Long way to go’ after dog inquiry

A report on pedigree dogs calls for breeders to make sweeping changes to improve the animals’ health. The inquiry follows concerns highlighted in a BBC documentary.
Jemima Harrison, the film’s producer/director, welcomes the recommendations but believes they may not be implemented fully.

The Kennel Club’s 137-year-old self-appointed role as the governing body of dogs has come to an abrupt end.
The eagerly-awaited Bateson Inquiry recommends that responsibility for the health and welfare of pedigree dogs is devolved to an independent body. The Kennel Club has been sent to the doghouse.
The inquiry is the third to publish since our Pedigree Dogs Exposed, the film we made for the BBC in 2008 that lifted the lid on the extent of health and welfare problems in pedigree dogs – what we dubbed “the greatest animal welfare scandal of our time.”
In graphic detail, we showed what more than a century of inbreeding and selection for the show-ring had done to some breeds and it was not a pretty sight.
Well, other than to those judges who seemed to think that a German shepherd is supposed to look like a frog.

The film provoked uproar from the public – and denial from the Kennel Club, although they have since introduced changes, including the revision of many breed standards, a ban on mother/son and brother/sister matings and a specific decree that no healthy puppy can be put to sleep on purely cosmetic grounds (a practice that we highlighted was still going on). ”
To read more http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8460012.stm

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