Channel 4 Under Pressure to Cut Ties with Crufts

For Immediate Release:

16 March 2016

Contact:

Jennifer White 020 7837 6327, ext 222; [email protected]

CHANNEL 4 UNDER PRESSURE TO CUT TIES WITH CRUFTS

PETA Calls On Broadcaster to Stop Airing Dog Beauty Pageant Following Yet More Controversy and Inbreeding

London – After footage emerged this weekend showing the deformed German shepherd who was crowned Best of Breed at Crufts yet could barely get herself around the show ring, PETA rushed a letter to Channel 4 CEO David Abraham urging him to stop airing the cruel event. In the letter, PETA encourages Channel 4 to follow in the footsteps of the BBC, which in 2008 made the compassionate decision to stop airing Crufts after the TV documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed revealed that purebred dogs have an abnormally high rate of health problems which often cripples the animals, leaving some barely able to walk or breathe.

“The ‘standards’ which judges use to rate dogs at Crufts encourage breeders to produce dogs with a certain look – with almost no regard for the animals’ health”, says PETA Director Mimi Bekhechi. “It’s time Channel 4 stop broadcasting this spectacle of cruelty.”

Earlier this week, PETA researched the family trees of this year’s Best of Breed recipients and uncovered their incestuous backgrounds: the paternal father of the Best of Breed Boston terrier, Andridz Cloak and Dagger, was conceived when his granddad had sex with his daughter. This year’s Best of Breed Weimaraner award went to Sh Ch Gunalt De Ice at Stridview, whose paternal grandparents are brother and sister.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – notes that inbreeding takes its toll on the animals. Many bulldogs, pugs, Pekingese and other brachycephalic (flat-faced) dogs cannot breathe well – let alone go for a walk or chase a ball without gasping for air – because of their unnaturally shortened airways. Other dogs have genetic predispositions to epilepsy, heart disease, deafness, hip dysplasia and many other health problems.

PETA’s letter to Channel 4 is available For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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