An international campaign against the mass killing of greyhounds at the Macau Canidrome has embarrassed the city's government and will lead to the closure of the track within three years, the head of the city's leading animal welfare group believes.
Albano Martins, chairman of the Society for the Protection of Animals (ANIMA), expects the Macau government to cancel the controversial venue's land lease when it expires in 2015 because of growing local and overseas pressure for the Canidrome to close.
Martins expects to meet Macau chief executive Fernando Chui Sai-on over the issue later this month and said he would call for the number of greyhounds imported from Australia to be reduced and for the number of daily races to be cut to reduce greyhound injuries.
A global campaign by animal welfare groups began last year when a Sunday Morning Post investigation revealed how 383 dogs were euthanised in the Canidrome in 2010, most of them healthy and most aged no more than five or six years old.
Because there is no mechanism for the greyhounds to be adopted after retirement, all are killed by lethal injection, often for no other reason than that they are too slow to finish in the top three of the three-times-a-week races.
Following an outcry, Canidrome bosses met government officials and ANIMA and agreed to hand over at least one retired greyhound for adoption, Martins said.