Official Report 770KB pdf
Greyhound Racing (PE1758)
Welcome back, everybody. Our next item of business this morning is consideration of PE1758, which is on ending greyhound racing in Scotland. I welcome to the meeting Paul Brignal, who is the owner and director of Thornton Greyhounds; and Mark Bird, who is the chief executive officer, and Professor Madeleine Campbell, who is an independent director, of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain.
We have about 75 minutes for questions and discussion. I invite all our witnesses to give a short opening statement. I will ask Paul Brignal to start.
Good morning.
At the moment, Thornton greyhound track is the only one operating in Scotland. We race at approximately 40 meetings per year, when, on average, 30 greyhounds will race in five or six races. The greyhounds race against each other for their enjoyment and ours. It is safer for a greyhound to run around our safely prepared sand track than it is for it to run around a field, where uneven ground and rabbit holes can be far more dangerous.
I question whether any of the concerns that have been raised by the petitioners in their previous statements to the committee have any bearing on greyhound racing in Scotland. We have provided video evidence to show the committee and the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission that there are very few injuries at our track. The SAWC has attended the track and has seen that all the greyhounds were in excellent condition and there were no animal welfare issues.
The SAWC has submitted a report to the committee that contains very little relevance to greyhound racing in Scotland but makes a case for phasing it out based on greyhound racing in other countries. It has recommended that a vet be present at all race meetings. Although every animal-based sport would love to have a trained vet in attendance, the cost for an amateur sport is far too high. All Greyhound Board of Great Britain tracks have a vet in attendance, but they are paid for by bookmakers and funded by the multimillion-pound betting industry. How do you propose that amateur greyhound racing and, for that matter, all other hobby sports involving animals competing, would fund a vet?
In the rare event of a serious injury, there are several vet surgeries in the close vicinity of the track, so an injured greyhound will receive treatment faster than any person would be treated at an accident and emergency department. Even if there were a vet at the track, the injured greyhound would still have to go to a surgery, because there would need to be X-ray and operating facilities in order to treat it.
The SAWC should give independent advice to ministers. However, its previous correspondence, report and subsequent presentation show an unacceptable level of anti-greyhound-racing sentiment.
The call for views has given animal activists in Scotland yet another platform from which to attack greyhound racing. Although the committee maybe felt that it would get the views of the general public, that was never going to be the case, because the passionate animal rights activist has far more motivation to take part in the call for views than any other person does. That can be seen clearly in the report of what has happened. The call for views is no basis on which to decide the future of greyhound racing in Scotland.
The Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 protects all animals in Scotland, and there is no reason why a greyhound in Scotland should be treated any differently from any other animal that competes for fun and competition and recreation. Thank you very much.
You will be glad to know that I am not going to use the three minutes that you have offered, but thank you for allowing us to come along this morning.
I have a question. To go back to Paul Brignal’s comments about the SAWC report, I note that Madeleine Campbell and I gave evidence to an SAWC committee. We were pretty dismayed by what we read when it was published. We have submitted a response to that in which we outline over 35 inaccuracies that we want to air today at this committee meeting. Can you confirm that you have that report and that the members of the committee have seen it?
Yes.
Thank you. That is as much time as I need.
We will kick off with questions. Thank you for those opening remarks.
I want to explore how GBGB and Thornton protect the welfare of greyhounds through your role as a director and the board’s role as a nationwide organisation. What evidence do you have that the approach secures the highest level of animal welfare? In your responses, could you set out your role and how you monitor the tracks for GBGB, how data on monitoring is made available and how you engage with the public and external organisations in order to incorporate expert advice? I ask Mark Bird, from the GBGB, to start, and then Paul Brignal to outline how you address potential animal welfare issues.
The GBGB came about as a result of the Donoghue report that was done by the Westminster Government, which looked at greyhound welfare. Subsequent to that, legislation was passed in 2010 on the welfare of racing greyhounds.
All of that came into being and GBGB became the self-appointed regulator of the sport in the UK. We are not a big organisation and we are certainly not for profit. There are 32 members of the board of the GBGB. We are required to certificate and license all the tracks, of which there are 20, and all trainers and residential kennels. That has been the case since the Donoghue report was given life, and the siutation has evolved over the nearly 22 years since.
We have a small office in London, but most of what we do is about feet on the ground and going to the tracks and doing inspections, mostly at random, although tracks are recertificated every year. That is the case with the trainers, as well. We have 504 licensed board trainers, and their kennels are checked twice every year, as a minimum, as part of what we are doing to try to safeguard the welfare of greyhounds.
You asked also what we do in relation to the public and other stakeholders. As well as having a stakeholder board, we report back through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We meet other animal welfare charities that sit on the greyhound forum—that meeting still takes place. Even though, as you are probably aware, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Dogs Trust and Blue Cross have called for a ban on greyhound racing more widely, they are still members of the greyhound forum and we continue to exist alongside them, speak with them and work with them on taking greyhound welfare forward.
Can I add a couple of brief comments to that? You asked about the scope of the protection that we provide for animal welfare. As you know, we are required to take responsibility for animal welfare only within the racing period of a greyhound’s life. However, as you will have seen from the strategy that we published almost a year ago, the GBGB has made the decision that we will take responsibility across the entire life of a greyhound that is bred for racing and that we expect all stakeholders to join us in adopting that responsibility.
On engagement, there is everything that Mark Bird described, on top of which we are working with the charities within the greyhound forum to develop roadshow-type events whereby, alongside them, we can go out and engage with the public—for example, at county shows and things like that—to talk about welfare, particularly of retired greyhounds.
Thank you.
Paul Brignal, it appears that the GBGB is almost the professional arm of greyhound racing, and, from what you said in your opening statement, it seems that you are very much the amateur side. Week to week, how do you review animal welfare concerns as part of an amateur sport?
Fundamentally, because we are an amateur sport, the welfare of the greyhound, day to day, is the responsibility of the owner of the greyhound. As a track, which is a hobby track, our only real responsibility is to ensure that the track is as safe as possible and that the environment that the greyhounds are in is as safe as possible when they come to the track. We do that to the best of our ability.
We can always improve things, but, at the end of the day, if a dog that was not in a good condition was coming to the track, we would address that. We would approach the owner and say that they were not looking after the dog properly. That is the scope of what the track will do for the greyhound’s welfare. Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of the owner, as it is with a whippet or an agility competition dog. The owners turn up at events and it is their responsibility to look after the dogs. Fundamentally, our responsibility ends at the safety of the dog on the track.
As the director and the owner of the track, do you go through a procedure? Do you have a board of directors that meets regularly and decides that an owner has presented a dog regularly that has not been, in your view—
That has never happened, to be honest. All the people who look after the dogs at our track look after them exceedingly well. The SAWC will confirm that. Contrary to what the SAWC thinks, we did not tell anybody at the track that it was coming. It turned up and the first that people knew of it was when I announced over the tannoy that the SAWC was there and we asked people to co-operate with it. That was the first that they knew, so what the SAWC saw was what happens regularly at our track.
