Greyhound Rescue Wales has assisted with
research to assess the scale of the problem in
Wales i.e. how many greyhounds
meet unacceptable fates when they
retire.
Research carried out in association with the All
Party Group for Animal Welfare at the National
Assembly for Wales in 2003 provided the first
hard facts ever in one of the home nations of
the UK
[1]. This near complete survey of local
authority pounds found that 139 greyhounds
entered pounds in Wales in a twelve month
period. Wales has about 5% of the British
population and at the time had about 4% of UK
greyhound tracks. It therefore seems reasonable
to estimate that about 2,800 greyhounds would
meet this fate throughout Britain.
The fate of the greyhound called Last Hope,
found shot through the head and with his ears
cut off on Fochriw Mountain in May 2004, shocked
caring owners within greyhound racing as much as
it shocked those of us active in welfare
organisations. Following this, people within
greyhound racing in Wales started talking more
freely about the number of greyhounds that are
simply shot at their owners request when they
finish racing.
In
July 2004, Greyhound Rescue Wales produced a
paper
[2] suggesting that between 100 and 300
greyhounds were being shot in Wales each year
after they retired. This paper also concluded
that the shooting of greyhounds was well
organised on a commercial basis, and carried out
routinely to dispose of unwanted dogs. The Wales
Greyhound Forum whose members include the Welsh
tracks then decided to accept the lower figure
of 100 greyhounds being shot in Wales each year
[3].
Since then the investigative reporter Daniel
Foggo, writing in the Sunday Times newspaper has
exposed the Seaham slaughterhouse in north east
England and a knackers yard in south East
England where thousands of Greyhounds had been
slaughtered, for a small fee. In each case the
owners felt they were doing a service to the
industry
[4]
[5]
[6].
It
seems therefore seems reasonable to estimate
that between 2,000 and 4,000 greyhounds will
meet this fate in Britain each year.
In
addition to this estimate there are greyhounds
which are euthanased by vets; greyhounds which
are abandoned and die without being found and
greyhounds which are abandoned but subsequently
lucky enough to be taken in by caring people.
These dogs, for the moment, do not appear
anywhere in the statistics.
Even if just 20 greyhounds met each of these
fates in Wales every year (and this is almost
certainly an under-estimate) this would add
significantly to the total figures.
No
matter which way the figures are interpreted,
there is enough evidence for any reasonable
person to conclude that thousands of greyhounds
meet an unacceptable fate in Britain each year.
An
estimate of the unacceptable fates of greyhounds
in Wales and in Britain as a whole is shown
below:
