 See you all! Welcome to our 10th meeting of 2023. Before we begin, I remind those members using electronic devices to switch to silent. Our first item of business is the decision to take item 3 and 4 in private and to review evidence heard on petition PE1758 in Greyhound Racing in Scotland in private at future meetings. Ar y gwaith ymlaen i'r ysgol, y cyfnodig pethysion PE1758, ac rwy'n gweithio i'r gwaith ymlaen i'r Gwylfaith Scottish Animal Welfare. Felly, mae'r profesi Cathedwire, chei, ac yn gweithio i'r cyfnodig, mae'n Mike Radford a Dr Ellie Wiggum, a'i gweithio i'r gwaith. Mae'n gweithio i'r Gwylfaith Scottish Animal Welfare i'r gweithio i'r gwaith i'r cynydd ydibell beth ar gyfer hailio glisin locations i'r Gwylfaith' gwaith. Meid wnaethwyl i café o ar gael y diwrnoddau hyn hynny. The agreement that we could spend a bit more time on that is that we looked at evidence that was available in the scientific literature. We looked at the evidence that the Greyhound board of Great Britain put forward. We spoke to a number of different stakeholders, so that included some of the charities. We also visited the stadium at Thornton where we could observe races and talk to gyda gyd JeffYr Dennyddan yn édych chi'n gwerthwNAr一些 onions i'r gymreidwaf.哗現othau nifer o'r opening trwm i'r se falch yn cyätzeisio rhowedig o'r investigaethol. So pryswyr y gweithw yw cylif yn ddigivu sefnitudes i'r rhaid o gofynodau indication arrawryd channels a'r hyn yn hyfrif yw roedd ei pwys Чeurau neu ddeinugurau am Fentol yn bryddedog zitru a nadurai. felly mae'r cyfgawr oedd o'r blaen o'r sefydlu o'r gwaith a'r blaen o'r eithaf y rhan, yn cael ei fod yn ein bod yn dda, ac yn ôl yn goredu ar hyn o'r amlwgiau i'r Unwy, yw'r ystrygiadau ac Mariae Sillio, ac mae'r cyfgawr yn gwybod iawn o'r cyhoedd, a ddylai, ac mae'r cyfgawr o'r asbeithau sydd o'r risks, oherwydd mae'r cyfrif Clif. Felly, we consider the issues of dogs racing under GBGB regulation, which obviously isn't incurring in Scotland at the moment, as well as independent tracks. I think that, as you will probably see in the evidence, it was generally pretty poor and there's not a lot of scientifically independently verified data, particularly in Scotland, but we were able to draw on data that came particularly from Australia, looking at track design, where we spent a lot of time meeting with people and discussing with them. We looked at the animal welfare strategy that GBGB has put forward as their response to concerns and whether that was, in our opinion, sufficiently robust to mitigate some of the problems that we saw. It's important to say that we did use the GBGB data where it was available. It is not easily interrogated in the form that they present it. I spoke to an epidemiologist contact and we both agree that we were struggling to really be able to use that data very well. Our best guess is that a dog on the track has about a 1 in 4 chance of injury every time it races and about a 1 in 200 risk of fatality in any one year, which we felt was a significant welfare issue and of great concern. That leads us to some of our conclusions about greyhound racing. We did accept that there are some positive aspects for welfare, so I think that for dogs, running and chasing is part of a normal behaviour and the evidence suggests that that is rewarding for dogs, but we didn't feel that that was sufficient to offset the welfare risks that dogs were also exposed to. They were obviously the risks of fatality and injury on the track. The fact that most dogs originate in Ireland, where the UK has no jurisdiction in terms of the number of puppies that a dog may have and how they are transported to the UK. In particular, some of our concerns are around the end of life for dogs and some of the evidence that we took from people rehoming dogs. On balance, we felt that the welfare risks to dogs being involved in racing were to have a poorer quality of life compared to a dog not involved in racing on average. We would accept that there are obviously some dogs that may have very positive welfare, but on average a dog in racing probably has poorer welfare than a companion dog. We felt that there was insufficient evidence to really conclude about the independent tracks. They collect no data. They are not required to present any data. We were really on the cusp of whether the Thornton track is truly a commercial racing track. However, I think that what swayed us was the presence of a bookmaker there. In fact, the dog track does not race if there is no bookmaker, but there is no vet. We can race with a bookmaker, but we do not have a requirement to have a vet present. We felt that that was really important, that vets would be able to provide an independent assessment of the welfare of the dogs, whether they were fit to race and, of course, to provide prompt treatment should there be a need. We felt that, if racing was to occur, it was mandatory that a vet should be present to carry out those functions. However, our overwhelming feeling is that if dog racing is to continue, we need independent regulation. We were not convinced that there was a desire for racing to continue, particularly in Scotland, as a population as a whole. There is a small, quite vocal group of people who are very keen that racing does continue. However, we were, I think, on balance, not convinced that there is a desire for racing to continue. We would be concerned if there were any intentions to add new tracks or to expand grey hand racing in Scotland. We are going to kick off with some questions, starting with Ariane Burgess. I am going to base my questions on one of your recommendations, which relates to the welfare of the dogs. I would be interested to hear if you could expand on the inherent risks of injuries and deaths associated with both licence and unlicence grey hand racing, as well as the specific risks associated with grey hand racing at the unlicence track at Ftorn. The biggest risk—this is something where there is a reasonable amount of scientific literature, not based in Scotland but mostly coming from Australia—is that there is good evidence that dogs run around a curved track, that there is increased risk, particularly as they hit the first bend of collisions. The dogs usually are running straight for about the first 100 metres, and then the degree of curvature of the bend has an impact on their risk of injuries. Race and Greyhounds suffer specific injuries. I might pass over to Ellie Bell at some point, because she did some of this investigation. They suffer specific injuries, particularly around the foreleg that we do not see in companion dogs or dogs running not in a race. Dogs are sighthounds, so they are following a moving lure, and they are trying to keep that in sight as they hit the corner, so they tend to bunch together as they come round a corner. That increases the risk that they will collide with each other and also puts forces particularly on the foreleg as they are pivoting round the corner as well as they come into that bend at speed. Our concerns are that there are specific risks of injuries, and the rates of injuries—as far as we can tell with the poor quality data that we have available to us—is considerably higher than the companion greyhound dog population. There are specific types of injuries that are not really seen in other dogs. Ellie, do you want to add anything about the tracks and the risks to greyhounds? Sorry, Ellie, to the bigger part. Just before we bring you in, it would be my preference that we do not actually mention by name any of these tracks and we keep the discussions around licensed and unlicensed. I am aware that there is a limited number of