The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission noted that
“Racing greyhounds suffer specific injuries, particularly around the foreleg, that we do not see in other dogs—companion dogs or dogs that run but not in races.”
Can you give some more information about the types of injuries that racing greyhounds endure compared with those of other dogs, and can you outline the role and importance of having vets present on the site?
It is not surprising, perhaps, that canine athletes, like human athletes, incur different injuries to non-athletes. One of the things that the board was already doing, which we have continued to develop within the current welfare strategy, was drilling down into the evidence base. We are working, and have already worked, to improve the granularity of the evidence and data that we collect. That is sometimes difficult because the numbers are quite small and we need to be careful that we interpret them carefully. With exactly that in mind, we are also in the process of recruiting a data analyst specifically to help us to do that.
We are trying to understand what type of injuries occur and what the predisposing factors are that might result in those injuries. That goes across the board. It covers everything from track design—there are parts about that in the strategy—to the way that dogs are prepared for races, to detection, to the way that people are trained to detect injuries very early so that the dogs can be rested and treated appropriately and not raced. They are subclinical injuries that we are talking about.
All that is written into the strategy, as is use of new technologies. We have in place research on that that will help us to make use of all of the techniques that nowadays are used for human athletes, so that we can try to adopt some of them and apply them to canine athletes, as well.
What about the role and importance of the vet?
As you know, there is always a vet on site at any GBGB-regulated track, whether the dogs are trialling or racing. The vet checks the dogs when they first arrive, before they go to race and when they come back from the race. Any concerns that the vet has can be dealt with at those points.
We also have a system in place for following through. If a dog has incurred any injury at all, the vet will treat it at the track. Immediate first aid is always provided. If the dog needs to be referred on, specific instructions are given and the GBGB follows up on whether those have been taken care of thereafter.
Thanks very much. Paul Brignal, why is it seen as less important, as I understand it, to have a vet present than it is to have a bookmaker at your track?
The bookmaker is basically fundamental to improving the experience of the people who are racing their dogs. If they want to make a small bet—it would be a small bet; we are not talking about large bets—the one bookmaker that we have at the track is there to provide that service to the people. If they have a £50 bet on their dog, that makes it a little bit more exciting for them than running just for a rosette. Some of the people who run dogs at our track also have whippets, which they race for rosettes. Many people at the track run their dogs but do not bet and instead race the dogs for nothing more than the privilege of seeing their dog win.
11:15
We have just heard from GBGB about the importance of a vet being present at a regulated track.
The GBGB has a different policy on vets. It is a huge organisation with a multimillion-pound turnover. If we were to employ a vet to stand at our track, he would probably charge £400. Where is that £400 going to come from? We are just a small club and we do not have the capacity to pay that. You do not insist on having a vet at a whippet race meeting or at some other amateur sports racing, so why would an amateur sport such as a greyhound track have to have a vet?
Well, clearly, it is an important—
If a dog hurts itself, it will get treated extremely quickly. If a person hurts themselves, a doctor does not jump out of the bushes and come to treat them. I find it hard to understand why we think that a dog should have better treatment than human beings—that is a bit weird. I appreciate that the dog may suffer for 10 to 15 minutes during the journey to the vet, but a small child who has broken his leg playing football will have to sit in a car to go to accident and emergency. Why do you think that it is so important? I do not understand.
We are just—
The GBGB has a vet at the track for several reasons, but one of the reasons is that, when a trainer turns up at a GBGB track, he will have 10 or maybe 13 dogs on the card. If one of his dogs were to break a leg, he could not drop everything, take his 13 dogs and zip down to the vet. He has to have a vet at that track to treat that dog, otherwise it would be total chaos. They would have hardly any dogs running. The GBGB has a vet on the track for totally different reasons, and those reasons do not apply to us.
Okay. Thanks for that detail.
One small point that I forgot to mention is that, on GBGB tracks, under the new welfare strategy, in addition to what we might call the treatment vets, which we have just been talking about, we now have a team of regional regulatory vets. They are there to deal with the whole regulatory side of it. Veterinary surgeons are also there.
My understanding from what has been said is that GBGB is about providing greyhounds for betting—for the gambling industry—whereas Thornton is very much about providing a facility for amateur greyhound owners to race their dogs, and the bookmaker is secondary to that desire.
It is secondary but, to be honest, most of the people would like the bookmaker to be there so that they can put £20 on their dog if they want to do that. We have come to the conclusion that if a bookmaker is not available, we might just as well cancel the meeting. In the past, by the way, we have run without a bookmaker and people have run their dogs without the bookmaker. However, bear in mind that we do not make any money out of this and, if the bookmaker says that he does not want to go to the meeting, fundamentally, we will turn around and say, “We will not have the meeting.”
Thank you. Jim Fairlie is next.
I have to admit that I have never been to a dog track in my life and I have no idea what it is like, but I have raced pigeons, I have been to agility tests and sheepdog trials, and I have worked with animals most of my working life.
What I am getting from all the evidence that we have been presented with and from hearing from what I would like to call the professional side of the business and from the side that Paul Brignal seems to be on is that two fundamentally different things are happening here. The amateur side that you are working on, Paul—and please correct me if I am wrong; this is my assumption—is based on people who own their dogs. The dogs are part of the family. They go to the racing and that is part of their everyday life. Those dogs are cared for and treated in the same way as pets, except that they race around a track, whereas some of the evidence that we have taken is that big breeders produce lots of pups specifically with the purpose of racing them at the highest level and, if those dogs do not hit the highest level, they are no longer needed by the people who breed them or train them. Am I wrong in making that assumption?
Yes, you are. In many of the cases, when the greyhound retires, the people keep the dog as a pet for the rest of its life.
Sorry—I am asking you whether I am wrong to make the assumption that, for the folk that are coming to you, the dog is part of the family—
Yes.
However, the evidence that we have taken from the SAWC and from the GBGB is that there is much more of a professional take on it, with the point of view that the dog is a commodity rather than part of the family. That is the point that I am trying to make.
In general, for our dogs, an owner will probably have two or they may have only one. There are no big kennels and the dog will probably have the run of the house and the garden. It is treated as a family pet. So, it is totally different from what the GBGB sees, yes.
Some of the 504 trainers that we have licensed to us almost sit in Paul Brignal’s category in as much as they are not doing it for a commercial reason. We call them professional trainers because of the expectations that we have of them around the care and welfare of their dogs, and we ensure that that is there. However, a good number of those 504 are not in the category of doing it for a commercial reason. They have another job. They do it because they live and breathe greyhound racing.
A section of those trainers do it as a job and a form of income. They do it on much more of a commercial basis. Going back to the previous question, the 20 tracks are doing it for commercial reasons. It is not just about the running of the dog and the bookmaking against it. For some people, it is also about the entertainment value of going out, taking the family, taking their friends, having what is now a good meal at most of the tracks and watching the dogs run. It is not all about the gambling.
