Deliberately Deformed Dog Wins Dog Show First Prize: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
January 3, 2023

Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch in response to the “Best in Show” winner at the American Kennel Club National Championship—a bulldog, a breathing-impaired breed (BIB):

As if it weren’t shameful enough to promote breeding and selling dogs when millions cast off because of the COVID-19 pandemic are flooding America’s animal shelters, the American Kennel Club has just named a BIB—a breathing-impaired breed—“Best in Show” when “Most Deformed” would have been a more accurate description, since restricted airways are the leading cause of death for flat-faced bulldogs. A pet shop employee admits in breaking undercover PETA video footage that bulldogs’ features are so distorted that they can’t breed or give birth naturally and that “it’s not an ‘if.’ It’s more of a ‘when’ and ‘how often’ are they gonna have problems with the sinuses.” PETA urges everyone to condemn breeding and buying dogs, particularly ones the American Kennel Club dooms to a lifetime of struggling to breathe, run, play, or do anything else that makes a dog’s life worthwhile.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.