Importantly, the principle behind it all makes a mockery of the process used to determine the effect of greater or lesser amounts of cobalt and arsenic in a dog.

GA used a single test of the amount of cobalt in a few hundred dogs, divided by the number they first thought of, and imposed a 100n limit. It did not repeat the test, so far as I know which contravenes scientific principles nor did it attempt to work out the effect of more or less cobalt in the system. It just scaled down the numbers derived from the thoroughbreds decisions.

There is some scientific advice that cobalt is ineffective as a stimulant in dogs (or even horses) and that conventional testing is inappropriate for this substance. Other advice may well contest that but decent proof is not available. Anyway, many of the horse cases are based on using very large amounts, not those that might occur as an incidental content of other substances.

GA has demonstrated in other areas that its judgement is flawed (eg on euthanasia data that ended up before the McHugh Commission or in being photographed with Grey2K) so it hardly gives us confidence in anything it does.

EPO is a different story as it has been clearly shown to affect performance (and it is risky).

Both cobalt and arsenic regulations should have been challenged at the outset legally and administratively. They can still be. Peoples livelihoods should not be at stake on the basis of guesswork.

Unfortunately when a threshold is published it establishes an acceptable threshold perhaps even with a performance or attitude adjusting one. Remember when Testoprop was permitted within guidelines. It didn't last long because of the above stated reasons.

And that said, I don't suppress my bitches anymore because I don't like the drawbacks of using "the pill".

Anything within tolerances should be permissible but we don't live in a perfect world. By all means argue freely about what the threshold numbers should be but its easier just to rule things out than delve into that area in most cases. Environmental elements like Cobalt, Arsenic etc are inevitable just from stock feeding so all dogs will carry this, it really is just about the acceptable limit.

My comment was about the process used to derive the rule, not so much the rule itself. To that end I instanced examples of amateurish GA approaches to other subjects, including some which endangered the very existence of greyhound racing itself.

The default position is that a substance is bad unless we say it is OK. I dispute that, too, partly because it is lazy and partly because it fails to recognise that the greyhound world and the world around us are becoming indistinguishable, one from the other. This is the old don't walk past a bread shop because the odour of poppy seeds may affect your dog.

The current green tea in the kibble saga is another illustration (see also Sweet It Is in NZ). The final amount in a given dog would be almost infinitesimal and is a testimony only to the scientific improvements in the lab. Sure, caffeine is caffeine so you have to knock it on the head. But should the same approach be taken for a substance which is highly unlikely (a) to have any effect on the dog and (b) to have any scientific backing?

My point is that the effect of, say, cobalt is unknown or arguable at any level - big or small - therefore it is unjust to take away a person's livelihood on such spurious grounds. It is hard to imagine a decent court allowing such behaviour by authorities.

It's like charging someone with robbery because they were standing in a bank queue at the time.