That is an important point to make. To say that the professional greyhound industry exists only to provide a gambling product is incorrect. There are other aspects of it, as Mark Bird says. Equally, to say that, on the one hand, we have this professional thing and, on the other hand, we have a family-oriented thing is also incorrect. My experience as an independent expert coming in has been very much that everyone involved in GBGB-licensed training is truly passionate about animal welfare. They care deeply for these dogs and many of them remain involved in the lives of the dogs—whether, in fact, those are dogs that never go racing to start with or whether they are dogs that are homed and, once they finish racing, people stay involved with them at that stage.
Forgive me if it appeared that I was trying to demonise one side against the other; I am not. I am purely trying to get an understanding of why there is an issue about dogs racing. There clearly is an issue, because we have people petitioning to get it banned. I know, having worked with dogs my entire life, the care and attention and everything else that is put into that. Why would you then want to do something that will make that dog ill, hurt or whatever else? Working as a sheep farmer, I have had dogs killed on the farm. I understand that these things happen, but why is there a need to stop greyhound racing when people are so passionate about looking after their animals in the way that you tell me they are? Where does that issue come from?
It is a good question. I fulfil many roles—a lot of my roles are around horse sport as well as around greyhound sport, and I completely agree. What we are discussing today is only a small part of human use of animals generally, so what is different about it? Part of the issue may be a lack of awareness about what is already done for greyhound welfare. It is important to say that, when a greyhound goes out to race, there is absolutely no intention ever that it should get injured. That is always an accident and something that everyone involved wants to avoid, just as they would want to avoid an accident to their sheepdog, their racing pigeon or whatever.
Mr Brignal, you said in your opening statement that you are responsible for the welfare of the dogs only at the track. Is that correct?
Yes. We are responsible for making sure that the dog does not hurt itself on the track surface. I use my 40 years of experience in greyhound racing and working on tracks to ensure that the track is as safe as it possibly can be.
Yes, that is not a problem—you have made it plain that you are responsible for their welfare only at the track. However, you have commented on the welfare of the animals with their owners when they are not at the track and afterwards. How can you know about that when you are responsible for their welfare only at the track?
I do not quite know what you are getting at. You are saying that the people come to the track, they are nice to their dogs, they turn their dogs out in good condition and then they take them home and do not look after them. How could that possibly—
I am not saying that that is happening. I am asking how you know what happens. You cannot know.
I do not, but common sense will tell you that if someone looks after their dog well at the track and the dog looks in prime condition, it will not be abused when it goes home.
There is another little issue—the phrase “prime condition”. You have stated that you say to owners that, if a dog is not in a fit state, you will not let the dog run. No vet is there to assess that. Can you tell me why you should be able to say, without a vet—and it might not be too obvious in certain animals—that they are not fit to be there?
What would you think would be an unfit dog at the track?
It is not a question for me to answer—I am not an expert. You are the person who sees the dogs all the time.
If a dog is far underweight or if a dog is obviously injured—and I can tell that from 40 years of experience in greyhound racing—it would be unfit. I have had greyhounds all my life and I can see if a dog is injured just as easily as a vet.
We need to understand the process that a vet would go through to assess whether a dog is fit to run. He would ask you to walk the dog up and back, and he would look at the dog to see whether it was lame. He would not give the dog a thorough examination. Someone with a trained eye, whether it be a vet or a dog physiotherapist or a trainer, could look at a dog when it was walking and know immediately if it was lame.
What you also do not understand about greyhound racing is that all the dogs that run at our track go to physiotherapists and are regularly checked by physiotherapists. When the dogs come to our track, they will probably have been checked before they race anyway.
Do you know that the dogs have been to physiotherapists?
I do not know that they have been to physiotherapists, but—
I am not being difficult. It is just that you keep saying “probably”. I am just asking how far your reach is in respect of the welfare of the dogs.
There is a limit to what I can do, obviously. What you are asking me to do is impractical. We are a hobby sport. If you go whippet racing—
Sorry. You misunderstand me. I am asking you what you know, not what you think you know.
We are a hobby sport and I am responsible for making sure that the track is as safe as possible. I am responsible for making sure that the dog is not lame when it goes on to the track. I try my best to do that.
I accept that—I understand that you are responsible for welfare at the track. However, I would suggest that there is a difference between an elite athlete suffering injuries and a greyhound doing so, because the athlete chooses to compete and the dog does not. Let us park that as a comment.
Let me move on to the GBGB. How far does your veterinary responsibility for the welfare of dogs extend? I understand from Mr Brignal that his responsibility is just at the track, though he may know other stuff through passing knowledge. For you, how far does it extend? For instance, does it extend to where the dogs are bred, how they are kept, what happens to them when they are injured and what happens to them when they can no longer run or when they are euthanised? When those things happen, how far does your responsibility extend?
Quite a lot of the detail on that is provided in our written response to the SAWC report, which we have given to you, but you are absolutely right. As I said, as a board, we chose to take responsibility for welfare across the animal’s lifetime.
In the early stages—in the pre-racing stages of a greyhound’s life—we work alongside, for example, the Kennel Club, which is developing a bespoke assured breeders programme so that we can concentrate on welfare standards around breeding. We also work alongside the Greyhound Stud Book so that we can interact with all those who breed greyhounds. We now have in place not only the treatment vets but also a team of regional regulatory vets, who will help to track and ensure the optimised welfare of dogs at that stage of their lifetime. Of course, stewards also go in and check on kennels. When we go into the racing period, we have an independent kennel auditor visit residential kennels once a year.
11:30We are in the process of finalising United Kingdom Accreditation Service accreditation for trainers and residential kennels, and all trainers are required to be compliant with the PAS 251:2017 standard. If concerns are raised by regulatory vets, by treatment vets, by the vets who look after greyhounds on a day-to-day basis, by stipendiary stewards or by any of the others who visit kennels, they can be brought back to the GBGB. We have a director of regulation, and a complaint can go through the disciplinary process, which has independent members sitting on it. The whole system around establishing the welfare standards within kennels is run by something called the impartiality committee, which has a vet on it and is an independent sub-committee.
When a greyhound goes into the retirement stage of its life, it is normally moved into the care of a non-greyhound vet—a regular vet who looks after pet animals. It then falls under their care and under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and, at that stage, it is looked after as any other animal would be.
Am I correct in saying that not all greyhounds are suitable for retirement, because they have not been socialised and so on, no matter what you try to do? You did not answer the question about how many dogs are put down and for what reasons in a period of a year—last year, let us say.
I will pass over to Mark Bird in a moment, so that he can give you some figures on that.
