Greyhounds: Animal Welfare

(asked on 13th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the welfare of greyhounds that have finished their racing career.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 21st April 2021

In January 2019 the Government announced an increased funding commitment from bookmakers to support the Greyhound Board of Great Britain’s (GBGB) efforts to improve welfare. In 2019/20 the British Greyhound Racing Fund collected a total of £8.87m from bookmakers, up from £6.95m in the previous 12 months. The Government continues to encourage any remaining bookmakers that have not signed up to the voluntary arrangements to do so and welcomes the 22 March 2021 announcement by the Betting and Gaming Council that four more bookmakers have agreed to begin contributing to Fund. Working with the GBGB, each year the Fund contributes half its revenue to the welfare of racing greyhounds.

GBGB has committed to ensure that, wherever possible, every greyhound leaving GBGB racing should be rehomed. They have also introduced the Greyhound Retirement Scheme. The scheme attaches a £400 bond to each greyhound at the point of registration, paid for jointly by the owner and GBGB, in order to pay for rehoming costs at the end of a dog’s racing life.

Once a greyhound’s racing career is over, these dogs may be exported to Pakistan if the appropriate animal health and welfare certification requirements are met. We consider that completion of this process is sufficiently rigorous and costly to prevent the wide scale exportation of dogs from the UK. Since the beginning of 2019 we have only one record of an application for a certificate to export a greyhound to Pakistan. However, we are unable to account for any movements to Pakistan that may have transited through a third country.

If we find evidence that there is a widespread problem, we can then consider what further steps may be necessary. GBGB is currently investigating whether any licensed GBGB member has knowingly supplied any greyhound directly to Pakistan.

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