RE your story headlined “Heading south – to feed demand for squirrel pie” (Echo, May 29) in which pest controller Paul Parker said of the poor grey squirrel: “They are destructive because they don’t belong here.”

Surely this has to been some sort of discrimination, even bordering on racism. Can you imagine the outcry if we were told “Redheads are destructive because they don’t belong here”?

No, thought not.

Someone should tell Mr Parker that our multicultural world also extends to the animal kingdom.

As a “soft Southerner” who has settled happily in the North-East, I like to read The Northern Echo over breakfast, but there are some things I just cannot take with my cereal and this was one of them.

While I appreciate that the paper has a duty to report without bias, it did not really need to be printed with the accompanying picture – of Mr Parker removing a dead squirrel from one of his traps – which was most distressing.

So much for us being a nation of animal lovers. Methinks not.

Fran Willows, Shildon, Co Durham.