In answer to your question about the dogs that are not suitable for rehoming—or for homing, because it is the first time they have gone to a home—that is a very small number, though we are, nonetheless, committed to driving that number down. In the welfare strategy, we have a particular stream around behaviour, and we work with one of the charities in the greyhound forum specifically around that. There are several strands to that work, including—importantly, as you mentioned—in the early stages of a greyhound’s life, everyone responsible for it making sure that it is socialised in a way that will make it easy for it to go to a domestic home at the point at which it retires. That is one programme.
We are also developing, in collaboration with a canine charity, a standardised assessment of behaviour of greyhounds, and we are making sure that we have in place—again, along with the charity—a number of behaviourists to whom greyhounds can be referred. We are conscious of that issue and we have systems in place.
I will pass over to Mark Bird for the details.
Christine, when we met, which was about four years ago, when you were in the cross-party—
Yes—I have more recent correspondence, but the committee has not seen it.
We had only just started collating track injury figures and, within that, the fatality figures and figures on what happens to dogs at the end of their racing careers, when they go into retirement. When we first started collating the numbers, back in 2018, 242 dogs had died at the track. They were put to sleep or were caused sudden death at the track and were overseen by a vet. That was in 2018. In the figures for 2021, which are the most recent figures we have, that number had decreased to 120. That is a 50 per cent reduction, in four years, in the number of track fatalities among greyhounds. The number of injuries has pretty much remained the same, in terms of the number of runs versus the number of dogs that are running. I can give you other figures on other fatalities if you want.
Yes, because that figure is for dogs that died at the track—they either were put down at the track or died otherwise. What about dogs that are not suitable for retirement?
It depends on what you are saying they are unsuitable for. If you are saying they are unsuitable for homing, which means that—
Do you put down dogs that are not injured?
The figures for dogs that are unsuitable for homing, because there is some behavioural problem with them, show that, back in 2018, 190 were put to sleep by vets for that particular reason.
Was that out of the 242, or was that additional?
It was additional. In the 2021 figures, that number reduced to just 13—a reduction of 93 per cent. The reason that that came about was that we worked with trainers around the culture. You mentioned the dogs being a commodity and the need to get the trainers away from the view that a dog is a commodity and towards the view that it is a sentient being that has been used in racing and, therefore, will go on to retirement. The work that we have done over the four years has seen that number drop by 93 per cent.
The absolute number is very small, but we are not complacent about that. That is exactly why we have this huge collaborative programme within the welfare strategy to do everything we can to make it easier for greyhounds to transition to a domestic life when they retire.
That was helpful. I will stop there, but I might come back in later.
Thank you.
It was remiss of me not to mention that we have with us Mark Ruskell MSP, who has taken a very close interest in this topic as we have taken evidence. Mark will have an opportunity to ask some questions, but I will first bring in Ariane Burgess.
I want to go back and pick up a bit of a thread connected to Christine Grahame’s questions. This question is for the independent track owner. In Thornton Greyhound Stadium’s written evidence, you wrote that, if you felt that an owner was failing in their duty to look after their dog properly, you would address that. Picking up on the earlier conversation about the vet, I am interested in hearing about the next steps that you take in the situation that a greyhound is injured, given that no vet is present on the site and only out-of-office emergency vet services are available on a Saturday night, when races at the track take place.
We have a vet who is at home on Saturday nights. We would ring him immediately and the dog would go to his surgery to be treated.
Okay. Thanks for that clarification.
I want to go back to the issue of euthanasia. You introduced some figures. I gather that 1,400 dogs were euthanised over a four-year period from 2018 to 2021 for a range of different reasons, including difficulties with rehoming and treatment costs. I want to ask Professor Campbell about some comments that she made recently on euthanasia. These are your words, Professor Campbell:
“Euthanasia at the end of a racing career has the advantage that the fate of the animal is secured, and the guarantee that the animal will not suffer any subsequent welfare problems.”
Can you explain what you meant by that? On the face of it, it sounds like you were saying that the dog would be better off dead.
No, of course I am not saying that. As always, when things are taken out of context, they need to be explained.
You are absolutely right: euthanasia, by definition, is a humane process. We need to be very clear that, by definition, euthanasia is not a welfare issue. We are always concerned about improving welfare standards. That is why we are undertaking all the work that we are talking about and constantly striving to drive down injuries that result in a genuine need to euthanise a dog, because they cannot be treated, and do everything we can to give the dog the best possible chance of having a set of behaviours that allow it to be successfully homed at the end of its racing career.
I am not for a moment suggesting that greyhounds would be better off being euthanised—absolutely not. That has been taken out of context. The situation is exactly as I have just explained.
It is difficult to explain the words that you have written there. You are saying that euthanasia is a humane process.
By definition.
Surely, euthanasia is a humane process if it is in response to something that is unavoidable, whereas an injury sustained by a greyhound going around a track at 40mph is avoidable. How is it a humane process when dogs are euthanised in that context?
I think that you are confusing two things, if I might say so. As I have said, from a scientific view, by definition, euthanasia is humane. That is the definition of euthanasia. You are talking about whether it is ethically reasonable for dogs to run if the possible consequence is that they will become injured, and you are then talking about avoidable risk. The question is exactly the same across all animal sports—equine sports and other dog sports, as well as greyhound sports.
We have to accept that all animal sports have some risk of injury associated with them, as all human sports do. That is why we are constantly trying to identify risk that, exactly as you say, is avoidable. We gather increasingly granular data and we have all the research written into the strategy so that we can understand very well the causes of injuries and can understand what we can do to mitigate them. We then have an absolute responsibility to do everything we can to mitigate the causes of those injuries, so that we are left with only the unavoidable risk. It is not avoidable risk as long as we are constantly trying to undertake that research and to improve practice and policy.
I may come back in later, convener.
I am really struggling here. We are not comparing apples with apples. Most of the information that we have had from the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission is about the activities of the GBGB and professional, industrial-scale greyhound racing, if I can put it that way. However, what we have not had, which makes this difficult, is information surrounding the one and only flapper track, as it is described—the unlicensed track.
There is legislation in place specifically to protect greyhounds—greyhounds are mentioned in the legislation—but what confidence can we have that there are no animal welfare issues at Thornton if there is not regular inspection somehow? I understand that the SSPCA does not have access to—or has not taken access to—Thornton, and we have no other way to understand whether there are or are not animal welfare issues at the track and, subsequently, in the breeding of those animals. You are saying that it is mostly a hobby thing.
How are we to understand how we can improve animal welfare if we do not have Scotland-specific information? We have no GBGB tracks in Scotland; we have only an unlicensed track. So, how can we be confident—or what needs to be put in place to ensure—that we know that the current legislation ensures the best welfare for greyhounds? Do you think that the SSPCA or the Government should be doing more to ensure animal welfare at these tracks? All the information in front of us is about the GBGB, and, from what I understand, it is comparing apples with pears. Your business at Thornton is completely different from the GBGB model.
