It is a booklet called Canine Consumer Report, published by “The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights”, which is associated with the HSUS.
Where has it been shown that simply because an animal is purebred, particularly a dog, it will have an increased risk of genetic disease? Or, is that it has been shown that more purebreds - far more purebreds - are tested and therefore will show up far more often in lists of both positive and negative results?
If you look at the percentages, mixed breed dogs are not doing all that well. If you go here and search for “Hybrid”, you’ll see that of the hybrids tested, 20% were hip dysplastic, and that is just of the hip xrays that were actually submitted to OFA for review (really bad hips are generally not sent in). Labradoodle percentages are better, but out of the untold thousands of those that have been sold in this country, only 52 of them have had their hip xrays sent to OFA, only 48 elbow xrays and 38 thyroid tests - despite there being labradoodles affected with these three. Goldendoodles aren’t even listed, which means OFA has recieved nothing for those crosses. You have to know enough about what is going on in dog breeding to be able to interpret the stats.
Essentially, we all carry for at least a few genetic diseases. The issue is whether or not linebreeding, which is what all purebred breeding is, “creates” or makes more common any of these diseases. It doesn’t, simply because a breeding program - linebred or “hybrid” - can only produce whatever genes are put into it. Popular breeds tend to have a majority carelessly bred until there are so many sickly members of that breed out there that the popularity crashes and the responsible breeders are left to clean up the mess. Whether those carelessly bred sick dogs were linebred, inbred or outcrossed doesn’t matter, what matters is that the “breeders” didn’t care to do any health checks or to keep their breeding stock healthy - all they cared about was to crank out as many pups as they could, as cheaply as possible.
He specified purebred dogs and cats. The fourth post, from JKilez, claims that “aggressive inbreeding” created sinus and eye problems in Persians. astro linked to a highly emotional and rather questionable site on captive bred white tigers that appears to be trying to blame “incest” for birth defects. Malleus,Incus,Stapes! linked to a site that purports to have a list of genetic diseases of cats, yet under the first breed is listed a physical result of a behavioral problem (Psychogenic alopecia - overgrooming due to stress).
PETA and the HSUS are doing their best to make it impossible for me to continue to breed a litter every two or so years from completely health checked parents with pedigrees containing generations of heath clearances. One major way they are doing this is to put out propaganda convincing the general public that a responsibly bred purebred is the same thing as a mass produced puppy mill pup, and that both are inferior to mixed breeds. This is leading to laws that more and more restrict my ability to even have dogs, much less breed, yet don’t touch big puppy mills like Hunte. So, when I see posts that are blaming a type of breeding (linebreeding, inbreeding, pure breeding) for genetic disease, I try to fight the ignorance!
