Some of the vision aired on Monday night’s Four Corners program was offensive beyond words.

One clip showed a prominent trainer removing a mother possum from its baby and using it as bait on a lure.

When the lure stopped, the possum had been snapped in half, attached only by its spinal cord.

Other defenceless animals grasp grimly onto life, mutilated beyond recognition, while workers laugh at their pain and sling them around the track again.

How can any decent, compassionate society accept this?

Any form of animal cruelty is detestable, but there is something manifestly grotesque about cruelty for financial gain.

This is humanity at its most inhumane.

That greyhound authorities have been wilfully blind to this for so long makes it even worse.

Already, sponsors have walked away and some politicians have called for an immediate suspension of the sport.

These are not bit players involved.

Top officials and even one of Australia’s leading trainers, Darren McDonald, have been implicated.

Anyone with even a cursory involvement in the sport knows live baiting, or “blooding”, has been widely practised across the industry.

In Tamworth, rumours have been rife for years at least one trainer uses live possums as bait for his dogs.

As a community and a nation, we should continue to condemn this barbaric practice.

But we should also be aware these criminals operating in a moral abyss represent only a small minority of players in the industry.

The sport of greyhound racing now sits on a precipice: either it has a systemic purge of cheats, much like competitive cycling has, or it continues to lose supporters and relevance.

If authorities choose not to act, then greyhound racing deserves to go to the dogs.