Greyhound Racing

I found out today that one of my favourite companies, Lush, are going to be launching a campaign which supports “Greyhound Action” who campaign against Greyhound Racing. There is a lot of controversy around this so I thought I would give you some information and tell you what I think.

In the UK 40,000 greyhounds are killed every year by the racing industry. This is due to over breeding and also to short racing careers. It is quite common to find Greyhounds that have had their ears chopped off as the dogs have tattoos on their ears which identify their owner. People therefore chop the ears off if they steal the dogs. Thousands of puppies are also killed if they are not good enough for racing. It is estimated that over 10,000 greyhound puppies are killed annually in the UK for this reason. Injuries from running are extremely common. These include injured toes, torn muscles, strained tendons and arthritic joints. Greyhounds retire from racing at an average age of 2.5 years old and very few of these manage to be rehomed. The British Greyhound Racing Industry have said that 500-1000 retired greyhounds are killed every year because they can’t be rehomed. Many owners will kill the dogs by cruel methods because they don’t want to pay to get them put to sleep by the vet.

In my opinion, the only way to get rid of this cruelty is to ban Greyhound racing. I think it is disgusting how these animals are treated and am totally backing the Lush campaign. I got the data for this blog post from Greyhound Action.