Rita Ora has faced backlash from animal activists after she featured a dog with cropped ears in her latest music video.
The singer has been criticised by PETA activists for including the pitbull in the video for ‘Big’, a new collaboration with the likes of David Guetta and Imanbek.
The video itself sees Ora walking along a street in Bulgaria, where she encounters a masked man holding the dog with clipped ears on a lead.
The process of clipping ears is undertaken by breeders to give the animals a tough appearance, but is outlawed in the U.K. under the Animal Welfare Act. However, it is not illegal to import dogs who have already been clipped from other countries.
PETA UK director Elisa Allen told MailOnline: “Maiming animals for vanity is unacceptable. Dogs’ ears are there for a purpose, and they need to use them like directional antennae.
“Ear cropping is a painful mutilation that is most commonly used by dogfighters to prevent an opponent from grabbing the ears – it has no place in a civilised, humane society.”
She went on to explain how the procedure “involves cutting off the majority of the dog’s enervated, extremely sensitive ear and taping the remnants into an unnatural, ‘devilish’ shape for aesthetic reasons.”
The latest controversy for Ora comes after she was fined £10,000 for breaking lockdown rules to hold her 30th birthday party.
The singer was forced to apologise last November after hosting a group of friends for a meal at Notting Hill’s Casa Cruz restaurant, despite regulations at the time banning indoor meetings of separate households.
She then issued a separate apology when it later emerged that she should have been self-isolating at the time of the party, having travelled to Egypt in a private jet on November 21 to perform at a hotel in Cairo before returning to the UK the next day.
Under current government quarantine rules, Ora was meant to self-isolate for 14 days but instead attended her own birthday party on November 28.
NME has contacted Ora’s representatives for comment.
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