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Dave any guidance as to how long this stuff stays in the system for ?

So once the dog pees and poops there should be nothing showing up IMO.

The two real issues with the Pentobarbital Cases are

1 It is very difficult to identify any animals that have been put down using Pentobarbital in Ireland. Each of the several Vets that I have spoken to have said that they had not euthanised any cattle in the past year with Pentobarbital.This is mainly due to the cost involved, the medication costs approximately 80 euro on top of the vets bill.
The only animals that I can identify in Ireland that have been put down with pentobarbital are horses that have died whilst running in races and there are very few of these.

2 With respect to how long will traces of pentobarbital stay in the food chain

A If a horse had been put down with pentobarbital and the carcass buried, pentobarbital is detectable for up to 228 Days, see study,
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B If the meat is consumed, then that is a different story as the dog will excrete the pentobarbital over time.

The half life of pentobarbital is up to 48 hours, that means that half of the pentobarbital is excreted by 48 hours, 3/4 by 96 hours, 7/8 by 192 hours 15/16 by 386 hours, 31/32 by 772 hours etc

Therefore by 772 hours or 32 days, there is still 1/32 of the Pentobarbital in the system.

Why is this important ?

Up to now the Control Committee of the IGB have not released any drug levels and clearly this is relevant.

If a dog was positive a month ago , it should still be positive now, although the levels should be significantly reduced.

This is why it is so difficult to understand how a dog that has tested positive can be negative on a retest within a month or so.

This is an area where the concept of Zero Tolerance becomes a difficult one as any medication given to an animal will show up for several months or even years if the right test is used and if the testing equipment is accurate to low concentrations.

Obviously at very low concentrations, the drug will not have a therapeutic effect.

What is disquieting with regard to the recent cases is that no threshold level has been described by the Control Committee of the IGB and by not releasing the levels found in the greyhounds, it means that suspicion is attached to all cases.

At the same Control Committee hearing, one trainer was found to have no case to answer whilst another one was fined, why was this ?

The received wisdom is that one had legal representation and another did not, this is surely too simplistic and very hard to believe.

It would be interesting to know which case was heard first?

Is it a case that the levels of Pentobarbital were different ?

We have no idea as they were not published but to treat the two cases so differently appears illogical.

Until the Control Committee publishes the levels, it is difficult to argue one way or another but then again, you might ask if this is why the levels are not published ?

The official stance of the Board is that the excuse of feeding knacker meat will not alone not be accepted as an excuse but will be treated by the Control Committee as an aggravating factor in such cases !

my issue is simple, the Greyhound Industry is built on the back of cheap meat (i.e. Knacker meat). Previously I believed it was OK to feed Knacker meat but maybe 2 or 3 days before a race switch to butchers meat and all would be OK (and that would appear to be Daves belief also going on his answer). I asked the question as I recently heard it could be in the system for over a month. It's easy for people to say don't feed knacker meat but butchers meat can be 3 a pound and if you have 5 dogs that is a big extra cost on everyone (in effect increasing the cost of feeding by over 200%). Cat 2 meat is a no go and I believe you are better off using no meat as its all fat. We are potentially faced with these additional feeding costs plus all the micro chipping etc, where will it end.

Surely Board can see this and provide some additional guidance on levels. People will continue to feed knacker meat I'm sure and take chance the meat is OK, but there is a risk and given additional cost I think people will continue to take the risk. Surely the Board can apply and as you say publish levels.

Your final sentence is very damming and arrogant from the Boards perspective in my opinion, because giving a Dictate that states don't feed knacker meat is hitting at the foundation of the sport.

Now I know people will come on and say they have been feeding knacker meat for 50 years etc and never had a positive and that's great but now with what appears with Newmarket testing been able to detect to lower levels its a risk to feed knacker meat full stop and I think Board simply issuing a Dictate of don't feed it is a cop out on their behalf.

Even dogs at UK sales showing positives, I believe gbgb have recognised it's a problem.

Horse meat for sale on Sporting press this week, how could anyone chance that ?

If you think the nuts are not at risk, I spoke to a man who worked for one of Irelands and UK's largest horse feed suppliers, he is now retired but he told me when he was involved they couldn't guarantee that their feed wouldn't show a positive in New Market tests as their testing equipment was not as precise and to get more precise equipment was too expensive.

This is a can of worms and the half arsd solution we have now could create more problems. Yes by all means catch the drug cheats but is it worth it, if it triples the cost of feeding a dog for someone trying to train a few dogs, when surely the tests results have enough information to determine guilt without forcing everyone to stop using knacker meat source?

Applying proper levels and publishing them has to be the way to go.
Person x had a positive for substance A at a level of .01 ppm
Person y had a positive for substance A at a level of 50 ppm
if the threshold is 1 ppm, then person x is let off and person y is guilty.
Surely this is possible ?

A threshold AND the levels being published, otherwise the Control Committee are back publishing results " as they see fit "

I would be surprised if this is not a Morris Report Recommendatio.

Can someone please check the record of the Dail as it should be in the Dail library by now as promised by the Chair of the Agricultural Committee in January in the Dail in January

Laurence,the very fact that there are so many positives lowers the likelyhood of it coming from the meat.
I ran a small knackery for 25 years, producing around 100 ten pound bags of beef each week. In all that time, the only animal I collected that had been put down by injection was a calf.
I have just spoken to three different vets and the concensus is that although it is possible that all the positive tests came from contaminated meat, it is highly unlikely due to the widely spread nature of the offences.Not one of these vets had put down a cow with pentobarbital. Only using it on calves or sheep. Neither of these animals enter the dog meat produced at any knackery that I spoke to.
It is highly unlikely that a farmer would pay the 100 or so to put down a cow with injection,so therefore the chances of a beast put down with pentobarbital ending up in a knackery are slim, and just by the laws of statistics the chances of multiple positives spread throughout the country being due to contaminated meat must be negligable!

Who is your vet?