Brachycephalic dog breeds
correct conformational disorders. ’ Banning the breeding of these breeds could backfire on the veterinary and breeding communities and prevent vets from performing the surgeries that correct the breed-related problems and further damage the welfare of affected breeds.
In 2020, Westgate (2020) reported for the Vettimes that in 2014 the Dutch government had outright banned the breeding of most brachycephalic breeds if the abnormalities present could harm the health of the parent or offspring, but that the Kennel Club would not be following suit. The reason given by the Kennel Club was that, as an attempt to prevent adding ‘ further fuel [to] the ongoing crisis of irresponsible breeders, illegal puppy smuggling, and uninformed puppy buyers ’ , they would not be banning breeding outright, but continue working alongside registered breeders to protect animal welfare and evaluate the breeding populations for irregularities in conformation. There is truth in their statement, that illegal puppy breeding and smuggling will become more common with a breeding ban, making it near to impossible for vets to guard the welfare of affected animals, making the ban counterproductive. While there is little evidence of this occurring in the Netherlands, the breeds in question are much more popular in the UK, with the British bulldog being seen as a ‘national symbol’ , making it the fourth most popular breed in the country (Pedersen, 2016; Brown, 2021). This means that we could expect more extensive ‘underground’ breeding to occur in the UK, avoiding legislation and impacting the breed health considerably, making an outright ban unviable in this case. It follows that a better solution to this is the education of potential buyers. If we were to campaign to reduce the popularity of these brachycephalic breeds, the demand for them would decrease to a point where a ban would have a considerable effect in reducing breed prevalence, or even remove the need for a ban entirely. Campaigns like this have already begun, with the #BreedtoBreathe campaign run by the British Veterinary Association ( Breed to Breathe campaign , 2021) already having a considerable following on the popular social media platforms Instagram and Twitter. Using social media targets the younger generations who will be the future owners of these dogs, so while the effects may take a few years to become evident, they should be considerable. In addition to increasing awareness on social media, a ban on using brachycephalic breeds for advertising should also be enacted. The BVA has already written to major retailers and charities asking them to evaluate the breed-related health problems endemic to brachycephalic dogs. Charities such as Comic Relief have already pledged to avoid the use of brachycephalic dogs in advertising in the future (Rossi, 2017), demonstrating that there is hope in decreasing the online visibility of these breeds in advertisements. If there is support for such a ban, the effect would hopefully decrease the popularity of affected breeds to a considerable extent. In addition to what the BVA has already done, vets are being urged to speak out and raise awareness of breed-related problems with potential puppy buyers. A journal article from 2012 evaluating the awareness of owners to the clinical signs of inherited disorders, Packer (2012), found that 58% of owners failed to detect even severe clinical signs of BOAS in their dogs. This highlights the importance of veterinary surgeons educating potential owners in how to spot these clinical signs in order to protect the health and welfare of affected puppies, and additionally to discourage any uninformed purchasing of certain breeds.
246
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator