NAKITA RONTO
Animal welfare groups have called for greater communication between the greyhound racing industry and rehoming organisations.
Twenty thousand greyhounds are bred each year by the racing industry, with eighteen thousand dogs euthanised, due to their unsuitability for racing.
Racing Queensland’s Animal Welfare Manager Lauren Elgie said that the organisation supports the efforts of independent greyhound rehoming organisations, but that they needed to communicate their needs better.
“What I would love is for those rehoming groups to communicate with us about those poor standards,” she said.
“What’s happening at the moment is that their not telling us which trainers are dropping off dogs in poor condition so we can’t manage it.”
Ms Elgie said that recent developments in the industry have lead to a better situation for the animals involved.
“Rehoming initiatives are growing, last year our rehoming rate was about 1 dog per week and now we’re up to 6 dogs per week,” she said.
Despite these changes, greyhound rescue and rehoming organisations like Gumtree Greys are calling for the industry to be shut down.
Founder of Gumtree Greys, Tracey McLaren said that despite their best efforts, there would never be enough people to rheum all of the industry’s ex-racing dogs.
“We probably estimate around 1200 a year are rescued in Australia, there is never going to be enough which is why the industry has to be shut down”, she said.
“We are a drop in the ocean, we are never ever going to come close to rescuing these dogs”.
Ms McLaren recognised the argument that shutting the industry down will result in the death of many animals, however countered by stating that was the status quo.