It Is A Long, Long Way From Clare To Here – MICHAEL WATTS MRCVS

A press release is generally a statement of what is going on, or at least how the party issuing the presser views events, usually couched in upbeat language where optimism can by any stretch of the imagination be seen to be the order of the day. Last month’s epistle from Greyhounds Australasia [GA] stands out from the pack as being a horse of a different colour. The subject was the closure of the Macau Canidrome and the fate of the greyhounds who had until recently raced there.

Cutting to the chase, it deals with GA’s attempts to get involved in the continuing care of these greyhounds and to influence events in Macau. As most of these quickly came to nothing it reads like an exculpatory effort mostly designed mainly to save their blushes and cover their backsides.

Now I have never been much closer to Macau than the New Orient Chinese takeaway in the High Street, although I confess to rather enjoying the horseracing from Hong Kong on satellite TV in my more insomniac moments. As I am therefore unable to check out the facts of the case for myself, I am reliant on normally reliable sources like Greyhounds Australasia for the straight story. Now “the antis” have had the Macau track in their sights as far back as I can remember and have not been slow to come up with horror stories about the welfare of the greyhounds who race there, or the lack of same. We often talk about those opposed to the use of dogs in sport as if they were a single entity, all singing from the same hymnbook.

Having grown old and grey reading their contributions to the debate, I can confirm that while for some organisations the end justifies the means and that they therefore have few qualms about the promulgation of fake news and, in some cases, fairly transparent lies if that helps to promote their agenda. We should not however tart them all with the one brush. There are some groups and individuals who make a point of keeping themselves well informed and who have identified real welfare issues that the industry, whether here, in Ireland or in Macau, needs to address. I would be failing in my duty if I did not tell the story as best I can unearth it and I have to say that there have been so many rumours aired over the years about the state of affairs at the Canidrome that it is hard to deny that there must be some grain of truth in at least some of them. As much as I cannot dismiss out of hand every allegation levelled at out sport by those opposed to it, I would be equally out of order if I took the line that everyone in the greyhound game should stick together and watch each other’s backs, and that I should use this forum to lavish fulsome praise on all involved in the sport in Macau. Where I come from you make your bed and then you have to lie in it for good or ill.

The Yat Yuen Canidrome Club is the only greyhound racing stadium in Macau. It dates from the 1960’s in the good old bad old days when Macau was a Portugese colony and “The Las Vegas of the East”. In its heyday it staged five meeting a week, each with a sixteen-race card. It has two grandstands I am told, as well as private boxes and a VIP lounge, all mod cons!. It had a fifty-year operating licence which, when it expired in 2015 was only renewed by the government for a further twelve months. Clearly they did not see it as having a big future. Its turnover fell 64% between 2010 and 2014, and a further 13.7% since then. The golden age of greyhound racing in Macau was back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when there were not as many alternative forms of gambling in the city as there are now.

According to official figures from the Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau, revenue from the Canidrome only amounted to 0.05% of Macau’s total gaming revenue in 2015, despite a reduction in the income tax payable by the owners to 25%. In an interview with Macau Business Daily, the President of the Macanese Association, a community group based in the city, has gone on record as saying “Times have changed. The Canidrome doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore. It doesn’t produce profit, so it doesn’t make sense. We have different sensibilities now and it’s hard to see the abuse the animals there suffer. We should dismantle it”. The Chinese authorities would like to see the focus of tourism in Macau shift from the handful of international high rollers whose spending helped to transform the city from a colonial backwater into what it is today towards a broader based more middle class, more Asian market.

In keeping with this approach, the Macau government ordered the closure of the Canidrome last month when its lease expired. This was the final phase of a long-running saga involving government officials, local animal welfare charities and prominent local businesswoman Angel Leong, executive director of Yat Yuen. Ms Leong, a longstanding Macau legislator, is the fourth wife of Dr.Stanley Ho who for around forty years enjoyed a government-granted monopoly on gambling in the enclave She has long been the subject of criticism from animal rights organisations such as the locally based Anima but has always rejected claims of cruelty and generally declines requests for comment.

