Greyhound killers’ annual awards

Tony Peters 20.01.2009 20:56

Greyhound protection group to stage demonstration:

Demonstrators at last year’s event

This is a yearly booze-up, dance and banquet, where the GBGB (formerly known at the British Greyhound Racing Board) hands out trophies to their various pals within the greyhound racing industry.

“In addition, the greyhound racing industry itself admits that around 2,000 ex-racing dogs are ‘put down’ annually when their ‘careers’ on the track are over.

“This means that about 17,000 greyhounds are put to death every year because of dog racing in Britain and that each of the 28 major tracks is, on average, responsible for the deaths of over 600.

“There are various greyhound rescue groups, who do excellent work in finding homes for some of the dogs that ‘retire’ from racing at the tracks, but this only amounts to a minority of the greyhounds disposed of because of the existence of the British dog racing industry.

“In recent years there have been many media exposés of the wholesale slaughter of greyhounds disposed of by the racing industry and several mass graves, containing the bodies of shot greyhounds, have been discovered.

“Greyhound racing also causes the death of many thousands of other dogs apart from greyhounds, as places in homes and rescue kennels, which could go to other stray and ‘unwanted’ dogs, are taken up by greyhounds got rid of by the racing industry, meaning that those other dogs are ‘put down’ because there is nowhere for them to go.

“In addition there are thousands of injuries, many of them serious, caused to greyhounds running on British tracks every year, because the shape of the tracks, with long straights leading into tight bends, creates a very dangerous environment for the dogs to run in.

“Greyhound Action believes that the only real solution to this horrific state of affairs is for the greyhound racing industry to be outlawed, which is why we are calling on the government to do this, through the simple measure of making it illegal to place or accept bets on dog races.

“Nine states in the USA have abolished commercial greyhound racing in recent years, so there is no reason why a ban shouldn’t be imposed in the UK.

“In the meantime, we are urging the public to boycott the dog racing industry. If enough people refrained from attending greyhound racing and stopped betting on races, then the activity would die out through lack of financial support.”

Source:  Indymedia:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk:80/en/2009/01/419571.html

Tony Peters
e-mail: info@greyhoundaction.org.uk
Homepage: http://www.greyhoundaction.org.uk

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