["Breeding for distress" in fowl]

During the last hundred years the fancying and breeding of exhibition poultry became very popular as free time activity. Certain breeding standards were set, and the aim of actual breeding endeavours is to meet these standards through selective breeding. Not only were serious defects established as standard qualities (e.g. domestic ducks with feather crests, rumplessness, and ear-tufts in the domestic fowl), but certain distinctive marks were changed into excessive formations (e.g. pigeon breeds with large, cauliflower-like wattles, or enlarged crops and severe behaviour changes). Accurate analysis of such breeding efforts shows that these breeds are to be called defective and abnormal in the sense of section 11b of the German protection of animals legislation. Whether an increased embryonic mortality, especially during the hatching period, constitutes a condemnable state of cruelty against is recently being discussed. Criticised are also standard features which handicap, in varying degrees, certain functional systems of the natural behaviour patterns. Section 11b of the German protection of animal legislation in its present wording is definitely no sufficient mean to control the contemporary excess in breeding of domestic animals.