tracks in Scotland, but I think that the discussions should be around licensed and unlicensed rather than specific examples. Due to the racing greyhounds currently only ever training and running anti-clockwise around an oval racetrack, it puts greater forces on the left forelim and the right hindlim, which is very specific to running in that direction. Those tend to get more injuries around the hawk of the right hindlim due to that always training in one direction. I will add to a further point that you mentioned about specific risks of unlicensed tracks. In licensed tracks, where there is a vet present, all dogs' racing must be deemed as fit to race, so they must have a veterinary check before they go on to the track and do their race. If they are doing multiple races on the same day, in the same session, they need to be checked in between each race. On licensed tracks, where there is not a requirement for veterinary presence, that check is done either by someone based on the track or not done at all. If they are not a veterinary trained, they will not have the same level of potential knowledge and independence as a veterinarian would. If you could expand on the animal welfare concerns across the full life cycle of greyhounds from breeding to the kennel life to racing and beyond, which led to your conclusion that, on average, a dog bred for racing in Scotland currently has poorer welfare than the average of other dogs? The vast majority of greyhounds in the UK are bred in Ireland. The statistics that we saw were somewhere around 87-88 per cent of greyhounds are bred from Ireland. Although in the UK we have legislation that will control the number of puppies that a breeding bidge can have, that is not enforceable in Ireland. Without that data, we do not know how many litres of puppies a female may be having. We do not know very much about the early life of those puppies and the conditions under which they have been bred and reared. It is separated from our ability to look at that evidence. I suppose that there is a lack of evidence more than anything else in that but also a potential lack of regulation. Unfortunately, when animals are worth a lot of money, there is a temptation to exploit the production of those animals. The vast majority of dogs are coming from Ireland, which means that they are transported here. Again, that is a gap in our evidence about how those dogs are transported, but we do see some evidence occasionally that that is not necessarily in the best way that we might like to see a dog transported here. There is a gap in the numbers between dogs that have been bred and registered in Ireland and the dogs that are in racing in Ireland and racing in GB. Some of those dogs may have just not become a racing dog but there are concerns about the numbers of dogs or the numbers of puppies that disappear from the data and knowing what has happened to those dogs and what their early life experiences have been. When they are here in racing, there is a difference between a dog that is racing on a regulated track that is usually kept in kennels and that is part of the requirements in particular to be able to check for illicit substances. Dogs that are racing on an independent track do not have to be kept under those circumstances, but some are. The dogs that are kept in homes are probably having a reasonable quality of life, we would hope, but certainly dogs in kennels are spending up to 95 per cent of their lives in kennels. They may be meeting the animal's welfare needs just about, but they are certainly not providing a good quality of a good life for those animals in terms of their social interactions and environmental complexity. We would be concerned about the long duration of life that an animal might spend in a kennel, which I think leads to a poorer quality of life than the average dog. When racing careers are finished, some of those dogs will carry on living in a family home and may have a very similar quality of life to any other dog, but we know that there are reasonable numbers of dogs that are being rehomed in some of the charities and are being relinquished by trainers. Sometimes with injuries that the trainer is aware of, but often some of the evidence that we took suggested that the veterinary treatments or the injuries were not disclosed, so either the trainers weren't aware of them or those animals had not had veterinary treatment. Again, we were concerned that that was across the lifespan if we compared that to the average companion animal dog. We felt that, on balance, it was generally poorer for the average racing greyhound. You have touched on welfare extensively. In your report, you mentioned that GBGB welfare strategy did not give sufficient attention to behavioural issues and the mental states of dogs, even though those forms are two out of the five domains of animal welfare. Could you expand on the importance of those domains and how they relate to greyhound welfare? The model of welfare that the welfare strategy took is one that we would support. It is a very progressive view of how we might look at animal welfare. That considers there to be four physical domains that are integrated through a mental state domain. We felt that the welfare strategy covered the nutrition part of that domain, the physical health, particularly through veterinary care, and some aspects of the environment, particularly around education of kennel staff and thinking about improving kenneling for dogs. Although it covered those domains quite well, there was very little weight given to the behavioural aspects of welfare of the animals. We would tend to think of those for being equally important for welfare. We do not partition out the physical bits and say that they are more important than the animals' behaviour. Some of the aspects that we would be concerned about, again, are the lack of social contact for dogs when they are kept in kennels for 95 per cent of the time. We have said and acknowledged in our review that chasing a lure is rewarding for dogs, so that is a positive aspect. However, we are aware that there is very little evidence around the training aspects of dogs, so understanding behaviour and how training is done with positive rewards or fear-inducing stimuli. I should say that we did not see evidence of a poor dog owner relationship in our investigation, but some of the feedback that we have had from rehoming charities has been that sometimes those dogs are arriving and are very fearful and very concerned about being around people, which leads us to believe that they have not had a good experience with humans before then. One of our concerns with the approach of the strategy was that we felt that it had not really tackled some of the very big structural issues, the running anti-clockwise round-of-curve track, and thinking about how dogs cope with the injuries, but also with the quite oppressive living in a kennel all the time, which is not something that we would really recommend for a companion animal. It was their approach to that that we were quite concerned about. They did not seem very realistic and they did not seem to be tackling the important welfare issues. Thank you very much. There are lots of the evidence that you have given us that is anecdotal. You mentioned the potential for dogs to be bred in Ireland and no regulation of it, but you have no evidence of that and you do not have any evidence of how many puppies, if you like, are being transported into Scotland. You talked about training methods. You said that you had no evidence or that you did not do any work to find out whether there were positive or negative training methods. Two of the