Introduction

Game farming is the domestication and commercial marketing of native and non-native wildlife for a variety of products, (including meat, hides, feathers, and antlers) or for paid hunting. It is an industry designed to privatize and domesticate wild animals, to own and raise them for profit (Rowledge, 1991).  Game farming involves intensive, small pasture production or extensive, wide range production of captive wild animals, and poses significant threats to non-game farm wildlife and conventional agriculture, such as the disruption of migratory patterns of wild animals through the installation of high fences, increased poaching as the sources of wildlife products become difficult to track, or by fostering diseases and parasites both within “livestock” populations, and to wild animals.

AWA’s Position:

AWA supports living wildlife economies that promote the conservation of wildlife populations in their natural environment and as a public resource. Living wildlife economies are economies that depend on living wildlife, such as camping, hunting, fishing and wildlife watching. AWA is opposed to the privatization, domestication and commercialization of wildlife, including game farming. 

Game farming of wildlife is neither economically nor environmentally viable. It is antiethical to wildlife, our system of conservation and our living wildlife economies. Game farming brings costly problems such as disease, parasites, genetic pollution, habitat loss, and increased poaching. Game farming has no legitimate place within Alberta and should be phased out and prohibited by law. In line with this, the shooting of captive wildlife for a fee is considered to be an unethical and unacceptable method of hunting by AWA and various hunting and fishing groups in the province.