February 2014
On Thursday 27th February, David and Frances Ramsden from the Barn Owl Trust travelled to London to join up with Bert Wander and Meredith Alexander from avaaz.org and meet with Minister Mike Penning. The meeting was also attended by representatives from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The meeting was an opportunity to deliver our petition, signed by over 120,915 people, telling Mike Penning MP and the Health and Safety Executive: Britain’s Barn Owls are in crisis. We call for the introduction of stronger controls on the use of powerful rodent poisons and clear labelling on packaging, as recommended by the Barn Owl Trust.
There can be no doubt that our Rodenticide Campaign and the public support it has generated will be considered when HSE meets with the rodenticide industry on the 4th March.The Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) was established by the companies that make the poisons to encourage safe use by the user groups, including professional pest controllers, farmers, gamekeepers and amateurs. CRRU have been tasked by HSE with Co-ordinating new stewardship regime proposals. The Trust has already submitted detailed comments on the 44-page document.It’s not over yet. You can still sign the petition.
Following the meeting at the Department of Work and Pensions we wanted some photographs for the archives with avaaz.org and we met up again with the Minister outside who was happy to join in.On the same day Channel 4’s Jon Snow featured the Barn Owl Trusts’ Rodenticide Campaign on the 7pm news.