really important things is that you did not do any work to get any more evidence on that. The recent dog in Scotland currently has poorer welfare than the average dog in the population. Is that based on—you have talked about companion dogs, but did you compare a greyhound with other types of working dog? Is the welfare of greyhounds bred for racing less than the welfare standards on average for other working dogs rather than companion dogs? I will try to remember all those questions. There is reasonable evidence of the number of dogs coming from Ireland. That is not anecdotal. That is based on the evidence that GBGB produces themselves. We looked at their own evidence in terms of dogs that were registered with the Irish Coursing Committee, which I think regulates greyhound registrations. It is voluntary, so we do not know how many dogs fall through the cracks before them, but that is the data that we have. We can also see the number of dogs that are registered each year to run with GBGB. The transfer of dogs from Ireland to the UK is evidenced rather than it being anecdotal. We did speak to people about training of dogs only in the one track that we have visited, which is the independent track. That is not the same sort of training—the more intensive training—that the dogs that GBGB would be regulated would be going under, where they live permanently in a kennel. Some of the dogs that we saw were living in homes. The training seemed to run around the track, as far as we could tell. As I said, our observation of those dogs and their interactions with humans were generally positive or neutral. We did not see evidence of poor interactions between those dogs. I suppose that some of the other evidence—the more concrete evidence—was from the rehoming charities who have evidence of dogs arriving with untreated injuries, as far as they could tell, of various sorts. At least for one of the groups that we spoke to, those animals are coming from the trainers, so the trainers voluntarily relinquishing them. It is not that those dogs have had a long period of other things happening to them, so they have come direct from a kennel and training environment to the rehoming centre. They were reporting large numbers of injuries and lack of veterinary treatment for those animals, so that those animals were thinner than they would expect. They had poor dentition, so in general it felt like they were having poorer quality of care than we would expect from an animal in the average population. You are right, we did not—as part of our investigations, we looked at working dogs in other situations. There is a limit to the number of things that we could look at at any one time. We could not compare a race in Greyhound with a working dog in another situation, so I cannot comment on that aspect. Those might be daff to questions, but it is just curious that I have popped up in my head as you have been speaking. I am sorry that I forgot your name, the girl that is remotely. She talked about dogs running anti-clockwise all the time. Has there been any evidence or any suggestion that changing the direction of running would help the welfare of the dogs? There has been some suggestions both in the literature and in some of the welfare charities that potentially are not necessarily changing direction but rather running in a straight track would potentially reduce the number of injuries that is seen during Greyhound racing. During my research, I could not find any firm like numerical data on that, but it has been suggested as conclusions for a couple of scientific literature. There are some straight tracks, the ones that we looked at were in Spain, but it does happen that it is not currently used in the UK. Okay, so that was just a curiosity. There are a couple of other points. Can you see how many dogs are brought over to Scotland from Ireland annually and are they puppies or are they fully trained dogs? There is no data collection specifically of dogs arriving in Scotland, so the figures that we have because the track here is independent and there is no requirement to collect data. I think that we acknowledge in the report that there is a gap because we have only one track and it is independent and there is no requirement for them to produce evidence. Everybody that we spoke to at the track who had a dog had acquired their dog from Ireland. We did not meet anybody who had a Scottish bred dog or even a British bred dog, which would seem to support the evidence that we have seen elsewhere that more than 85% of the dogs are coming from Ireland. The only evidence that we have on when and what state the dogs arrive at is from GBGB's own figures and some of the work that some of the other charities have done, which suggests that the dogs tend to arrive at about six months of age. They live in Ireland until six months and they do not start their training until they arrive in Scotland. In general, they would be trained here rather than arriving as a trained dog. The inference—I know that it is not at all what you meant, but the inference of your statement earlier on is that you cannot legislate for what is happening in Ireland. What are the rules and what are the welfare conditions? What would you have to do in Ireland to breed and produce top-quality racing dogs in Ireland? Have you had any contact with Irish authorities as to what regulations they have in place? We haven't spoken directly to the authorities in Ireland. As part of our evidence gathering, we spoke with the RSPCA and the Dogs Trust and they commissioned an independent report where they did try to understand a little bit more about the conditions and what was happening. When we spoke with GBGB, they mentioned developing an association with the ICC to better be able to understand the flow of dogs and the conditions. Given that you remit and that you suggest that 87 per cent of the dogs that race in Scotland come from Ireland, surely that is a massive gap in data gathering if you haven't engaged with Irish authorities to see what animal welfare policies they have there? Given 87 per cent of the dogs that come from Ireland, surely you are then working on a very small number of dogs to base your recommendations on? That is a fair point. I think that we were working on very limited evidence all the way through, to be honest. Everywhere we looked at the amount of data that we had, it would be more anecdotal evidence if we spoke to producers in Ireland. You didn't look to Ireland? We didn't go to Ireland. No, which would seem to be a massive gap given that 87 per cent of the dogs that race in Scotland come from Ireland. Your recommendations are based on the whole life cycle of a greyhound. That is a fair point. The problem that we have is that dogs are voluntarily registered with the ICC. That is the only point that you would have data from. My colleagues can chip in. I am not confident that we would have been able to find much independent data, because it is coming from the ICC at the point where dogs are registered. Our ability to access places where dogs are being bred is quite low. I have some colleagues working in Northern Ireland looking at breeding of dogs in general. The ability to access places where dogs are bred commercially is extremely difficult. However, we could have looked more closely at what was happening in Ireland or attempted to. I think that Mike Radcliffe is a signal to come in, Beggar Parrant Radd Fford. Mike, would you like to come in? Thank you very much, Chairman. Just to make two points. Firstly, to pick up the issue that you raised about comparing welfare of racing greyhounds with other working dogs. I think that it is important to