Various of the races are named ‘‘We love our dogs, they love to race 390m’’, ‘‘Industry employs 1054 PBD’’ and ‘‘$159.2 million contributed to economy C3/4’’, reminders of a race which was run and lost a few days ago.
On Thursday, despite a spirited battle by the greyhound racing community — which does indeed number in the many hundreds and make a multimillion-dollar contribution to the economy — Parliament voted to ban the sport.
This was no photo finish situation: the House had voted unanimously to end dog racing in previous votes, and at Thursday’s final reading only Act New Zealand opposed the ban, which passed 112-11.
From August 1, 78 years of dog racing as we know it will come to an end.
This will have come as no surprise to them. Greyhound racing has been subject to multiple reports about the welfare of its canine participants and Racing Minister Winston Peters has repeatedly warned that the sport needed to drastically reduce the number of animals hurt or killed on the track.
There have been improvements, and innovations such as the opening of country’s first straight line track — deemed safer than the dogs racing around the traditional oval — have been tried.
However, injuries remained at such a level that concerns could not be ignored.
Every time a dog died while racing animal welfare campaigners would highlight that fact, and MPs were strongly lobbied to end the sport.
However, stopping racing comes with collateral damage.
Among various downstream effects, New Zealand’s canine blood bank draws its supplies from greyhounds and it does not know if it can survive an end to racing.
Mr Peters said that closing the greyhound industry was not an action which had been taken lightly, but that welfare concerns were irrefutable.
‘‘There is only one thing more depressing than what we’ve been doing today, and that is not doing it,’’ he told Parliament.
‘‘It wasn’t to do with party politics; there was just a general concern that something was going horribly wrong in the peak damage of dogs.’’
Mr Peters loves racing, and is an ardent supporter of the equine codes, but in the end the tide of opposition to dog racing was too strong to hold back.
It is not as if New Zealand will be an outlier in bringing in a ban: Wales, Scotland, and Tasmania are also moving to close commercial greyhound racing.
Mr Peters will no doubt be concerned that thoroughbred and harness racing will be the next sports targeted.
Animal welfare issues are high among the concerns of those who run those sports, and they are well aware that — as has been often said — that greyhound racing lost its social licence.
They will not wish to follow in that industry’s pawprints, and need to ensure that their welfare regulations are above reproach.
Act MP Cameron Luxton told Parliament that the people in the greyhound racing industry depend on good animal welfare, and he was dismayed that many decent people had been tarred with the ‘‘animal abusers’’ brush.
‘‘They have recognised issues in the past and come to terms with them and tried to find a way through. They’ve spent millions of dollars supporting it. Frankly, their own standards and pride of work depend on those animals.’’
That is now about to go, to be replaced by a transition agency. That organisation will have to rehome an estimated 1600 dogs and help retrain those 1054 people working in the sport — many of whom have invested millions in land and kennels.
Mental health and wellbeing support services are also to be set up and will no doubt be sorely needed by people whose lives have centred on looking after dogs and training them for speed and stamina.
Closing the sport down is the ‘‘easy’’ part. Making sure that all those involved, canine and human, are able to move on safely is the difficult part.
