Pug Postage a Royal Fail: PETA Urges Royal Mail to Scrap Stamp Glamorising Suffering Dogs

27 June 2024

Pug Postage a Royal Fail: PETA Urges Royal Mail to Scrap Stamp Glamorising Suffering Dogs

London – Because promoting pugs and other breathing-impaired breeds (BIB) normalises their suffering from an array of debilitating and even fatal health conditions due to their purposely flattened, pushed-in snouts, today PETA sent a letter to Royal Mail CEO Emma Gilthorpe urging her to withdraw a stamp featuring the breed from the service’s new collection of dog-themed stamps.

“Promoting pugs fuels demand for these dogs, who are deliberately bred to have life-threatening deformities that make it difficult for them just to breathe, let alone run or play,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA is urging Royal Mail to ditch its pug stamp posthaste and stop glamorising ailing animals.”

PETA notes that BIBs – including pugs, boxers, shih tzus, and English and French bulldogs – are bred for a particular look, resulting in distorted and restricted airways that shorten their life expectancies and cause painful or distressing symptoms, such as laboured breathing, snorting, snoring, coughing, gagging, retching, vomiting, tiring easily, collapsing, and fainting. A number of countries, including the Netherlands and Norway, have banned or restricted the breeding of some or all BIBs.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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