appreciate that other working dogs in the name will be working on a day-to-day basis with their handler, their owner, and will generally be living in a domestic environment, whereas greyhounds, which race on registered tracks, are kept in kennels away from a domestic environment. The reason they are kept in kennels is not for the benefit of the dogs. It is for the benefit of punters to ensure that nothing untoward is being done with those dogs so far as betting is concerned. Secondly, on the issue of dogs from Ireland, the remit of the commission's report and inquiry was greyhound racing or is greyhound racing in Scotland. The important point here is that if the dogs were being bred predominantly in Scotland, then clearly Scottish authorities and ultimately the Scottish Parliament could oversee and regulate for those dogs, but at the moment they are being bred out of our jurisdiction. That means that Scottish authorities have absolutely no control over what is going on. Once again, we are here to scrutinise what legislation might be coming forward. It is anecdotal that you are suggesting that other working dogs, other than greyhounds, are kept in a domestic or generally a domestic situation. What evidence are you basing that on? Because any knowledge that I have of working dogs, they are not necessarily within a domestic household or a domestic situation. They are kenneled or whatever. Is that anecdotal evidence as well? I take that point, Chairman, but they are generally kenneled at the handler or the owner's premises. I take the point that you do not have legislation, but 87 per cent of the dogs are coming from Ireland and we are looking at the whole life of the animal's welfare. I think that there needs to be an understanding of how those dogs are bred, the conditions that they are bred, and they are highly valuable animals by all accounts. If they are, you would expect that the breeding of them and the welfare of them would be of priority to the people who are trying to make money of them. That is just my assertion. I do not think that I am saying that that is a fact by any stretch of the imagination. I am surprised that there has not been more contact with the Irish racing authorities to work out exactly what is happening in Ireland, and if there is the ability to be able to be far more collaborative with the Irish authorities. The other point that I want to bring up is that we do not already have legislation, and I might be wrong on that, but we do not already have legislation about the transportation and registration of pets that are coming into Scotland from a non-UK country. I can pass this to Mike, but yes. We already have legislation, and I think that we cited in the report the legislation that covers dogs in general, but there is nothing specific for Greyhounds, but they are covered by a number of pieces of legislation, such as the Animal Welfare Act, the Animal Transport Act. It is not specific to Greyhounds. Why is there a specific reasoning for having to have something specifically for Greyhounds, as opposed to the laws that already exist? The movement and transport of Greyhounds is a commercial animal, not a companion animal, particularly when they are being used for racing. Most of our legislation is thinking about those animals as a companion, a pet animal, where one would assume that the owner is quite motivated to improve or maintain the welfare of those animals. Our specific concerns are that that is more of an animal that is being kept for a commercial purpose. There is exchange of quite large sums of money, and I think that our concern is that that opens up the opportunity for there to be exploitation of animals in a way that there is less likely when it is a companion. I am not suggesting that there is not trade in other companion animals, which are also worth a lot of money, which we would be concerned about. I suppose that it is whether the regulation is sufficient for the movement of dogs for racing. They are worth a lot of money, but the evidence that we collected from the rehoming charities is that they are also quite disposable. If the animal is not running fast enough, the dog has some injury, then even a very expensive dog is relinquished to a charity and replaced with another dog. To our witnesses for coming today, the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission report makes recommendations around minimising and monitoring welfare risks, specifically for the presence of a veterinarian when dogs are racing, for the collection of independent data on injuries and fatalities at Stadia and for a review of these metrics and consideration of whether racing should continue within the next three to five years. However, the report concludes that even if a dog track is regulated by the Greyhound Board of Great Britain, which requires a vet to be present when dogs are racing, any welfare strategy is, quote, unlikely to have a significant impact on injury rates in dogs in the foreseeable future. In light of that, would a better course of action not be for a more immediate phase out of dog racing? That is an option that we considered. One of our concerns with all the regulation of racing in the UK is that it is regulated by the industry itself, so it is not independent. I think that that was one of our concerns that there is, that there is clearly an issue where if your livelihood is about making money out of racing Greyhounds and you are also regulating their welfare, that is not independent and there is a concern there. We considered whether we felt that racing could be safe for Greyhounds from their welfare perspective if there was independent oversight. I think that we felt with the independent track here that there was some positive benefits for the dogs living in a home environment who came and raced. It is beyond our remit, but we were also persuaded by some of the people we spoke to that there was a social benefit to those people as well of attending. That was made very forcefully to us by a number of people that this was their one opportunity to go out of the house and speak to like-minded people. It was difficult because that is not really our remit, but I think that it is worth mentioning that there is this broader context. Our problem with the independent track is that there is no data. They are not required to collect data. They recalled an injury or two or a fatality, but there is no verification of that data. We were concerned that we were making a decision on this track on almost no data whatsoever. We felt that if there was an opportunity to collect data, we would have a better understanding of the welfare risks to dogs. Given that some of those dogs are not living in kennels and probably are coming from Ireland, I accept that we do not know perhaps enough about those conditions for those dogs. We considered whether calling for a phased ban was the right approach or not. I think that it was very narrow for us. One of the things that perhaps persuaded us was the view from a number of participants in the racing that they are already undergoing a phased ending of the racing, because the number of people attending is dwindling and they are an ageing population. It was really how far we needed to push that, something that was maybe already occurring. Perhaps a way of bringing a vet into the track would help us to regulate the welfare issues as that track potentially fades out. To confirm, it is the view of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission that racing at unlicensed tracks should not continue. No, we stated that we did not have sufficient evidence to know whether the independent track should continue or not. Does