We would more than welcome the SSPCA if it wanted to come. In fact, we have written to Mike Flynn, saying, “You’ve had every opportunity to come and visit our track.” He eventually came to the track with Professor Dwyer. I do not think he was in any way concerned about anything that went on at the track, and the same thing would have happened if he had come at any time. As I say, the invitation has been open to him, and he is more than welcome to come if he wants to.
I want to go back to the point about euthanasia. I presume that, when you get to the point at which a dog is going to be euthanised because it is unsuitable for rehoming, that is because of a severe injury, the dog’s temperament or whatever. How did you manage to reduce the number from 190 to 13? What made a difference? Why did people change their minds about euthanasia?
First of all, we should talk about homing rather than rehoming, because they have not been homed until they get to that stage of their lives.
It is a really interesting question. There is a lot around decision making. There is the scientific part, about which injuries can be successfully treated, and there are questions about how quickly we can refer to specialist centres. Within the strategy, we have a big workstream on making sure that we can do that really effectively. There are also questions around making sure that everyone understands clearly the responsibility for doing everything we possibly can to successfully treat injured greyhounds.
I will hand over to Mark Bird, who can talk a little bit about the injury treatment scheme.
We have an injury recovery scheme. When a dog is injured at the track and it goes into treatment with the vet, it is a pretty emotional time, because the dog is probably in pain. It is a question of changing the culture from when the dog is in pain. The owner, the trainer or one of the kennel hands might be upset themselves because the dog has become injured, and that has sometimes led to the dog being unnecessarily put to sleep because that is what people felt was the best course of action when actually it was not. It was more the case that they did not have a prognosis of what the injury was. Working with the vet to give the dog some immediate pain relief, you can assess the scale of the injury and what the forward-thinking prognosis is. That has caused some of the changes.
11:45Going back to the issue of a dog being unsuitable for homing, it is just about behaviour. The owner’s or trainer’s assessment would be that a dog would not home and, as a result, the dog was put to sleep. That was happening far too often, and, in our view, that was unacceptable and unnecessary. We have worked very hard with trainers and owners on the behavioural problems of most of these dogs, and, as you have seen, the numbers have changed radically through a process of changing the culture.
Funding is also available to help with treatment costs.
There is treatment cost funding and there is funding for getting dogs retired. When a dog enters racing, a retirement bond of £200 is paid by the owner. When the dog comes to retire, that £200 is then released for the dog, with a further £200 from the GBGB to assist with the homing journey of that particular greyhound. The injury recovery scheme helps to fund some of the treatment costs when the dogs are injured. For a long bone injury, you could be talking about anything up to about £5,000. You will realise that some people who have dogs as domestic pets cannot afford to pay that. We take the responsibility—as do the owners in our sport—that, if a dog with an injury is saveable, we should do our utmost to make sure that that dog is looked after as well as possible, and that includes the treatment.
So, the dogs have these bonds and what have you. I am interested to hear that they are not being rehomed because they have never been homed. That goes back to the point that I was trying to make earlier: the dogs are bred for a specific purpose, which is to race only, whereas my understanding—I could be wrong—is that, at the amateur track, the dogs are very much part of the family. Please do not think that I am trying to make that differentiation between the two things.
At a professional track, do the owners have insurance? If I am a pet owner and my dog gets injured, I can have pet insurance that will allow that dog to be treated, up to a certain amount. Do you have insurance? Paul, do the folk who come to your racing track insure their dogs against injury on the basis that there is a risk that the dogs will get hurt when they are going round the track?
No. You would be very lucky to find a pet insurance policy that would insure a greyhound that was racing. They are not insured. It is fully the responsibility of the owner to make sure that his dog is well looked after if it does get injured.
It is the same with the professional side.
To put things into perspective, throughout the whole of last year, we had two bad injuries that needed treatment promptly by a vet. One of them was a broken leg, which was fixed—the dog is now sitting on the guy’s sofa. The other dog broke its wrist and, unfortunately, the owner decided that the cost of having it fixed was too high and had it put to sleep. That is something that we do not encourage, but it is, fundamentally, the owner’s choice.
That kind of goes back to the point that the convener made. We do not know how many dogs will get euthanised by the folk who come and race at your track, but we have statistics, so we can make that argument and that judgment. It goes back to the question that the convener asked: how can the committee be confident that how your track is being run will allow the committee and the wider public to have confidence that what you guys are doing meets the standards and people’s expectations around animal welfare?
We provided the committee and the SAWC with all our race videos. Believe me, if a dog breaks its leg, it is blatantly obvious. Anyone can see it. If you watched the videos, you could see that there were no other serious injuries throughout the course of the year’s racing.
I am not saying that there would not have been some muscle injuries. As you heard previously, like all athletes, all animals that take part in any competition will pick up muscle injuries. You might think that flyball is a totally harmless sport, but the wrists take an absolute pounding and a lot of the dogs get serious wrist injuries. It is just the nature of taking part in a competition. Whether it is an animal or a human, there is an element of risk, and they will pick up injuries. However, all the injuries will be treated and all the dogs will make a recovery. If they do not recover, they will be homed—probably by the person who owns them in the first place. On the odd occasion, they might get sent to a rehoming centre to be rehomed.
Does Mark Bird or Madeleine Campbell want to come in on that?
To cover off the point again, even in professional greyhound racing, there is very little chance that you can get insurance to cover a dog. I am sure it is exactly the same with horse racing. The injury recovery scheme that we have spoken about is almost a form of insurance that allows a dog to be treated or some of the costs met.
The point that Madeleine Campbell was going to make was about the fact that some of the tracks will meet any additional costs over and above what we put in under the injury recovery scheme. If it is a long bone injury and the cost of treating it is £5,000, the owner will not have to pay out anything for the dog’s treatment. Some of us have an issue with that, because it is about responsible ownership, but that responsible ownership comes at the very end, when the dog is due to retire and the owner does the right thing by the dog.
But GBGB-licensed owners are completely different from the owners who race at Thornton. They own an asset rather than a lapdog, if you like.
The quandary is obvious to the committee today. As you said, it is apples and pears. We impress on all the owners who bring their dogs to licensed sport that the ownership responsibility is there, and we make sure, through our rules, that that is adhered to. Paul Brignal is working on the basis that these are family pets that are used to race, and the ownership responsibility follows from that.
Everything that Mark Bird has just said is true, but I do not think it is fair to the owners of greyhounds that race under a GBGB licence to describe their animals as being assets to them. The owners are often attached to their animals and, like all owners, under the animal welfare acts in both nations, they have ultimate responsibility for the welfare of their greyhounds.
But the majority of the greyhounds are kennelled at a GBGB location rather than at the owners’ homes.
They have to be kennelled. I will tell you the reason for that. A few years back, when I came to speak to Christine Grahame, some dogs—especially in Scotland—were being housed in the home, and the problem with that is that there is then access to all manner of different substances that a dog could get their nose into, including things like tea, coffee and chocolate—those are all prohibited—that, at a licensed track, they could be tested for. So, we had to do away with that type of licence. The only type of licence now ensures that a dog is kept in kennels for its racing career.
