Minister wants ban on keeping animals with harmful, external features

Minister Adema of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality is coming up with additional measures to combat the keeping of dogs and cats with harmful, external features. These include, for example, short-chested dogs and cats with folding ears. There was already a breeding ban for these in the Netherlands, but now a keeping and display ban is also announced.

Veterinary specialist and geneticist Hille Fieten, has been researching harmful external features and hereditary diseases at the Expertise Centre Genetics Veterinary Medicine for many years and worked, among other things, on drawing up criteria for short-skulled dogs. She is positive about the measures announced:

The animals covered by the ban suffer from the externals on which they are bred. Their health and welfare are affected by, for example, constant shortness of breath, eye infections, arthritis and headaches.

The mission of the Genetics Expertise Centre is sustainable breeding of healthy dogs and cats, where the ambition is to eliminate harmful external traits and hereditary diseases from companion animal populations. Maintaining or increasing genetic variation is essential in this regard. View the Expertise Centre's website here for more information.