Mixing Betting Money with Racing Animals

1286:

Edited by CJ Tointon

Live baiting greyhounds means live rabbits tied to boards and used as bait, bodies torn apart, piglets dangled by the tail at the end of a rope, dogs let loose on them!!!!!!!   "Blooding the dogs.  You've got to blood the dogs", one of the so-called 'trainers' was heard to say. 

Within a few days of the ABC TV Four Corners report, everyone had either seen it or heard about it and most had only seen some of it before averting their eyes.  If you watch the full footage from Animals Australia, it's gut wrenching.  The footage is accompanied by a report, which includes this description: "Terrified piglets, rabbits and native possums are all victims of live baiting — tied to lures, flung around racetracks at breakneck speeds, and then mauled to death.  Some animals who survived their first attack were 're-used' multiple times...".  One less sympathetic politician being interviewed on TV, summed it up like this:  "This is a welfare issue.  It shouldn't happen.  But don't close the whole industry down (greyhound racing).  The Animal Rights people (and he quotes PeTA) believe that no animals should be used for anything".

Punters at the greyhound track are interested in the outcome of these findings.  They don't want to see the end of greyhound racing!  They'll believe it's a few rogue trainers doing something most trainers wouldn't do.  They will say, "Prosecute the bad ones and let the rest of us get on with the fun of the race".  They choose to believe what they want to believe. 

It's the same with horse racing.  No live baiting, but a terrible wastage of horses that don't run fast enough. The industry values these animals on the basis of  'financial return'.  Thirty thousand horses are in training at any given time in Australia.  Over half of those registered for racing end up prematurely at the abattoir - as pet meat!

It's not surprising that the more an animal can generate money the less respect some humans show when it disappoints.  Of greyhound pups bred for racing, 40% of the 20,000 born each year are not deemed fit for the track and are slaughtered.

The nastiest facts are being uncovered, the less nasty facts will always remain hidden from view.  Punters who enjoy a bet don't want to know the truth and the racing industries certainly want to keep everything that goes on behind the scenes well hidden from the public.  All praise to those hidden cameras spying on these ugly scenes and the courageous activists who are not intimidated by the Ag-Gag laws which threaten to prosecute the trespassers who plant the cameras.