Greyhound Racing NZ chief executive officer Edward Rennell is “surprised and disappointed” both leaders of the two major parties agreed with a question over whether greyhound racing should be banned.
Speaking at the TVNZ's Final Leaders' Debate held last Thursday, both National Party leader Christopher Luxon and Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins agreed the sport should be banned when asked.
In response to the agreement between the party leaders, Rennell told Breakfast he assumed the incoming prime minister “hadn’t had the opportunity” to review the latest reports which highlight “significant progress” in regards to animal welfare.
“The progress over the last 18 months has ensured we are in line with best practice, we’ve made significant improvements around [euthanasia], injuries and rehoming rates. We aim to ensure every dog has a life after racing.
“We operate in a very regulated environment, from our perspective, the animal welfare rates we are now applying are world class.”
Meanwhile, SAFE campaign manager Anna De Roo felt the industry has had “more than enough chances to clean up their act”, and she is “not surprised” at last week's comments about a potential ban.
“Over the past 10 years, there has been four separate damning reviews all highlighting significant animal welfare concerns, and the latest review stated that many of these concerns are as relevant as they were 10 years ago, and that if animal welfare had been at the heart of decisions been made Greyhound Racing board more progress would have been made.
“It is clear as day the industry has to go, 40% of greyhounds racing in the last season were injured.”
Last month there were 60 injuries including eight fractures and a broken skull.
But Rennell said seven greyhounds died last season out of a total of 37,000.
Serious injuries in the sport require a stand down of more than 43 days, and currently occur at a rate of two per 1000 starters, according to Rennell.
“We have a rehabilitation scheme where Greyhound Racing NZ picks up the cost of having those dogs rehabilitated and then re-homed.”
The path of euthanising the dog is only taken when veterinary advice suggests it is the “most humane” thing to do, Rennell said.
But De Roo told Breakfast the severe injury rate is still “very high”, despite the rate of euthanasia going down.
“The concern there is some dogs are now perhaps needing to be euthanised but that is not happening. What we really want to see is the injuries and severe injuries go down otherwise we’re going to have greyhounds suffering.”
SHARE ME