YOUR correspondent Pauline Burgess (Your Letters, June 7) has pointed to the nub of the problem of fox hunting. Fox hunting is supposed to reduce the number of foxes. Why? Because they kill farm animals; and what are farm animals for? Mainly to eat.

Meat eating is responsible for a catalogue of other problems, factory farming, broiler poultry, live exports and in some cases long journeys to abattoirs, to name a few, all responsible for unnatural and stressful conditions for the animals.

Arable farming has its problems but it does not cause swine fever, foot and mouth disease nor TB, BSE or salmonella (which endanger human life). Do away with livestock and land now used for animals feeds could become available for growing food for human consumption.

It has been stated (and I have yet to hear it contradicted) that this could provide enough to feed the world, thus doing away with any need for the unpopular, as yet unproven GM crops.

SHEILAH FIELDING, Kempley Green, Dymock.