In the past there were rumours of friction between Anima and another local animal welfare organisation, the Abandoned Animals Protection Association of Macau, who, it has been suggested are more sympathetic to greyhound racing interests. The Canidrome belongs to powerful business interests, to people who are very big fish in the small pond that is Macau. Opposing them may not always be easy and not always productive. We who can only look on from afar and whose information is second-hand at best, find it to know who to believe. As prior to the imposition by Greyhounds Australasia [GA] of a ban on the export of greyhounds to Macau in March 2013 all the greyhounds that competed at the Canidrome originated from Australia, the Animals Australia charity took a keen interest in their welfare, liaising closely with Anima on the ground in Macau and keeping GA informed of progress, or mostly the lack of same.

A rehoming scheme for retired greyhounds was set up in 2012, reputedly as a result of pressure from government officials. It seems thus far to have re-homed only a handful of dogs but Rome was proverbially not built in a day. With around six hundred and fifty thousand people shoehorned into a peninsula less than twelve square miles in area, Macau has to be one of the most densely populated places on God’s earth and perhaps it does not readily lend itself to the keeping of large dogs as pets. Here in the U.K., where greyhounds have been kept since time immemorial, we encounter cultural difficulties when trying to re-home ex racers as pets. It might be asking a lot of the Macanese, who have no tradition of greyhound sport, to do any better.

With the closure of the Canidrome, local government officials took into their care five hundred and thirty-three greyhounds that remained in the boarded up track. Around a dozen of these were reportedly suffering from skin disease and other health problems. The authorities in Macau have warned that Yat Yuen may face legal measures under the Animal Protection Act for failing to move the dogs from the track, which a reported from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has described as “a bleak concrete jungle, rows and rows of kennels, up to eight hundred dogs locked up for most of the day”.

According to their press release, GA had approached Animals Australasia in early June only to be told that the Anima people had so far been unable to get access to the track. GA then approached the Yat Yuen company with an offer to help rehome Australian-bred greyhounds considered suitable for rehoming. This approach too seems to have borne no fruit. GA now says that it will “stand ready to provide Animal Australia and the Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals Hong Kong with support in rehoming any Australian bred greyhound suitable for rehoming.” No mention is made of Anima or other Macau-based charities, although perhaps these are working through Animals Australia or SPCA Hong Kong. Half a world away, we may only hear half the story. What is clear from their press release is that Greyhounds Australasia want us to know that they are giving the problem their best shot, even if, through no fault of their own, they keep coming up against a brick wall.

Looking back though, it is salutary to note that it was not Greyhound Australasia’s refusal to issue passports for dogs going to Asia that ended the export of race dogs to Macau. At no time was it illegal to export greyhounds Asia, where there was a market for greyhounds that lacked the pace to race successfully in Australia. Although those who breached GA’s prohibition on sales of greyhounds to China potentially risked disqualification from racing at home, the trade apparently continued . Ultimately the death knell on the supply of Australian greyhounds to the Canidrome was struck by the major airlines. On 11^th December 2015 Quantas announced on their Facebook page that they would no longer fly racing greyhounds to Asian destinations, a move that was quickly mirrored by Cathay Pacific, effectively signalling the end of greyhound exports from Australia to Macau. Given the probability that neither airline was making its fortune flying race dogs to China, in the great scheme of things their best move was to walk away from a potentially contentious issue and avoid any possible flak which would reflect badly on their public image.

Continuing our wee history lesson, in search of new recruits the Macau greyhound racing industry turned its attention to Ireland. Trawling my favourite search engine – others are available – reveals that Lufthansa allegedly flew six greyhounds to Hong Kong in April 2016 the ultimately destination of which allegedly was Macau. A larger consignment of Irish-bred greyhounds allegedly destined for the Canidrome on 12^th May got no further than Heathrow as their transport cages were apparently deemed to be too flimsy for the proposed onward journey.

By the sounds of things therefore at least some of the five hundred plus dogs living in limbo in the Canidrome may have come from Ireland. Greyhound Australasia make it abundantly clear in their press release that their interest begins and ends with the welfare of the Australian-bed greyhounds there. That seems a bit mean-spirited to my sentimental Irish heart, although I can appreciate the magnitude of the task that has landed in their laps and understand their need to mitigate it. Is anybody speaking up for the Irish-bred dogs or working behind the scenes? I am going to bung a few dollars to SPCA Hong Kong on the off chance, just to salve my conscience.

There is a lesson here for those opposed to greyhound sports. After long years of pressure from the welfare lobby, the track in Macau has finally closed its doors, precipitating and entirely predictable welfare crises for the now redundant greyhounds “The antis” should be careful what the wish for, they just might get it.