Abbie MacGregor: We need a more serious approach to risk around greyhound racing and gambling

Abbie MacGregor is Director of Corporate Affairs for the Greyhound Board of Great Britain

There is something increasingly unhealthy about the way risk is discussed by campaigners against gambling and greyhound racing.

We’ve seen it in full force recently with Andy Burnham’s comments that high street betting shops are bad for communities, and then Lisa Smart MP’s Private Members Bill to ban greyhound racing.

Their arguments often begin with a real instance of harm: a person develops a gambling problem; a greyhound suffers an injury; an animal dies. These events deserve to be taken seriously, and every responsible industry should work continuously to prevent avoidable harm, improve safeguards and reduce risk wherever it reasonably can. The problem is, that is no longer where much campaigning ends. Instead, the existence of any harm at all is treated as proof that the entire activity is unacceptable; one injury becomes evidence that racing can never be safe, likewise, one person’s gambling addiction becomes evidence that betting itself is inherently predatory. One death becomes proof that an animal should never have been allowed to participate in the activity in the first place.

This is not a serious approach to risk. It is a demand for a world that has never existed and never could. Nothing involving human beings or animals can be made entirely risk-free. People are injured playing football, riding horses, cycling, climbing mountains and simply walking down the stairs. Dogs are injured running in parks, chasing balls, playing with other dogs and living ordinary domestic lives. Animals become ill, accidents happen. Eventually, every living thing dies.

We do not normally respond to those realities by banning everything that carries risk. We ask more intelligent questions.

How likely is the harm? How serious is it? Could it reasonably have been prevented? Are proper safeguards in place? Are standards improving? Does the activity provide benefits that justify allowing a managed level of risk? Yet when the subject is gambling or greyhound racing, that balanced assessment is frequently abandoned; risk is treated not as something to understand and manage, but as a rhetorical weapon.

This produces a peculiar double standard. Every time we board an aeroplane, we do so hoping – and expecting- that it will land safely. Nobody wants the aircraft to crash, but we nevertheless accept that the risk, however remote, cannot be reduced to absolute zero. That is precisely why we listen to a safety briefing: not because we expect disaster, nor because we are indifferent to it, but because responsible risk management means taking sensible precautions against even unlikely events. I suspect many of the activists demanding the abolition of anything that cannot guarantee perfect safety still travel by air. They do not point to the existence of air accidents and conclude that flying must end.

Similarly, a greyhound injured while racing is presented as a victim of the sport. A pet dog injured while running freely is regarded as having suffered an unfortunate accident. The injury may be similar, but the moral judgment changes according to the campaigner’s opinion of the activity.

The same distortion appears in debates about gambling. Most adults who place a bet do so as one part of their leisure and without experiencing serious harm. That does not make gambling addiction any less real or any less deserving of intervention, but the existence of problem gambling cannot logically mean that every gambler is a victim, any more than the existence of alcoholism means every person who enjoys a glass of wine has been exploited.

A mature society understands the difference between use and misuse, enjoyment and dependency, risk and recklessness. An increasingly paternalistic strain of campaigning refuses to acknowledge those distinctions.

That refusal has consequences. If zero harm becomes the only acceptable standard, evidence of improvement becomes almost irrelevant. An industry can introduce stronger regulation, better veterinary care, greater transparency, improved traceability or more effective consumer protections, but campaigners can simply point to the fact that some risk remains.

There is also a danger in pretending that prohibition eliminates risk rather than redistributing it. People do not necessarily stop gambling because the legal, regulated options are restricted. Nor does every greyhound automatically enjoy a better life simply because organised racing is abolished. Removing regulation, oversight and investment can create new risks which are less visible, less measurable and considerably harder to control.

We should always strive to make life safer. But we should be deeply wary of campaigners who treat anything short of perfect safety as a moral failure. They are not offering a safer version of the real world. They are demanding an imaginary one – and applying that impossible standard only to the activities and communities they already dislike.

That is not the foundation for a serious debate that will help to improve outcomes.