The Only Way Is Ethics – by Michael Watts

Michael Watts MRCVS

I got an e-mail the other day from a journalist, a real journalist who works for a national television channel, not just a poor player like me “who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”. This is not something that happens every day of the week in my neck of the woods so I sat up and paid attention. There is after all some small part of each and every one of us that is just a little chuffed at the thought of appearing on the box should it be ever so briefly.

It would please my Mother at very least and maybe persuade her she did not raise a total deadbeat. Your Man was doing a bit of digging about the Welfare of Racing Greyhounds Regulations (2010), not you might have thought a subject likely to put a lots of bums on seats in the era of cable television but he is the pro so what do I know? There had apparently been a statutory review of the Regulations after they had five years to bed in, which to be fair I did vaguely remember.

Seemingly the British Veterinary Association Ethics Committee had made a submission to the consultation which raised a few issues. Whether this had passed me by at the time, me not being a member of the committee in question, or whether a copy had landed on my desk at the time and I had simply forgotten about it in the intervening four years I cannot now say.

Now I may be an amateur, but I like to think that I am not a complete blithering idiot, not all the time anyway. Me making off-the-cuff comments about a report, in the drafting of which I had played no part, might make good television but it would not be the smartest career move I ever made. I quickly outed myself. Fools rush in, and all that. I told Your Man that I had not been involved in writing the submission so he would be better asking some of those who were.

Nice try, no cigar. Apparently the Ethics Committee had been wound up between then and now, which was news to me but I do live in a rural backwater. The long and the short of it was that none of those who had made the submission to the Department of the Environment Food & Rural Affairs in 2015 could now be tracked down, or if they could they were not about to stick their heads above the parapet any time soon. The ball which I thought I had safely kicked into touch was heading my way once again.

Perusing a copy of said submission thoughtfully supplied by the British Veterinary Association, I found that the Committee had expressed the view that “despite the work of greyhound charities there are too many greyhounds still being euthanased at the end of their racing careers“. In my book one healthy greyhound euthanased without a very good reason is one too many.

While the Committee conceded that “euthanasia may of course be the only option for a small number of greyhounds with certain types of chronic injuries or behaviour problems” you have to wonder if a change of environment and circumstances might reduce the severity of some behavioural problems even if eliminating them entirely is a big ask.

For those greyhounds whose behavioural problems fail to resolve, might not life in an institutional kennels be an option worth considering? Euthanasia may be a quick fix for many problems but it is an irreversible step that should not be taken lightly.

I still struggle to come up with many very good reasons for euthanasing greyhounds with chronic injuries In their recently published injury and retirement statistics for 2018, the GBGB, if I understand them right, seem to be advancing an argument that euthanasia is a viable alternative to treating injured greyhounds if the cost of veterinary care is too high.

If true, this is arguing the case for short arms and deep pockets, rather than furthering the welfare interests of the greyhounds involved so I am hang glad I was not asked to try to sell that idea to a television audience.

Interestingly, in their submission to DEFRA, my colleagues on the Ethics Committee called upon the GBGB to publish, from 2018, summary statistics for the number of dogs that leave the sport each year, saying that in their view “the publication of annual statistics about the number of dogs leaving racing would be useful to help identify trends and problems within the industry. We would suggest that in order to make these statistics more effective and useful, they should include the reason each dog left racing”

I cannot argue with this approach for one moment. The best way for the industry to counter the often ill-informed propaganda from those opposed to our sport is to publish robust, transparent and verifiable data to refute their claims. Of course publishing such data is a two-edged sword.

If the statistics paint an unflattering picture of the greyhound game, then it falls to all of us involved in the industry to raise our game and clean up our collective act.

The members of the Ethics Committee felt it necessary to state that they “would also like to highlight that the euthanasia of healthy greyhounds no longer required for racing is currently a significant ethical issue within the UK greyhound industry” adding that “sometimes euthanasia is used as a convenient means of dealing with greyhounds that are considered too old or too slow to continue racing”. Their stance was in my view sad, but pretty accurate.

If I agreed to appear on Your Man’s television programme, there were only two roads I could go down. Either I had to try to justify euthanasing healthy dogs and have the “antis” picketing my doorstep or I call the industry out  and earn their eternal enmity Once they had got me on camera they could potentially edit my contribution at will, cutting and pasting so as to make a black crow white if they so wished. I may be doing these good people a grave injustice but in the cold light of day it is hard for me to be sure that my future wellbeing would be as high on their agenda as getting good ratings and high viewing figures.

Either course of action would potentially leave what remains of my career open to demolition by some random keyboard warrior  with an axe to grind giving me dog’s abuse on social media..

Cutting to the chase, the programme was broadcast last week. I didn’t watch it myself but our esteemed Editor described it as “sensationalist bullshit, dressed up as journalism”. I can do no better but quote a wiser man than me who commented on Twitter that “the vast majority of participants in the sport do their very best for the dogs in their care and don’t deserve the lazy, one sided agenda-driven blackballing our industry got”

My concern is that unless the ethos of the industry changes so that the euthanasia of healthy greyhounds is viewed as unacceptable in all circumstances we are making the bullets for others to fire at us/

I must have the perfect face for radio I have just received requests for interviews from two more members of the Fourth Estate, one from La Bell France and another from The Principality. Alas I have a prior commitment. I am up to my eyes walking my dogs on the beach ….

  ©UnderTheRadar 2019