If you have ever wondered why the greyhound industry has struggled to engage the welfarists, a visit to the All Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group meeting in Westminster on Tuesday night would have nailed it writes Floyd Amphlett.
Forget ‘honest open progressive debate’ and think ‘Christians v Lions’.
As someone who spent years trying to engage with ‘the antis’ before realising that it was a pointless exercise, my earliest impressions of this get-together seemed entirely accurate.
In a room of probably 100 people, more than 90% were anti greyhound racing, with some practically biting their own forearms at the prospect of taking down the GBGB’s Managing Director Mark Bird.
My first issue – can you debate with someone with a closed mind?
Simply, can you discuss injury prevention and re-homing with an abolitionist whose sole objective is that greyhound racing is wiped off the race of the earth? So why bother?
My second issue – are they deliberately lying, or do they actually believe their own propaganda?
The antis do have a bit of history. I have a memory of Annette Crosbie describing the number of “annually shot, drowned or hanged” as twice the number being born in Britain and Ireland combined every year.
The evidence remains in a cross section of leaflets that were more colourful in their production of ‘facts’ as they were in appearance.
One of my favourites was a piece of glossy toilet tissue produced by Greyt Exploitations which claimed “4,000 greyhounds bred for British racing were unaccounted for in 2017”
They even attempted to distort Greyhound Star published figures. I don’t have the space here to go into the numbers of greyhounds born, registered, sent to Britain or retained for coursing or racing in Ireland’s 18 tracks, but the figure is absurd. A complete fabrication.
(The total figure of missing British bred pups is probably around 120-140, of which I would expect almost all to have been re-homed, since pups are more in demand than ex-racers as pets – as the homefinders should know).
What sickened me the most was actually the panel, like everything else at the meeting, heavily weighted towards the antis.
We heard from Andrew Knight, Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics and a man very fond of the word “kill”. He made several statements that simply baffled me.
We were told that the percentage of injuries was dramatically reduced in races under 300m. I wonder where that evidence came from? Presumably it must be accurate. But he also told us that the vast majority of injuries occurred at the first bend. Confused.com!
He said that during the process of bone re-modelling, greyhounds lost calcium from other parts of their body which made them more likely to be injured in other areas.
Presumably it is verifiable, but in healthy well fed athletes? I would like greater clarification and wonder why canine and equine nutrition specialist Dr John Kohnke never mentioned it in probably 20 different articles and vets letters about bone-remodelling over the last 15 years.
Mr Knight also questioned the dramatic drop in euthanasia figures produced by the tracks in recent years. Now maybe that is just me being thick, but I would have thought the answer was obvious.
The tracks attempted to make the trackside euthanasia figure more accurate by not allowing trainers to blame chronic racing injuries for what were effectively “economic euthanasias”.
Knight also made reference to euthanasias, sorry ‘killings’, that took place days after race meeting took place. But aren’t they covered in the green forms?
Maybe dogs were revived and killed again? The general insinuation that GBGB were fiddling the figures clearly needs to be backed up.
Clarissa Baldwin OBE, remains the most highly respected of all welfare campaigners. She is not radical enough for many antis, but criticised GBGB over various issues, most particularly, racing during hot weather. She did though acknowledge a much improved level of communication since Mark Bird took over at GBGB a year ago.
As for League Against Cruel Sports, their cynicism never fails to sicken me. Over 32 years I have seen a number of employees wheeled out to justify their salaries. The latest was Nick Weston.
Very fond of the word “exploitation”, our Mr Weston. I wonder how many salaries that one word has paid.
I wonder, is it a bit like the leaf falling in the forest? If a greyhound goes around a track and nobody had a bet on it, is it still exploited?
A lesson for Mr Weston, greyhound people do not ‘exploit’ greyhounds, they race and love them and in 86% of occasions, re-home them.
Do the bookmakers exploit them? Absolutely, if they fail to support welfare.
Indeed Mr Weston received a round of applause for suggesting that owners who can’t afford veterinary care should not be allowed greyhounds.
Perhaps a more morally sound argument might have been: ‘should any betting organisation not prepared to pay for welfare be allowed to bet on them? Since they are the major financial beneficiaries from racing.”
Finally, one statement, which, like all so many others in a partisan audience, went unchallenged.
Mr Weston, who apparently owns two ex-racers, described how it wasn’t right how he couldn’t allow one of them to gallop “with the wind blowing throwing his fur” because he had broken its leg when racing
It was an effing broken leg, not a triple amputation!
When my eldest broke her arm ice-skating (clearly unloved to be allowed to do something where she may get hurt!), we didn’t confine her to living the rest of her life like Stephen Hawking.
Despite feeing like Daniel among the lions, the star of the night was GBGB boss Mark Bird.
Unlike all his predecessors who lacked the ability and most crucially the cahones to address a pack of the most fanatical antis in the country, Mark Bird demonstrated once again why he is THE person to take the industry forward.
He was given a rough ride, but there was also a general respect from the audience for being willing to stand in the firing line.
Make no mistake though, he is not a placator. The greyhound industry will need to raise its game, or else.
In the meantime, I look forward to Mr Weston sitting on a panel in front of 80 greyhound racing supporters.
I left the meeting frustrated. I raised my hand with plans to challenge some of the statements made by Knight, Weston and Greytxploitations’ Trudy Baker.
Sadly, there was insufficient time and too many arms in the air with bitemarks on them.
I also have to say, in clear conscience, that I agreed with some of the points made by the antis.
For example, the lady seated in front of me, a Ms Rita Joannu-Yarwood-James of CagedUK, questioned Mark Bird as to why some trainers had contacted her organisation to complain that they had reported other trainers to GBGB but had seen no action taken.
It rang true for me because I have received similar calls. Dogs being left 14 hours in a kennel, insufficient bedding, bad teeth (we should be ashamed of ourselves for negligence of teeth). But when I have chased up stewards, I have largely been fed fudge.
“Well, we had a look and it wasn’t quite right, and we warned him about this, and advised him of that. . “
Utter bull!! Suspend the license. He will move a bit quicker and if the track promoter attempts to intervene, censure them too.
There is no room in this industry for dogs to suffer because stewards aren’t enforcing the rules.
Secondly, it is absolutely vital that should additional funding come through from the betting industry for on-line betting, the independent home finders should receive their fair share of it.
Many may hate us, but they do an invaluable job and take responsibility for greyhounds who have slipped through the welfare net.
Those of us who believe that 100% re-homing is achievable can never hope to get there without the independent home finders.
It was an interesting experience, well managed considering the level of passion in the room, though a completely loaded debate. For the next meeting of APDAW I may be too busy having a root canal filled.