We are, absolutely, not comparing apples with apples. That just reinforces that.
In many ways, other than, as Madeleine Campbell and Paul Brignal have said, in the owners’ responsibility for their dogs.
We are and we are not. The systems are different—you are quite right. However, what is important from the animal’s point of view—and this is very much how we look at things nowadays in animal welfare—is the animal’s lived experience of its own welfare. In fact, this goes back to Mr Ruskell’s question about the quality of an animal’s life and whether it is a life worth living, which is a baseline level, or whether it is a good life. That is exactly what we describe within the strategy. Whichever system they are in, it is important that their welfare needs are being met. Those are clearly described in legislation, and they are also very clearly described in the five-domains model that we have adopted in the welfare strategy. The way in which we will—and do—meet each of those is also described in the welfare strategy.
Okay.
We will have three supplementary questions from Christine Grahame, Karen Adam and Mark Ruskell before we move on to the next topic. Again, I am at fault here as well, but I remind everybody of the time constraints that we have.
This will be short. The first question is to Mr Brignal. Has there been an increase in usage at your track since the closure of all the licensed tracks in Scotland?
No.
Thank you. My next question is to Mr Bird, on the data. We have not gone into all the details because of the time, but is a form completed at the track or subsequently to detail why an animal was put down?
Correct—yes.
Have we seen a copy of that form?
The form has only recently been revised. We can provide you with a copy.
Could we see a copy of that form, please, if that is appropriate?
Yes, indeed.
Could I see the previous form, to see the amendments that have been made?
Indeed. We will explain why those amendments have been made as well.
Thank you.
Behavioural issues have been mentioned a few times. Can we get some clarity on that, for the record? What kind of behavioural issues are we talking about, and why have those happened?
A lot of them are related to greyhounds finding it stressful to be in a domestic environment, because that is not what they have been used to up until that stage of their life. That is exactly why we are putting systems in place, in collaboration with the charities and with one particular charity within the Greyhound Forum, to help everyone who looks after a greyhound, from the moment it is born, in its pre-racing stage, to when it goes racing, to accustom it to things like—it sounds silly—hoovers, sofas, noise and general household objects, so that, when it retires, it is not a stressful environment that it enters.
How does that behaviour manifest itself? I know that they would be stressed—that is the emotion—but what behaviour is displayed?
It varies from dog to dog. Sometimes, a stressed dog will withdraw into itself, and sometimes it may—this is rare in greyhounds—become overtly aggressive simply because it is stressed. It is fundamental to reduce the causes of the stress through appropriate management, in order that they do not exhibit any of those behaviours later.
I will give an example of that. I have a retired greyhound at home. When we got him from the trainer, we were told, because we have two other dogs that are not greyhounds, not to feed that particular ex-racer with those two dogs, because he had always been used to eating on his own. We did that for a number of days or weeks, but then, one day, due to human error, we looked away and then found that my other dog had her nose in the same bowl as the greyhound.
Some of it is perceptual as well. Because they have been handled in a particular way, as a working dog and a canine athlete, people have the perception that they will react in a different way. Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not.
Can I ask about the GBGB data on retirement? As I understand it, it also includes greyhounds that are designated for breeding and greyhounds that go on to race on unregulated tracks. Can you explain how that constitutes retirement?
It is retirement from the sport.
Retirement from the GBGB?
From regulated sport, yes.
But the greyhounds might then move on to unregulated sport somewhere else.
Not any more, because that loophole has been closed.
Mr Brignal, have you ever had greyhounds that have had a racing career at GBGB-regulated tracks race at your track?
To say that we have never had one would not be true, but it is rare, to be honest.
What is your data on that?
Mr Ruskell, you are taking a historical perspective because, in the welfare strategy, which was published almost a year ago now, it is explicitly stated that the GBGB no longer finds it an acceptable outcome for a dog at the point of retirement to go from regulated racing into unregulated racing. We are completely clear about that.
Okay, but how do you monitor that? Mr Brignal, you are saying that you think that it is rare, but do you have data on where these dogs come from?
Historically, it probably has happened, but we do not have any dogs at the moment that are ex-GBGB racers.
You do not have data on how many ex-GBGB racers have raced in the past at Thornton and how many are racing now. It is a perception that—
All the dogs that run at our track at the moment have been with the owners that they have now for a long time and they have not raced on GBGB tracks.
Would the GBGB be concerned if racers at your formally licensed tracks were racing at Thornton? Clearly, that would be in breach of your new welfare standards.
Yes, we would be concerned.
How would you monitor that?
When a dog comes up for retirement from licensed racing, the owner has to fill out a green retirement form. Quite clearly, that talks about who the new owner will be. In the event that we found out—and we have an investigations officer—that a dog perhaps had not gone to the person who was entered on the form or had gone into unlicensed racing, it would be followed up. The owner may or may not be able to then have any more registered dogs with the GBGB. There is a method for monitoring that.
How many such cases have been brought forward?
12:00
To date, none.
We introduced that a year ago, when we published the welfare strategy. We are not aware of any cases so far.
No cases have been brought forward.
We have spoken a lot about the regulations. Can you tell me a bit more about the differences between the regulations in Scotland and in England and say what effects the regulations have had on animal welfare?
Lots of things that we have been talking about all the way through the meeting, such as the requirement for a vet to be present and checks on residential kennels, come under the Welfare of Racing Greyhounds Regulations 2010. An awful lot of what we have been speaking to falls under those regulations, which are not currently applied in Scotland or in Wales.
Our view—it is our reason for being here—is that, although there are no GBGB-licensed tracks in Scotland any more, rather than going for a ban or a phased ending of greyhound racing, perhaps regulation could be adopted by Scotland as well. That could include regulations that are similar to, or the same as, those in England at the moment. The problem is that, as Paul Brignal said, that would be the death knell for hobbyist tracks.
My question follows on from Karen Adam’s questions. I want to get your views on the SAWC report and its recommendation that a scheme that is independent of the GBGB is required to ensure the welfare of greyhounds,
“possibly through Local Authority regulation or under the auspices of the new Scottish Veterinary Service”.
Could I have your views on that?
I imagine that the SSPCA would be the ideal body to monitor our track, and we have invited it to do so. It has chosen not to, maybe because its workload is already too big. That is its choice.
But you would not have any problem with any kind of regulations as suggested by the SAWC.
We would not mind the SSPCA regularly checking our track. That would not be a problem for us in any way, shape or form.
We strongly disagree with the view that there is a requirement for additional independent regulation of GBGB-licensed racing. The board of the GBGB already has four independent directors, of whom I am one. The chair was previously the chief executive of the RSPCA and a director at the Dogs Trust. Among the other independent directors, we have one who served as the shadow environment minister and as a senior member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, who obviously has a strong background in animal welfare. We have one who is a partner in a solicitors firm with decades of experience in regulation around sports. We already have quite a lot of independent oversight.
