Kennel Club judge Steven Seymour writes in Dog World:
"It is my absolute belief that if put to the vote today, there would be a huge majority vote in favour of major structural change in the way we breed and register puppies in this country."
"Dogs’ health and welfare are being left waiting on the shelf at present, while the power brokers decide what will produce the best outcome; maybe the best outcome for themselves. This is simply not good enough.
"The calls from the mainstream of dedicated breeders could not be any louder. They want the KC to take a proper stance against those who breed without regard to health, and equally they want action to ensure those who volume breed are strictly monitored and inspected on a regular and profession basis.
"Imagine any corporation or business today being able to receive millions a year in income and not be called to account for the product its brand endorses. Each and every day the KC registers puppies which are bred from unchecked parents. Its system of registration allows this to continue unregulated. Everyday someone will buy a faulty product which the KC has endorsed as being purebred and KC registered."
Read the whole thing!
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2 comments:
hi Patrick, I don't think mandatory health testing is the way to fix what is wrong with purebred dogs. Many breeds' gene pools are so small, and diseases so widespread, that health testing cannot have much of a positive impact. Kennel-club mandated health testing could never fly here in the U.S., where the vast majority of breeders are breeding either to win in the show ring and gain the admiration of their peers; to make money; or both. I STRONGLY disagree with the author that "the great majority of breeders know and do what is correct." At least here in the U.S. I haven't found that to be the case at all. It's rare to come across a breeder who truly cares about the temperament, intelligence, or health of the dogs they are creating.
Hi Romany --
The main news value of the story is that a major UK Kennel Club judge is saying things in the UK Kennel Club cannot continue as they are -- and he's saying it in Dog World, no less.
There are actually two core problems with how dogs are breed:
* Selection for extreme defect (English Bulldogs, Sharpeis, Pugs, etc.)
* Closed registries forcing breeds to inbreed, resulting in a rise in defect as recessive genes double down.
I have a long post on all this entitled "Inbred Thinking" which set out the core issues >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2006/05/inbred-thinking.html
As I note in that post, we cannot test our way out of all the problems for the very reasons you say.
That said, testing IS a way of reducing problems and improving many breeds of dogs. Take PLL. With a lot of breeds, you want to keep the PLL carriers (at least for now) in the breeding pool while never crossing two carriers, and all the while trying to breed the non-carriers more, and the carriers less.
As for Kennel Club show breeders, they will do whatever the Kennel Club says they HAVE to do in order to register their dogs and collect their ribbons.
I think the American Kennel Club will have to do SOMETHING, or go out of business. See >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2010/03/akc-to-go-out-of-business-by-2025.html
The British Kennel Club is not yet collapsing, and it is pussyfooting around with reform, but in a very half-assed way which is all gloss and not much substance. They are about to get a serious shock to their system, but that's a story for another day!
P.
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