that not contradict the body's previous statement in May that it did not support the continuation of greyhound racing at unlicensed tracks in Scotland? With our independent regulation, we have said throughout that our view is that, when there is commercial exploitation of animals, it is possible that we need independent oversight. Our suggestion is that having an independent vet there would provide some of that independent oversight. At the time when we were asked to make a statement, we were concerned about racing in general. We felt that any activity where there was no oversight independent regulation, we would be concerned about the welfare of animals in those situations. Having explored that in more detail, we felt that there was lack of evidence. In general, we weren't of the opinion that the independent track was any worse than, at least as far as we could tell, than a GBGB-regulated track. Proposing that vets should be at the track for animal welfare reasons and suggesting that they should gather data. As you have already outlined quite clearly, there is a lack of evidence. The vets would gather data on any injuries or fatalities. Would the commission be co-ordinating the data gathering and analysing the figures? That is not really a part of our remit. We would be very happy to work with anybody to look at those figures. It is not really within our remit to do that sort of activity. Who would you anticipate would be paying for the vet at the racetrack? I assumed that if someone was going to run a racetrack, they would be responsible for the costs of carrying out that enterprise. Has any assessment been carried out on how that might impact the business? Not by us now. You have recommended that no further new greyhound tracks are permitted in Scotland, so can you clarify who is permitted by an independent agency, local authorities or by the criminal law? What do you mean by not permitted? I might want to come in here on this one, but I assumed that it would require planning permission. We would imagine that the evidence that we gathered suggests that there is not a strong business case to be made for this anyway. There seems to be a lack of interest in the Scottish public in general of attending greyhound racing. That is borne out by the demographic, if you like, of the people that we saw attending a track anyway. I imagine that it is unlikely to be a serious business proposition anyway. One of our concerns was that there had been a call for a phased end to greyhound racing in England and Wales by Dogs Trust, RSPC and Blue Cross. If that was to occur and we did not have something similar in Scotland, we might see a movement of all greyhound racing coming north of the border, and we were concerned that that would not improve the welfare of dogs in Scotland. I am not suggesting that it is your job to decide what the law should be, but I am just curious whether you thought that it should be a criminal offence to run an event like this or whether you felt that it should be a law to achieve the ends that you are talking about. I am going to ask the lawyer in the room in a sorg to address this one, please, Mike. Thank you very much. I come in convener. Yes, go ahead, Mike. Thank you very much. It is common ground that there are significant welfare problems with greyhound racing. As the committee will be aware, the GBGB has recently issued a welfare strategy. Our problem with that strategy is firstly that it relies entirely on financing from the bookmaking industry, and it is not clear that that financing is going to be forthcoming. Secondly, we have reservations about whether that welfare strategy adequately addresses all the issues, and some of those have been discussed already. Scotland is in a fortunate position at present in that there are no regulated greyhound tracks. If it is decided that it would be undesirable for greyhound racing to be introduced into Scotland, it would clearly be open to Parliament to pass legislation preventing that, essentially banning greyhound racing in Scotland. There is a precedent for this so far as animal welfare is concerned in relation to fur farming. In 2000, the Westminster Parliament banned fur farming so far as England was concerned. In 2002, the Scottish Parliament enacted similar legislation banning fur farming in Scotland. There were no fur farming in Scotland. It was to prevent the industry moving from England where it had been banned to Scotland. Of course, from a point of view of issues such as proportionality and the Human Rights Act and such like, it is easier to ban something that does not exist rather than to ban it after the event and it has been established as issues of compensation and so on and so forth. On that point, when we were talking about the decline of the activity, you mentioned that races meetings only take place if there is a bootmaker who turns up. If there is this decline going on, are we at the point where bootmakers are unlikely to turn up or less likely to turn up? How interested is the gambling industry in this activity? We were only relying on anecdotal evidence. There was a single bookmaker that we spoke to who was the only one present. He suggested that he did it as a service to allow racing to continue. We noted that one of the reasons why a race meet had been cancelled was because the bookmaker was sick and unable to attend. It seemed that there was a sort of relationship between the bookie and the stadium that if it did not attend, racing did not occur. Again, it is only anecdotal evidence to know whether it is worth his while turning up or not. It opens the question up to why people spend significant amounts of money on greyhounds to race in Scotland when it is all down to whether one individual is feeling kindhearted enough to run a book on the race, which seems bizarre. Can you tell me—we are going back a bit, if you like—where you have animals racing or whatever. In the horse racing industry, we have vets present there. Is that paid for by the bookies or is it paid for by the sport itself? Is that something that has been ruled out by those running greyhound tracks in Scotland? Is that right? Having a vet present, when we discussed with the track, they had a vet who had attended in the past. It was a vet who was interested in greyhound racing and brought their own dogs to race, so they were not really independent, I suppose. I think that they had ceased to come for various personal reasons, as far as we could tell. There hadn't been an independent vet present. I am not certain that I can comment on horse racing. It is not something that we have looked at as a sorgh, unless either Mike or Ellie has more knowledge of that, of who pays for the vet. I imagine that it is the horse racing vetting levy board. That would be my guess, but I am not an expert. Okay. Did Mike or Ellie indicate no? Okay, I move on to a question from Karen Adam. Thank you, convener. I am just following on from what you were asking there. It says in the report that there was no evidence found that the industry was prepared to make any radical changes that would be required to achieve improved dog welfare. I was just wondering could you tell us what conversations you had, what kind of engagement you had to come to that conclusion? We met with the Greyhound Racing Board of Great Britain. We met with the CEO and a number of people involved in enforcement and regulation of greyhound racing. We also met with the author of the welfare strategy. We talked in a lot of detail about the sort of opportunities they had. They were pretty frank about the point that Mike has raised, that it needs to be funded by voluntary contributions from