We already also have a greyhound regulatory board, which is independent of the GBGB. It manages the rules of racing and everything that goes around that. We have an independent disciplinary committee with members including lawyers, a veterinary surgeon and experienced sports stakeholders. We also have under the United Kingdom Accreditation Service accreditation requirements an impartiality committee. Again, that includes a lawyer, a veterinary surgeon, a Greyhound Forum charity member and a senior animal licensing officer. We believe that there is already high independent oversight.
Once again, it is difficult, because there are no GBGB tracks in Scotland and we are, in effect, scrutinising what happens in an area that we cannot get involved in, but it is important that we understand how you are regulated. Can you make it clear that the GBGB is not a statutory body but its members are generally made up from those who participate or have an interest in the sport and that that is the same for the regulatory board? It is not appointed by the Government or through legislation and it is a self-governing body. Is that correct?
It is exactly that. We are self-regulated but, of course, we report to DEFRA and we report to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as well. There is even governmental oversight of what we do.
We also report to the canine charities, through the Greyhound Forum. We interact with them regularly and we have undertaken—it is written in the strategy—to report on progress to them regularly.
Christine Grahame.
I have run out of questions, except perhaps to ask whether we could see the form that is filled in on retirement. I asked about the form for animals that are put down.
It is the same form.
That is all that I wanted clarification about.
Mr Bird, why did you say in your letter in response to the SAWC that the report was not objective and that there were some inaccuracies in it?
I will defer to Madeleine Campbell.
The letter that Mark Bird and our chair submitted is detailed and probably goes a long way to answering that. We felt that a lot of what was in the report was, as you will have seen in that response, based on outdated information and some factual inaccuracies.
We will go on to the parts about breeding in later questions, so I will ask a supplementary to that.
The committee has noted that 91.7 per cent of respondents to the committee’s call for views said that they supported a ban on greyhound racing in Scotland. I take on board the comments that you have made regarding those who completed the feedback, but could both parties give us an indication of the impact of an outright ban on or, potentially, a phasing out of greyhound racing in Scotland? What effects would that have, including any cross-border implications?
We must not forget that Scotland had a licensed track, at Shawfield in Glasgow. That track was a casualty of Covid because, like most other tracks, it was not on a media deal. The racing was not shown in bookmakers’ shops, so it relied on footfall. Sadly, because of Covid and the restrictions, it closed its doors and never reopened. That has left us with 23 Scotland-based trainers who now travel from wherever their bases are in Scotland to, most likely, Newcastle, Sunderland or even Pelaw Grange. The effect of a ban depends on the detail, but it may be that even Scotland-based trainers could not carry out what they are doing, assuming that they are doing it for payment, and come over the border to England.
Our view has always been the same. You are aware of what is happening in the Senedd in Wales on the petition for a ban there. Have both Governments done enough to look at the legislation and the regulation without having to go for a ban? To ban something outright would, from our point of view, drive it underground.
I suppose that we have an example of how that might play out, because there was a licensed track that stopped dead. What happened to the dogs that you were licensing to race in Glasgow? What was the immediate impact of that?
Again, most of the dogs that were at Shawfield were the trainers’, and the trainers had probably two or three dogs. Few big owners were racing at the track. They raced only one night a week. As I said, it was not on a media deal, so there was no real incentive for trainers to have much in the way of dogs. Some of the trainers who do this as a professional living have transferred over. Other trainers have retired their dogs and are no longer racing.
Paul Brignal, what would be the impact of an outright or phased ban on your track?
The injustices of banning greyhound racing would be terrible. I do not understand why you would want to ban greyhound racing. That is the first thing. No one has ever come forward with a good enough reason to ban greyhound racing, compared with other sports. However, if it was banned, we would have to close.
Ultimately, we are not talking about Government proposals. We are talking about a petition. Today is your chance to respond to that. I preface my question by pointing that out, because this is not an accusation from me. The petitioners, however, have made an accusation and have raised concerns about drug use with dogs, specifically cocaine. My understanding is that the SAWC has not made that accusation, but the petitioners have. Can you respond to that, please?
Obviously, cocaine would be used on a dog with a view to trying to get it to run faster. Other prohibited articles out there would make a dog run slower. Of course, with the testing regime that goes on, certainly at GBGB-licensed tracks, any class A drug used would show up. Either dogs can be randomly sampled in races or, if there is intelligence to say that something is going on, testing can be targeted. The percentage of those that come back positive is miniscule—it is less than 1 per cent. Of all the races in the last year—and there were 359,000 runs—less than 1 per cent came back positive, and the percentage that were positive for class A drugs was even lower.
This is one of the problems that we had when dogs were staying indoors, especially in London. If you look at some of the Shawfield positive test results, you see that they were for class A drugs or things such as beta blockers, which are used for people with heart complaints. The numbers are minuscule because the deterrent is there. The dogs can be tested.
Mr Brignal, do you have any comment on that for your own track?
There is no requirement for us to test. I do not see any reason why anyone would want to cheat and use drugs at our track. What would they win? £50? £100? It is not the same situation. If you raced a dog at a GBGB track and you were inclined to try to cheat—although you would not get away with it, to be honest—you could potentially bet with hundreds of bookmaking companies and put thousands of pounds on. That is not an issue with us in any way, shape or form.
Testing does not—
We do not test. As Mark Bird said, if you found cocaine in a dog from a GBGB test, more than likely it would be because the owner was taking cocaine and had stroked the dog. The test is so sensitive that it will find the most minute traces. Even with poppyseeds in bread, a dog will fail because it will have opium from the poppyseeds. If you feed a dog poppyseed bread, it is likely to fail a GBGB test.
To pick up on Mr Brignal’s point, that is exactly the advantage of not having dogs living in a domestic environment during the racing period of their lives, which is the way we do it in the GBGB.
To follow up on that, whether it happens or not, there may be an incentive because of the return on betting to illegally enhance the performance of a greyhound that is racing at a GBGB track. However, at Thornton, the only bookmaking service available is the one bookmaker at the track and there is no external or online betting. Is that what you are saying?
Yes.
I want to pick up on one of the points that the GBGB made about the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission’s report, particularly its emphasis on the concern about the welfare standards for breeding and the importation of dogs from Ireland. What are you doing to develop a harmonised set of welfare standards for breeding?
12:15
You are exactly right. That question spans the GBGB and Ireland. You will have seen in our welfare strategy that, as I mentioned earlier, we are working with the Kennel Club, which is developing a bespoke assured breeders scheme for greyhounds. That is currently in development and will shortly be piloted. That will then form the basis for our collaborating with Irish counterparts in making sure that standards are raised internationally.
In fact, that is part of a wider piece of work. In March this year, the GBGB hosted a meeting of international regulators that was specifically focused on welfare. That was the first of what will be a series of meetings. The Irish attended that, along with all the other main international regulators. The purpose of those meetings is to share best practice and align standards, and we now have an online platform on which to do that. Later this spring, a small number of members of the GBGB will go out to Ireland specifically to talk to our counterparts about breeding welfare and to make a visit there to understand better how we can all work together to make sure that standards are raised uniformly internationally.
