The report makes foe harrowing reading and found that a whopping 48,000 to 68,000 greyhounds - or almost half of all greyhounds bred to race in NSW were killed in the past 12 years because they were uncompetitive.
Greyhound racing has been in a state of gradual decline for some time and feelings amongst greyhound owners tend to run high when racing is discussed, with one side pro racing and the other anti.
The end of greyhound racing may well recieved news to those who are anti-racing, but major short term headaches still exist and the NSW premier needs to provide clarification as to what plans the state government has in place to ensure that tens of thousands of dogs are not slaughtered now that they cannot earn a living for trainers.
While I wondered if Greyhounds as Pets (GAP) NZ could somehow help, the NSW news is going to create massive logistical problems that are just far to big for NZ to make more than a tiny difference. Either way the NSW news is likely to have huge animal welfare implications.
Gap NZ typically aim to adopt 300-400 hounds a year. There are arleady a huge number of hounds in NZ looking for homes. Even if Gap NZ was to take a years worth of hounds out of NSW, it'd barely make a difference. Worse still, it'd mean many hounds in NZ already looking to be adopted will have an even longer wait.
Sadly there are no easy answers to this perplexing issue. Most trainers simply cannot afford to keep the dozens of dogs they own if they are unable to pay their way at the track. It is also unlikely that the Australian public can adopt all the dogs likely to be displaced by the shut down. Thousands of dogs will probably the euthanised.
Clearly the NSW government needs to outline what they think is an orderly shut down of the industry and how they plan to avoid such massive slaughter of innocent dogs.
Given Australia's human rights record of recent years and the shambolic state of their politics any enlightened yet costly initiatives are unlikely to happen.
Perhaps a smarter option would have been to phase out racing over a 10 year period so what dogs could be humanely re-homed. I just hope that the NZ industry and government is watching and taking learnings from what looks set to be nothing short of a horrific slow motion train-wreck that'll once again see innocent dogs paying the ultimate price for human folly.
If you are an australian greyhound owner, write to your local media and state MP. Put pressure on them to clarify how there will be an orderly shut down and what is going to be done to avoid slaughter on such a massive scale.
While the logistics of GAP NZ getting actively involved in re-homing NSW hounds makes any such initiative impossible, I fervently hope that GAP NZ offers to provide marketing and Pr resources to help drive up awareness of the plight of these gentle animals....
Update
Yesterdays news weighed heavily on my mind so I decided to do some research. here's a few numbers just to give you an idea of the sheer scale of the issue:
Between 2010 and 2015 a whopping 38,524 greyhound puppies were whelped in NSW. approximately 66% of these are raced. I've been unable to find the number of hounds re-homed in NSW, but I estimate that around 2,450 were probably adopted through GAP NSW (the actual number could be a lot lower than this)...
This means that there's at least 36,000 greyhounds needing a home real soon. I don't know what the cost per hound is for welfare, nor do I know what the NSW state govt is putting up to help these dogs.
I am however very very worried for these poor animals.
