Elliot Kane;
[color:"orange"]Neither the money nor the races are the problem though[/color]

Would anyone breed a few dozen dogs and kill all the slow ones if there were no money to be made by having the fastest dog?

If there were no money riding on a dog's performance, would failure get punished by torture or death?

It is the bets made on the races which provide the motive for the cruelty. Many of the dog owners and breeders may be cruel or sociopathic by nature, but most are not going to go out and start killing dogs if there is nothing in it for them.


[color:"orange"]It is the people that are the problem.[/color]

The people running the races are as much a part of the problem as the dog owners and breeders.


[color:"orange"]Banning greyhound races will not change the attitude that torturing animals is fine[/color]

I would think that shutting down an industry that refuses to clean up its act in that regard would send a very clear message that this behaviour is unacceptable.


[color:"orange"]nor will it do anything except lead to the mass slaughter of the hounds. These are working dogs, and if their work dries up they will ALL be killed, not just the older ones.[/color]

To prevent a one time slaughter of all the dogs (assuming no attempt was made to protect them by those responsible for a racing ban), you are willing to accept an annual slaughter of most of them?


[color:"orange"]There is already a surplus of dogs at animal homes[/color]

An excellent reason to shut down the greyhound breeders, then.


[color:"orange"]a large number are (Humanely, in Britain at least) put down every year simply because there are no homes for them[/color]

And yet the greyhound racing industry claims to have found homes for all their retired dogs.

One of the news stories summarized on the petition page was about a guy who had a 40 year career killing greyhounds, at $10 each, half the price to have a vet do it (don't know if this was his main source of income or just a 'hobby').


[color:"orange"]Banning racing solves nothing.[/color]

I really can not see how it could possibly fail to help. In any case, not banning the races defiantly solves nothing.

If there is enough money involved it is never going to get banned. However, short of a major series of arrests giving real jail time, a movement to ban the races with enough public support may be the only thing that could force them to clean up their act.




Galadriel;
[color:"orange"]I just watched some PETA videos[/color]

While some of their goal are reasonable, PETA is filled with nuts, and I wouldn't accept their word as fact without independent corroboration. I heard an interview with a PETA spokesperson who said if he was driving and came around a blind curve with a human toddler on one side of the road and a dog on the other, with no time to stop and no way to avoid both, he would aim for the child to save the dog.

Years ago in northern Alberta, an animal rights group (don't recall if it was PETA) broke into a minx farm and released all the animals from the large heated barn (with plenty of room, food and water) into a -40C winter night. Many of the mink froze to death, and of those that were captured again the next morning, most died of pneumonia.