the bookies for the welfare strategy to be fully implemented. They were fairly open about the limited powers of enforcement that they actually have. We felt that it was quite voluntary based. The whole thing was quite voluntary. It required the licence tracks to agree to take up the strategy. It required the bookies to choose to pay into a pot to allow those things to happen. Again, it was still being regulated by the industry itself and they were comfortable with that as a way forward rather than thinking that they made it an independent regulator. We talked about the issues with the curvature of the track and they suggested that there is quite good scientific evidence that this is an issue, but they were slightly dissembling, shall we say, and said that there were other issues that were also important. I imagine that it is not very feasible, but they hadn't really thought about changing track design or even the point about whether they could run in both directions. Those sorts of issues are not really being raised. Some of the suggested approaches particularly around the degree of injuries and the fatalities that we felt had not been very thoroughly addressed in the strategy, they had dealt with the easier bits and not perhaps the core issue of the rates of injuries and fatalities. I have supplements from Rachel Hamilton and Jenny Mentow. What is the difference between the track design in Australia and the UK? Very little, as far as we can tell. There is no one sort of pattern of track design if you look, we just looked at two different tracks and you can see that they are very different shapes, but they all run anti-clockwise. All the dog tracks in the UK and most dog tracks run on sand as it is not as damaging as running on grass, for example. There is some work looking at the shape and the camber and some of the ways of manipulating track design. The reference for Australia is a place where money has gone into research to look at those track features and there is no similar work that has been carried out in the UK. That is really the reason for looking at the Australian literature, because there is nothing else. Going back to the Australian example, does that mean that, with the work that they are doing, they are making recommendations to make changes? There have been some suggestions to alter, to cite barriers in places where higher rates of crashes occur. They have suggested changes to design to alter the shape of the curve as the dog, particularly that first curve, which seems to be the place where most of the collisions occur. Is that something that you would recommend for tracks here? I think that it would be better than the status quo. If tracks were going to continue and running on a straight track was not possible, where we can avoid these curves, there is the opportunity to make changes to the track design. I think that a lot of the papers in Australia have focused on the mechanics and the physical properties of the animals running. The scientific evidence in the literature suggests that they should be changed, but we have no evidence of before and after an intervention to make that change to see whether that does improve the rates of injuries. Just in the back of Rachel's question, why was it not one of your recommendations that, if there were any new tracks that they would adopt practices that had a mitigating presence on dogs? I guess for the reason that at the moment those are all theoretical, so there's no evidence that if a track is redesigned that there is actually a substantial improvement in injury and fatality rates. It is hard to interrogate the GBGB data because it's not presented per stadium, so we know that stadiums are different shapes and it may well be that there is evidence that they have that say that these stadiums are better than those, but we are unable to access it because they don't present the data in that way, so they hold that data. One of your main recommendations is that there's a vet present, but that's not going to stop dogs getting injured. It's maybe going to stop dogs racing that are more susceptible to injury, but it's not actually going to stop them being injured, whereas a new track design may do that. It seems strange that, as an animal welfare commission, you're not actually preventing making any attempt to prevent injury. You're just suffering after an injury may take place, whereas there is potentially the ability to reduce injuries through track design. I'll come back to the point that we are uncertain that there is substantial evidence to say that this will improve welfare. With us will reduce the rate of injuries. All we have is that there are—the papers are quite theoretical—they look at the speed at which dogs run, the forces that dogs are under when they get into the bend, and they suggest that changing track design will, in terms of a curvature. We did suggest that the tracks would need to be straight to eliminate that aspect. Looking at where some of those tracks are, it's hard to see how that would be achieved. Our other concerns from having a vet present do speak to other aspects of dog welfare, not just the rates of injuries, but the fitness to run and other minor injuries, and biosecurity and other welfare aspects. I think that Mike Signal will come in and then I'll bring Rachel Lennon again, and then Jenny. Thank you, convener. Firstly, just for the information of the committee, going back to horse racing, there is a 10 per cent levy on what I've described as levial full bets. The definition of a levial bet is contained in legislation. The bookmakers are making a substantial contribution to horse racing. On the point of why we didn't make recommendations of certain conditions, if you look at the summary of our recommendations in our report, number three is that we recommend that no further new greyhound tracks are permitted in Scotland. We are not convinced that any of the current proposed measures can safeguard greyhound welfare appropriately and believe that that will help to reduce suffering in Scotland. In other words, our view is that there aren't any regulated tracks in Scotland, and there shouldn't become any regulated tracks in Scotland. Therefore, having concluded that, it was under a lot of pointing in looking at mitigating circumstances that would have admitted or would have found that we concluded that greyhound racing in Scotland is desirable. Rachael Hamilton, for a small brief. I was interested in some of the points that were raised by the convener and Jim Fairlie on the transportation. We have considerable legislative powers in Scotland through animal welfare protection and welfare. I wondered what the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission's view is on the current operation of the legislation in Scotland to protect animals from transportation right through to kept animals and beyond. Why, considering that it is such a large part of your concern, hadn't that been made as part of a recommendation to say that those bits weren't working? I'm not sure that I would agree that it's a large part of our concern is the transport of dogs. It's a component of the life of a dog, a racing greyhound, is that it will be transported from, well, if it's bred in Ireland, it will be transported here. I'll ask Mike to come in as well, but we have done some research work in my research team on animal transport and the transportation of dogs, the legislation is not based on very substantial scientific evidence, there has not been a lot of research on the transport of dogs and the requirements for the transportation of dogs. I think there is a gap in our understanding of the consequences of