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“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
Hippocrates

Local Organic, Regenerative and Ethical Meat - Better for You, Better for the Animal

G'Day Folks,

I'm going to have a rant this week!

So here I am driving around the mid north coast delivering your fruit and veg boxes while listening to the ABC radio. The radio host announces a report by chief vet, Alex Brittan, allegeing Greyhound Racing NSW was underreporting dog deaths and overlooking animal welfare violations.

It was another scathing report into greyhound racing in New South Wales which has prompted the peak body’s CEO to resign and forced the state government to open an inquiry and threaten to sack the board. You may remember our previous NSW Premier Mike Baird announced a statewide ban on greyhound racing in 2016 after an 800 page report into animal welfare abuses, it was later overturned due to political pressures.

So as I’m listening along, I find out the following;

  • Half of the racing dogs that retired each year were not rehomed, leaving at least 8,000 and up to 13,000 greyhounds to be “shuffled through the industry to paid commercial kennels”, Brittan wrote. The backlog of waiting dogs “will never be rehomed and will die within the industrial facilities that they were born and raced in”.
  • Death had become an alarmingly common solution to cutting the number of unwanted greyhounds, with dogs dying at unnaturally high rates. One in five greyhounds in the industry died when they were less than five and half years old, which Brittan wrote was “significantly higher than the norm”. There was at least one case where a GRNSW participant asked a local shooter to kill an unwanted dog, he alleged.
  • Brittan gave the example of one case where greyhound bodies and remains were allegedly found in freezers and a fire pit at a vet’s premises, but none of the deaths had been reported by owners. He alleged there were additional thousands of young unregistered greyhounds and old greyhounds yet to record a race who were at high risk of dying without their deaths being reported.
  • Brittan ultimately alleged nothing had changed in the eight years since the industry was briefly shut down in 2016 over the scale of animal abuse.“The industry continues to overproduce exhausted greyhounds that are no longer able to race,” he wrote. “Greyhounds continue to die rather than be rehomed. Twice as many greyhounds die than are rehomed over the past four years [to June 2023].”


Already feeling sickish by the level of abuse, a member of the public who grew up within the industry calls in to spill the beans on even more horrible scenes. Talking of large pits filled with unwanted retired race dogs and much more gruesome details to which the radio host had to quickly intervene for the sake of his listeners. According to the ABC a study found Two out of Three people in NSW and the ACT support the ban on greyhound racing, regardless of their political persuasion. How does it continue to operate? - I guess money talks more loudly in the halls of state parliament than we like to imagine.

Now I have to be frank, the treatment of these dogs pales in comparison to the treatment of industrially farmed pigs, chickens and cows. Pigs, which have been found to be more intelligent than dogs, suffer far worse in life and are completely ignored because I guess most of us didn't grow up playing fetch with them. They are not as nice to pat or cuddle up with on the couch, they make too much of a mess and taste far too good for most to consider a pet.

While Two out of Three people in NSW support a racing ban, that same group of people more than likely enjoy a pork roast from time to time. Now this is not to condemn people who choose to eat meat, myself and my family eat meat, but we purchase our meat from organic and ethical family farms who practise regenerative farming principles, sequestering carbon to offset methane emissions and who treat their animals with the utmost respect. Neither will I drag you through the horrors of factory farming, I know most of you will already be aware of the systemic barbarism of this system. But I cannot ignore the hypocrisy of outrage over Greyhound treatment whilst the animals most Australians eat are from factory farms.
Finally, I know it is easy to feel overwhelmed by all the things we should be doing, I too feel guilty for taking the easy option when I know full well what I'm choosing at a restaurant is incongruent with my values. I frequently scan the menu for the most ethical and sustainable option while listening to my belly grumble for the least ethical option. I have to be honest with you, my belly makes me feel like a complete hypocrite more than I like to admit.
But we must not throw in the towel because we lose a couple of rounds, like learning to ride a bike, we will fall off, but what matters is the getting back on part. The world we live in today makes it near impossible to make the right choice, it can be a bloody tough bike to ride sometimes, but don't give up, if you're reading this newsletter, you've already lost your training wheels!
You can find local organic, regenerative and ethical meat from the following family farms on the mid north coast.

Grazed and Grown - grazedandgrown.com.au

OxHill Organics - oxhillorganics.com.au

Chef to Farmer - chef2farmer.com

Home Made Happy Healthy Farm - homemadehealthyhappy.com

Thank YOU for joining us on this epic journey & supporting Your local farmer!

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