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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to reduce the number of deaths of dogs in greyhound racing.

Defra’s policy has been to work with the main industry regulatory body, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB), to address welfare concerns about the care of greyhounds once they retire, as well as reducing the number of deaths of greyhounds. The GBGB has introduced initiatives such as the Injury Recovery Scheme which provides financial support to trainers to treat career-ending injuries to greyhounds where otherwise they might be put to sleep; and the Greyhound Retirement Scheme which 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. HM Government has welcomed these initiatives and the latest set of retirement and fatality figures published by GBGB in May this year, showed the lowest ever reported number of track fatalities (120 or 0.03% of total dog runs) and the percentage of dogs homed/retained at the end of their racing careers remaining at approximately 94% (some 6014 greyhounds out of 6373 that ceased GBGB racing in 2021). HM Government wants to see this progress continue.