New PETA Ad Targets Dog Breeders As Crufts Dog Show Nears

For Immediate Release:
2 March 2010


Contact:
Sam Glover 020 7357 9229, ext 229; [email protected]


Birmingham – A provocative new PETA ad shows a white Maltese dog who has the end of a black comb strategically placed across his upper lip to make it look like he has an Adolf Hitler-like moustache. The caption on the ad reads, “Master Race? Wrong for People. Wrong for Dogs. Boycott Breeders. Adopt!” PETA’s new ad launches today at a Broad Street bus shelter just in time for the Crufts dog show, which begins 11 March. The ad makes the point that the quest to breed the “perfect dog” causes many pedigree dogs to suffer painful and life-threatening genetic defects and diseases and contributes to the homeless dog crisis in the UK – and the euthanasia that results.


About one in four pedigree dogs is afflicted with serious congenital defects, including hypothyroidism, demodectic mange, epilepsy, cataracts, allergies, chronic ear infections and hip dysplasia. These and other conditions have been handed down through generations of inbreeding and selective breeding for distorted physical features. Pedigree dogs aren’t the only animals who suffer because of the breeding industry. Every year, breeders sentence to death thousands of dogs in animal shelters because there are not enough good homes for them.


The BBC stopped airing Crufts after the TV documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed revealed how pedigree dogs suffer from an abnormally high rate of lifelong health problems. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals also withdrew its support of Crufts because, as it currently states on its website, the approach to such shows “actively encourages both the breeding of deformed and disabled dogs and the inbreeding of closely related animals. This is morally and ethically unjustifiable”.


“Whether you call it ‘pedigree’ or ‘master race’, the quest for pure bloodlines is the same thing – the false and dangerous belief that some breeds or races are superior to others”, says PETA’s Poorva Joshipura. “We are asking true dog lovers to take a bite out of cruelty by boycotting breeders and adopting a lovable animal from a refuge instead.”


The bus shelter ad has been placed at Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2DT. The ad will run for two weeks starting 1 March.


For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.