Striving to meet our own and the community’s high expectations for the industry, Greyhound Racing Victoria (GRV) takes its compliance responsibilities extremely seriously.
Our approach is both educative and punitive, affording participants every opportunity to do the right thing, while maintaining a strong and uncompromising compliance regime that not only punishes transgressions but is designed to act as a deterrence.
GRV believe penalties must make it clear to participants, the wider greyhound industry and the community that breaches of the Rules of Racing, GRV Policies and the Victorian Government’s Code of Practice for the Keeping of Racing Greyhounds will not be tolerated. Welfare offences are treated on an individual basis according to legislation, rules, procedural fairness, and natural justice. Penalties can be found in the GRV Greyhound Welfare Penalty Guidelines.
GRV’s integrity and greyhound welfare units have been strengthened and expanded significantly over the past eight years, demonstrating our continued commitment to integrity and animal welfare standards and our understanding of the community’s expectations. As well as taking on additional investigators, the investigations unit includes intelligence analysts, who use evidence-based processes to address areas of high risk in relation to animal welfare and integrity matters. Further, expert surveillance consultants have also been engaged for specific matters.
GRV investigations personnel are trained and authorised under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 and Domestic Animal Act 1994. A toll-free line and a ‘red button’ online notification system (both with the option of anonymity) have increased the avenues for participants, members of the public and others to inform GRV of welfare and integrity issues. The increasing uptake of these methods indicates that participants and the community are confident GRV will appropriately respond to concerns.
GRV also works with several organisations such as Victoria Police, local councils, RSPCA, other rehoming organisations, and Animals Australia in working towards our shared aims and will continue doing so into the future.
