REGARDING the goose problem (August 22), the city council should use the old method of leaving a single egg in each nest, and replacing all the others with stone or ceramic ones.

Those eggs which have been removed should then be transported well out of sight of the parents, and destroyed as instantaneously as possible. Sudden and complete crushing would probably be the quickest and most humane way. This would cause the chicks less suffering than a slow death from suffocation, which is what happens at present.

Whatever method is used, the council must destroy the chicks as soon as the eggs have been laid. It would be grotesque to allow the chicks to grow within the eggs, develop full consciousness, hatch, grow into adults and then kill them.

This barbaric approach, which is favoured at the university, causes horrific suffering.

Aidan Williams,

Manor Drive North,

Boroughbridge Road,

York.

Updated: 11:03 Thursday, August 25, 2005