Fury over fake vets raking in fortunes at designer dog breeding clinics
Unscrupulous fake vets are raking in massive profits by performing dangerous procedures on dogs in a growing number of canine fertility clinics, alarmed MPs were told.
More than 400 such clinics are known to be in operation in the UK - up from less than 40 in 2020, a committee heard.
An animal welfare chief said that even if people are caught carrying out medical work on dogs - such as caesarean sections and artificial inseminations - they can be fined just £100. This is despite the fact they can make tens of thousands of pounds in profits by breeding "trendy" dogs.
Labour MP Barry Gardiner voiced his horror over the "mutilation" of animals as a committee heard demand for dogs with cropped ears and docked tails is at an all-time high.
He asked: "Why is the profession not engaging in public education, to say, 'For God's sake stop buying animals that are mutilated by selective genetic selection?"
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Calls were mounted for a crackdown on the clinics (Beth Walsh)Sarah Carr, chief executive of the Naturewatch Foundation, called on ministers to bring in tough new laws to crack down on unregulated clinics.
She told MPs: "In terms of canine fertility clinics where they are lay people the maximum fine for conviction is £100. There's no incentive not to do it if you think about a clinic who's performing caesarean sections and how much money they're bringing in."
She said the clinics are associated with "designer trends", with competition between them to breed the most "different traits" - for which they can charge a huge amount of money.
."Many of the people involved aren't trained... they're lay people," Ms Carr said. "Members of the public may be duped that they're going to these clinics run by lay people."
She added: "People can set themselves up as a canine fertility clinic without any type of regulations."
The cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee heard fears that features such as flat faces, cropped ears, stubby legs and docked tails are becoming "normalised". This is despite the heartbreaking health problems that come with it.
Labour MP Barry Gardiner voiced his anger over the demand for 'mutilated' dogs (David Whinham / SplashNews.com)Dr Justine Shotton, senior vice president of the British Veterinary Association, said: "We've seen some really hard images of dogs that were bred with severely deformed limbs to the point where they had to be euthanised at a very early age."
She added: "People are so highly influenced by the trends and not thinking about the animal's welfare."
Sean Wensley, senior vet at charity PDSA, said: "For this to be undertaken purely for human self interest, human gain, human vanity is ethically abhorrent, it shouldn't be tolerated at all in the UK."
Although mutilation procedures are illegal in the UK, they are widespread in other parts of the world, and animals who have endured them are often imported from abroad.
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Tory MP Dr Neil Hudson - himself a vet - said he was worried that about the way mutilated animals appear in films. He said: "The Disney Pixar film Up is one of my favourite films watching with my family, but the dogs on that have been cropped.
"Similarly in the film Super-Pets the lead character was cropped. If these dogs are normalised in society and people think they're normal people will want to buy them and that's one of the real problems."
MPs also heard that the cost of living crisis is having a devastating impact on pet owners - with the Dogs Trust now operating food banks for pet owners.
Dr Paula Boyden, veterinary director at the charity, said it received 50,000 calls last year from people who were looking to rehome their animals because they could no longer afford them.
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