transport for dogs. Dogs coming from Ireland are making a ferry crossing. We know that animals are become nauseous when they're subjected to sea sickness in the same way that we are. There are a number of concerns that we might have around the transportation of dogs, how long they can be transported for without food and water, for example. There is legislation on that, but it's not based on, in my opinion, very strong scientific evidence of the impact of that on the dog. I don't know whether Mike wants to come in on... Yes, if I may. Simply to say this, clearly the journey is significant, but it's only a small part of our reservations about these dogs coming from Ireland. The legislation only applies to the journey time and the conditions in which the journey takes place. I concern about the number of dogs coming from Ireland is that this is completely the way they are bred, chosen to come and what happens to the rest of them. That whole background is totally outside the remit of UK authorities. That's exactly why I'm making this point, because in Kathy's initial statement she said that there are invisible issues with breeding. Now, I'm just a bit concerned that this document and the recommendations is not really going to improve the lives of four Greyhounds, because the issues that you're discussing, including breeding in Ireland and transportation, as you referred to in response to my colleague Jim Fairlie, are out of our control. What would you suggest that those significant issues that you raise, how this committee takes that forward? There is a market for Greyhounds in the UK coming from Ireland. That is a pull of dogs, and they have to come here. However, if they are involved in racing, our concerns are the risks to those dogs when they are involved in racing. However, there is legislation in place to protect animal welfare. Why isn't the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission looking at the current Scottish legislation, rather than looking at other aspects? If you are concerned about Greyhounds, there must be a commercial dog, but you must be concerned about other animals and other dogs. We do a number of pieces of work, but that was in response to a direct request from you to give information about racing Greyhounds. The legislation that protects dogs is clearly not protecting racing Greyhounds from having higher rates of fatalities and injuries when they are racing on the track compared to other dogs. I was following on from Karen's question about improved dog welfare. In the introduction to your report, you talked about the term cruelty, which has been used and sometimes as a synonym for, sorry, cinnamon. I cannot get my words out today. My apologies for welfare. I wonder whether you could put on the record the difference between those two descriptive phrases. Yes, thank you. It is something that is quite important to understand. Cruelty is a deliberate or negligent desire to cause suffering to an animal. The welfare of an animal is a continuum from poor to good, if you like, to very good. We talk about good welfare, but we cannot talk about that in terms of cruelty. Welfare is the animal's mental state, essentially. It is about how it deals with the physical environment, the psychological environment. It is about its physical mental health as it engages with the environment. That can go from very poor to very good. It is a property of the animal, whereas cruelty is something that we might do to the animal to cause it to experience very poor welfare. To my mind, they are quite separate concepts. They are often blurred together. We could talk about is greyhound racing cruel? I would say that it causes poor welfare, but whether it is cruel or not is a different concept, a different question, and it is not something that we addressed in the report. When we took some evidence previously, the Scottish Government's response was that there was legislation specifically that named greyhound racing to protect animal welfare was in place. Why is that not sufficient to address the issues that the petitioner has brought up in the situations that you have looked into? It does lead back to the previous response to the previous question. Welfare exists on this continuum. Our goal as the commission would be to encourage practices that provide animals with good welfare. We might believe that the legislation is going to avoid the worst cruelties. That is what it is designed to do. It provides the lowest baseline. If we take a utilitarian ethical view, we might believe that do people need greyhound racing? Is it important ethically for human happiness? If so, we might be prepared to offset some poorer welfare from that perspective. If we do not believe that it is essential for human happiness, I am not convinced that we should be living with a low or minimum standard of welfare when we could be suggesting that animals should be kept in good welfare. That is a useful response. I appreciate that. Mike McIntosh indicated that you would like to come in. Just on the distinction as far as legislation is concerned between cruelty and welfare, cruelty is defined in law as causing an animal unnecessary suffering. First of all, it would have to be demonstrated that the animal suffered. Then the question is, is that suffering unnecessary? Greyhound racing is present lawful. It is a lawful activity. Therefore, a court may well say that an animal has suffered, but this is the sort of suffering that one would normally expect from the activity, for example injuries because of running around in a circle. However, welfare is about an animal's quality of life throughout its life. Therefore, we are concentrating principally on welfare, on the animal's quality of life throughout its life in this report. The question would be if there was a proposal to introduce regulated greyhound racing in Scotland, would that be considered to the welfare benefit of the animal's concern? Our conclusion is that that argument cannot be sustained because of the inherent welfare issues. That is really helpful. However, I will go back to what the cabinet secretary stated in Parliament on 3 March, which was that the provision of animal health in welfare Scotland 2006, as amended, is sufficient to ensure that actions can be taken if the welfare of greyhounds, whether racing or retired, is not being met. The provisions of part 2 of the act apply to all people responsible for animals, including breeders, trainers and owners of greyhound racing. Those provisions include making an offence to cause or permit unnecessary suffering. Kathy, you helpfully suggested the difference between cruelty and animal welfare. The cabinet secretary suggested that the legislation in place covers welfare. With respect to the cabinet secretary, the welfare offence requirement is to do all that is reasonable in the circumstances. Therefore, the circumstances surrounding greyhound racing would be relevant for the courts to take into account. In other words, what is lawful in greyhound racing might not be lawful if you were keeping a dog in a domestic environment as a companion animal. The context is significant. In that same context, other provisions, including those powers, are for inspectors to gather evidence. To issue care notices if an animal welfare needs are not being met and to take animals into possession to protect their welfare if they are suffering or likely to suffer if their circumstances do not change. Are you aware of any care notices issued to any greyhound owners or greyhound track owners in Scotland under that provision? The SSPCA gave us evidence on that and there have not been. It has carried out a number of inspections