USA Greyhound organisation spreading misinformation

There has been a recent petition against greyhound racing in NZ published by a USA greyhound organisation.

If you haven’t seen this I will sum it up for you, “Greyhound racing has run out of chances, over the last two seasons over 2,500 injuries and 567 deaths. RIB found 54 drug positives including 5 meth positives from 2014-2023. NZ should ban greyhound racing”.

Now let’s break it down quickly, I’ll try make this short and sweet. Getting straight to the point… in the past two season we have had over 2,500 injuries and 567 deaths? I’m confused as to where they got these statistics and can’t help but think they made them up. I did comment to ask (I will attach my comment) but unfortunately they deleted my comment and blocked me, leading me to believe they know the statistics are not correct. So how many injuries was there from the past two season?

From 2022-2024 there was a total of 1,774 injuries out of 6,215 vet checks. That includes 941 minor injuries (1-10 day standowns). This is the category which is mainly made up of mandatory stand downs after a fall when no injuries are found (a precautionary stand down). So taking that into account only 833 medium injuries and above (this is not to say these injuries are serious as medium injuries only require a 11-21 day standown). This is half of the entire injury count for the past 2 seasons. And 567 deaths? Only 20 track deaths occurred in the past two seasons. There was a total of 291 deaths for the past two seasons as I raised with this organisation… but this is mainly made up of dogs which may pass from old age, dogs who might have conditions where euthanasia is the most humane option like epilepsy, cancer, ect. I will attach these statistics below.

Now widening the timeframe from the past 2 seasons till 2014-2023 just looks like they don’t have enough evidence in the last 2 seasons to justify using this statistic. So let me give it to you, how many drug positives were in the last 2 seasons? In 2023-2024 there were 5 positives above the arsenic threshold limit and 2 cobalt above the threshold limit. Both naturally occurring substances that were not “given to the dog to enhance their performance”. In the 2022-2023 season there was 1 positive arsenic above the threshold limit. All positives were noted by GRNZ that it didn’t seem to at all be deliberate and all cases were ruled as accidental positives.

Got any questions? Please ask away

Please note I have kept their name out of this as I’m not naming and shaming, just correcting miss information.

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