Do Puppy Mill Laws Help Reduce the Numbers?
August 20th, 2010
Puppy Mill
When speaking with a friend last week who has a rescue in Missouri, we were discussing some ideas on how to reduce the dogs and cats that find their way into the municipal shelter and if they’re lucky, eventually into her rescue.
One of the main problems in Missouri is that it is the Puppy Mill Capital of the Country and is home to more than one third of the nation’s puppy mills.
We discussed Proposition B, which will be on the ballot in Missouri in November. The proposed legislation would require people with more than 10 breeding dogs to meet new standards for housing, veterinary care and food. It would limit breeders to 50 dogs.
I expressed hope that the bill, if passed, would put some of the puppy millers out of business. According to ABC News, similar legislation in Pennsylvania, which competed with Missouri annually for the most puppy mills, put many puppy millers out of business.
The number of mills in Pennsylvania was reduced from over 300 to just 111 at the beginning of the year.
The cost to comply with the law was just too much for many Pennsylvania puppy millers and they went out of business. That law, however, is the toughest in the country, requiring dogs to have access to the outside to feel grass beneath their feet. It also requires them to do away with wire bottom cages and doesn’t allow the stacking of cages any longer.
Several other states, including Louisiana, enacted tougher puppy mill laws in 2008.
It’s unclear what, if any difference Missouri’s Proposition B, would make in the number of puppy mills in the state. My friend expressed doubts that such legislation would do much, if anything to reduce the amount of puppy mills. She told me she has a neighbor who has been cited several times for USDA violations and he just closes and reopens under another name.
I see her point. I’ve written stories on puppy mills since 2000 and have seen numerous mills violated on several occasions and continue to run business as usual. In one instance, a miller simply closed, sold her property in Kansas and moved on to Colorado.
Do you think tougher puppy mill laws are helping reduce the number of unwanted pets, or will, once more states enact them?
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7 Responses to “Do Puppy Mill Laws Help Reduce the Numbers?”
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Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell has had dogs all of her life. Her first rescue was Hershey, a miniature black and brown Dacshund. She ruled the Campbell household until 2005 when she passed away at age 16. The case of Scruffy, a Yorkshire terrier whose torture death was videotaped in 1997, horrified the nation when the tape appeared on national news shows. Kerri began covering the trial for the local daily newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas where the crime occurred. Her investigation into animal cruelty cases led to her awareness of the puppy mill problem in that state.
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I don’t think Prop B in Missouri is going to do the slightest bit of good in helping solve Missouri’s issues. Missouri’s primary problem isn’t the lack of laws, but a complete lack of enforcement.
HSUS (who is supporting the bill) estimates that there are 3,000 puppy mills in Missouri. However, according to the USDA numbers, only 1525 are licensed. That means that nearly half of all of the operations could be shut down tomorrow with proper enforcement efforts of basic licensing.
Even worse, is even though it is the state law that all licensed facilities be inspected every year, at the time of the last audit in Missouri (2008), only 60% of the licensed facilities were even inspected.
If we can’t close down unlicensed facilities, or even inspect the ones that are licensed (the two most basic enforcement items), there is no way the rest of the laws will be enforced.
The Missouri Vet Medical Association, the Better Business Bureau and the USDA all recognize that enforcment is the issue. So any effective law MUST somehow address that. Prop B does not.
A first step would be to increase licensing fees (which hasn’t been done in 20 year), and be sure all of that money is directed toward enforcement. Then increase fines for unlicensed facilities and instant closing of all facilities that are found to be unlicensed — with those fines then going back into enforcement as well.
If we could solve these two basic problems, shutting down unlicensed facilities and inspecting all of the licensed ones to be sure animals are well-cared-for, we’d make a huge dent in our problem. Sadly, Prop B addresses neither of these two issues.
That is sad, Brent. Thank you for weighing in. I agree that enforcement is a major problem, both in Missouri and Kansas. I’m sorry to hear that Prop B won’t address the issues already at hand.
this is a test.
I agree with Brent. It’s not the laws that matter, but how they are enforced. If the puppy mill owners were forced to live like the puppies they keep, there would be a lot fewer of them.
I fully agree with Brent’s assessment on this one. To me, when existing laws can’t be enforced due to finances or lack of appropriately trained investigators, it is not logical to try and make things better by passing even more laws.
The money that is being used to fund advertising and lobbying efforts (from both sides mind you) could probably provide a nice salary for several animal investigators to help root out the problem “puppy mills”.
In addition to Brent’s excellent solutions, I think we need to give the investigators more authority to force immediate seizure of animals and closing of facilities that are not making the grade. My understanding here in Indiana is that USDA inspectors can’t take immediate possession of animals nor close a breeding operation without jumping through numerous hoops.
Ha, Heather, I agree!
Tomcat, I think the problem lies within the USDA inspections. I’ve seen these people cozy up with puppy millers and ignore problem breeders. I also understand that the USDA laws have no teeth. Perhaps if the states were to take over the inspections and enforcement, it could be different.
I am very much against puppy mills, HOWEVER, like everyone else has pointed out, if you can’t enforce the laws that are already in place then why would you start creating new ones? HSUS is the biggest joke on us ever started as well. Instead of using big money to back this bill, why don’t they use the money to pay for additional inspectors & enforce the laws already there? They only use 1% of the money they take in every year for actual shelters anyways. My other problem is when government starts making laws saying how many animals you can have, how you care for them, yadda, yadda, yadda, you’re allowing them to slowly chip away at your rights as an american citizen. It makes me sick to see all these poor babies caged the way they are & not allowed to be out & have a loving human touch, but I think until people start researching where they are buying from & continue purchasing from pet stores that can only purchase puppies from puppy millers & take responsibility for taking the puppy back no matter the age or the reason to keep the animal from going in to rescue, this problem is always going to be present.
The last issue I have with immediate seizures. Yes, this is great for animals that are in immediate need of help, but think about this; Let’s say your neighbor is really upset with you for whatever reason, doesn’t even have anything to do with your dogs. They could go on to your property, dump all your dogs water buckets & then call animal control. Make no mistake that if you end up with an officer that is say, just having a bad day & is out to take it out on everyone they have to deal with, they now have the authority to seize your pets (not just your dogs, but ALL your pets) without looking in to things any further. If you think this can’t happen over something so menial, think again. It happens all the time. There was a man that had several pit bulls (I don’t recall the state, but I’m thinking it was Texas) & lived in the city limits. They made a law that pit bulls were no longer allowed within the city limits. The gentleman moved outside of the city limits in order to keep his animals. Mind you, he raised them & loved them inside his house as a part of the family. Very well socialized & gentle. His mother became ill, so he came back in to town to care for her for only 2 weeks, but had to bring the dogs with him due to the distance he would have to travel. Somehow animal control found out, went to the house & immediately seized all of the dogs including a litter of puppies that were only days old that his female had just had. The dogs, including the newly born puppies were immediately euthanized. He wasn’t given the opportunity to figure something else out. Now think if you were just a passing through visitor & this happened. They don’t have to give you a break because you’re a tourist. The same sort of thing was being passed in KY with immediate seizure of pets that were still intact. As a person who shows dogs, until they rescinded this, we made the decision to not travel to KY for ANY reason. All it would take is them seeing your animal & finding out if it was intact or not, then it would be seized, sexually altered no matter what you want & the cost would be yours to bear.