Free from animals
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Encouraged by fads, the excessive exaggeration of breed-specific traits through genetic selection is detrimental to animal health. If several countries have chosen to ban them, France lags behind.
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Have you ever heard of the Scottish Fold? Originally from Scotland, this short-haired cat has such a special baby face that it is popular, especially among stars (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, etc.). In fact, the breed, which was recognized as such in the US in the 1970s after its discovery in Britain ten years earlier, is characterized by forward-folded ears that border on the cute that the internet loves. And that’s the problem: this very Instagrammable morphology is the consequence of a genetic mutation, also responsible for a pathology, osteochondrodysplasia, which leads to debilitating and incurable osteoarthritis of the joints up to paralysis.
Disorders associated with the hypertype—that is, the excessive exaggeration of traits specific to a race by genetic selection—which call for more restrictive measures than necessary awareness campaigns. For example, some countries have opted for a ban in the face of fashion effects driven by social networks. The breed is thus in the hot seat in Belgium, where the Walloon Animal Welfare Council after Flanders and the capital region of Brussels asked at the beginning of the year
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