Having said all that, our welfare strategy is also partly about our desire to drive British breeding of racing greyhounds, because, if breeding takes place in GB, the GBGB has oversight of it, whereas that is not so much the case when it is in Ireland. In addition, that would mean that dogs would not be being transported. From a welfare point of view, we would prefer that they were bred and stayed in the same country. We have various pieces of work in place to support that. You will have seen that the number of British-bred racing greyhounds has increased substantially over the past few years. Indeed, by chance, this year the greyhound derby was won by a British-bred greyhound.
There seems to be an emphasis in the SAWC report on that aspect of welfare but, in the context of the petition, surely there are—I made this point to Cathy Dwyer in the committee session in March—current regulations and animal welfare standards that can deal with the aspect of animal welfare to do with the importing of young animals, the number of puppies that one animal has and so on. Will you comment on that? That part of the report concerned me considerably.
You are absolutely right. Everything that greyhounds do falls under general national canine legislation. As you quite rightly say, part of that relates to transportation and part of it relates to breeding. We have the breeding of dogs regulations, but who falls under those depends, among other things, on the number of litters the bitches have per year, for example.
This is an area in which we are collaborating with the Greyhound Stud Book and some of the charities in the Greyhound Forum, because they flagged up the issue when I first started developing the strategy. We are working to understand clearly which greyhound breeders in GB fall under which regulations and then to ensure, through our role as regulator, that each of them understands clearly their responsibilities under that legislation and ensures that they are compliant with them.
Given that this formed such a large part of your response to the SAWC report, I want to go back to my original question about whether the report was objective. I cannot find the reference to it now, but have you seen the report by the RSPCA, Dogs Trust and Blue Cross?
No.
No.
Why has that not been published?
We do not know.
Madeleine Campbell, our chair and I went to the RSPCA or Dogs Trust offices going on for two years ago and they said that they wanted to review their position on all greyhound racing—not just the GBGB racing, but the racing of the independents. That was because they did not think that we were acting sufficiently quickly or that we had the money with which to do what we wanted to do. Madeleine Campbell had already embarked on doing the welfare strategy that was published last May. They even asked us to stall that strategy work while they carried out their own review, which we contributed to 100 per cent, along with some of the animal welfare charities.
We published our welfare strategy in May. They published—or rather, they declared the results of their report in September of last year, but they have not shared that report with us or any of the animal welfare charities. They have not even alluded to why their position has changed. They simply said that, in their book, greyhound racing was now cruel and abhorrent and that, therefore, they were going to call for a phased ban of greyhound racing. We have not seen the report. They asked for the ban to be put in place over a five-year period. They are heading towards the first year of declaring that to be their position, yet we have still seen no evidence whatsoever from their report or how they see a phased ban coming about.
It is a matter of frustration to me that we have not seen that report, despite having repeatedly asked to have sight of it. Indeed, the Greyhound Forum itself has asked to be provided with a copy of it and has not been.
That is a matter of particular frustration to me, because we are all in this together. All of us want to optimise greyhound welfare. When I set out to develop the strategy, I asked each of the charities that sits on the Greyhound Forum to fill in a form and send it back to let us know what they thought the current welfare issues were and what potential welfare issues they thought there might be. They all did that and I considered all those responses. All of that was incorporated in the welfare strategy. If they now say that we are still missing something, I want to know what it is so that we can do something about it, yet they will not let us see their report.
Can I ask the committee if you have seen the report?
There is a summary as part of the SAWC report, but the full report has not been published or given to us.
I want to go back to the nub of the argument that the petitioners are raising and the veterinary evidence that the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission reflected on, which is to do with the nature of a dog racing at 40mph around an oval track. As I understand it, the GBGB is doing research into track design. This might seem like a daft question, but are you doing research into straight tracks rather than oval tracks?
We are working as part of the international collaboration with other regulators that I described to look in detail at the evidence base, because some work is already being done in other countries. As you will have seen in the letter that we sent to the committee, the GBGB will ask Dr Richard Payne at the University of Nottingham to have oversight of all of that and to make recommendations to us on what further research needs to be done, which might inform future policy development in the area. There are repeated mentions in the strategy of track design.
Is that a yes on straight track research?
We are looking at the evidence from all countries.
All the veterinary evidence shows that the issue is the first curve and the impact that that has on legs, given the speed that the dogs are going at.
When you say “all the veterinary evidence”, that report was done by Dr Andrew Knight, which is—
To go back to my question, are you looking at straight tracks?
As Madeleine Campbell said, we are looking at all the options, including straight tracks.
Yes. We are looking at the evidence from other countries.
I have a question for Paul Brignal. There has been a bit of discussion this morning about comparing apples and pears and the difference between regulated and unregulated tracks. Is the design of your track the same as that of a GBGB track or is it fundamentally different in shape?
It is similar. The only difference is that it has an inside hare and all the GBGB tracks have an outside hare.
But your track is not fundamentally different to Shawfield, for example, or any of the other tracks.
It is slightly smaller than Shawfield. It is probably a similar size to Sunderland.
On that basis, is the inherent risk that a dog faces in running at 40mph around an oval track in Thornton the same as the risk that a dog faces in running around an oval track in London, Glasgow or anywhere else?
I do not honestly think that you are right in what you say about the oval shape.
Why am I wrong?
Although there are reports that say that an oval track is slightly dangerous, there is no evidence to show that if it was a straight track, the dog would not still injure itself in pulling up at the end, because it would be hurtling—
There is substantial veterinary evidence, which the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has reflected on. Clearly, the GBGB will be looking at that evidence as part of its own review.
I come back to my question. Where is your evidence that what you have in Thornton, with dogs running round an oval track at 40mph, is different from dogs running round an oval track at 40mph at Shawfield? How are the inherent risks of a hobby sport any different from those of a professional track?
Obviously, they are not. However, I would say that, because we do not put on races quite so often, the track does not get compacted quite as often as a GBGB track would do. Other than that, I would say that it is very similar.
Throughout the evidence, it has been implied that unlicensed or flapper tracks are more dangerous and more likely to have illegal activity or whatever. Is that the case? Is Thornton different from other unlicensed or flapper tracks in the UK?
Ours is the only unlicensed track in the whole of the UK now, apart from the one in Wales, which will become GBGB registered in 2024, I think.
That could even happen this year.
Ours is the only unlicensed track in the whole of the UK.
The one unlicensed track in England, which was at Askern in Yorkshire, has now ceased racing because it is looking to become a registered track as well. It is now building up its infrastructure in order to make an application.
Is that something that you would consider Thornton doing?
Not in the immediate future.
Thank you very much. That concludes our evidence today. Thank you for your participation. It is very much appreciated.