and its informal feedback was that it had met the letter of the law. It may be a lack of clear guidance in the current law that is the issue here rather than the need for additional legislation. Potentially, yes. To reiterate Mike's point, it is whether we believe that the potential for suffering for greyhounds is acceptable for the purposes for which those dogs are being kept. It feeds back to Mike's point about what is acceptable for a dog that is kept for this purpose. We might need more clarity on the existing legislation that would address that. I should have said already at the start of the meeting that we are joined with Mark Ruskell, MSP, who has a particular interest in this. Although he is not a member of the committee, he has joined us today. Mark, would you like to answer some questions? Thank you very much, convener. It has been a very interesting and enlightening session. I just had a couple of very quick questions. One was about the report and the report mentions the situation where we have greyhounds that are being trained and live in Scotland, but they are also going over to England to race, where there is more of a greyhound racing industry. You recommended independent regulation in that scenario, so I wonder if you could explain what you think the Scottish Government's powers would be in relation to that aspect of regulation, because it is something that we haven't touched on yet this morning. I am not sure that I am an expert in being able to suggest what the powers should be. Our governing principle for a lot of our work is that the animals are used in many different ways where people make money. If that is the case, there is the opportunity for animals to be exploited. For some of those practices, we have independent regulation, but for a lot of companion animal issues in particular, we would draw greyhound racing into that. There is very little structured independent regulation of any of the things that we might do with those animals. Our concern was that even if racing ceased in Scotland, and there are people who are training, there are a number of trainers who live in Scotland who will train dogs, but they are kept in kennels because they are racing on GBGB regulated tracks, and they are subject to the regulation by GBGB. However, we are concerned that, for the reasons that we have outlined, that that is not an independent assessment of the welfare of those dogs and that there is at least the opportunity that there may be concerns about the welfare of those dogs because there is not an independent oversight. The people involved in regulating that are also involved in the income generation from dog racing. Mike, do you want to add anything more? Simply to say, given that legislation specific to greyhound racing has been raised, I think that it is important to understand that there is specific legislation, the welfare of greyhounds under the English Equivalent, the Animal Welfare Act, but no subsequent, no equivalent secondary legislation has been introduced by the Scottish Parliament. That is because presumably there are not any regulated tracks in Scotland. In England, they have gone for regulation because they have already got these pre-existing tracks, and there would be issues about proportionality and so on and so forth. If they are sought to ban them in Scotland, we are arguably in the desirable situation of not having any tracks, therefore, apart from the one unregulated track. However, as our report indicates, we question whether that unregulated track in Scotland has a long-term future. As far as regulated tracks are concerned, there is nothing to pass legislation for in terms of regulation. Given that there is nothing here, and in our conclusion the welfare of greyhounds is going to be compromised, it is surely better to prevent the industry moving here rather than introduce regulations that, by definition, would be permissive. If you regulate the industry, it is saying that it is permitting the industry to exist, subject to meeting those regulations. You also conclude that a phase out of greyhound racing would be desirable. Can you say how you think a phase out would work, and what the difference would be between a phase out and just an outright ban? One of the concerns with an outright ban is that there are dogs in the system at the moment, and how is that managed? If there was a ban tomorrow, what would happen to those dogs that are in training in kennels, are racing dogs? A number of the animal charities that we spoke to, the rehoming charities, are already close to capacity, if not beyond, so there is not really a place for those dogs to go if they are going to be rehomed. It seems unrealistic to expect them all to become the pets of the current owners and trainers. Our evidence gathering suggests that that leads to worse welfare often if the animals are not rehomed. I think that the point of a phased end to racing, and I think that this is something that was suggested by the Dogs Trust and RSPCA in Blue Cross in their thinking and their statement last year, was that this is a way of ensuring dog welfare as best as possible as racing comes to an end. In Scotland, as Mike Russell alluded to, and we have already mentioned it, it feels like it is coming to an end naturally anyway. There is a reduction in the number of dogs present, and there is a reduction in the number of people present. There are still reasonable numbers of dogs being rehomed. It is obvious that some of those dogs are not racing in Scotland because the figures do not match up, so they are racing elsewhere, which is one of our concerns about regulating dogs living in Scotland but racing elsewhere. However, it feels like we are coming to a natural end anyway, and how much effort wants to be put into pushing that a bit further or allowing it to reach a natural end, where perhaps dog welfare for those dogs leaving racing can be better assured than if they were in an abrupt end to racing. Between the lines, it sounds that you would prefer an all-out ban. Is that right? From a personal point of view, or from a commission? Mike, from the evidence that you have given us and the comments that you have made, it would appear that you want an all-out ban. From a practical point of view, it seems to me that if the committee and the Parliament more generally decide that the welfare of racing greyhounds is compromised and that it would be undesirable for greyhound racing to expand in Scotland, now would be the time to ban it, because if it is still permissible in Scotland and the industry moves in, it raises more complicated issues to ban something that exists than to ban something that does not exist. As I said, that is exactly what happened with fur farming. There is just one other point that I wanted to pick up. One of the views was that an independent oversight and regulation is required. One of the suggestions that you had was that it might be under the auspices of the new Scottish veterinary service. Have you got any indication of when we might see that formulated and come into being? No, I suppose that we will be the quick answer to that. What we were considering was who would be a suitable body that might have the skills and the capacity to do that sort of job. I do not believe that there is any further question, so it just leads me to thank you all very much for providing evidence today. That has been hugely useful and we appreciate the time that you have taken to join us this morning. We will take further evidence on the petition in April and May. That concludes our meeting in public and we now move into private session. I suspend the meeting for a 10-minute comfort break.