As I write this the animal welfare community in the United States is buzzing about the recent passage of a comprehensive puppy mill bill in Pennsylvania, a state considered to have some of the largest and most notorious mills in the nation. This success is hot on the heals of another puppy mill legislative success story: the State of Virginia passed legislation that prohibits breeders from keeping more than 50 animals.
Bringing the Virginia success story a little closer to home, many animal welfare advocates have cited a strong dog kennel ordinance in Minnesota’s own Sherburne County as the inspiration for the new law in Virginia. That ordinance, more than a year ago, prohibits the keeping of more than 40 dogs. Even more important, this ordinance says that no more than 10 of those animals can be intact females.
In spite of these and other successes, and in spite of multiple attempts to regulate puppy mills in Minnesota, our state has yet to see a viable and comprehensive bill that would regulate large-scale, commercial factory farms for dogs. As a result, no bill offered in our state has seen much movement at the legislature.
Problems with Past Bills
To understand what is needed to pass legislation in Minnesota that would regulate large-scale pet breeders a person only needs to look at past bills that have gone nowhere at the legislature.
Senate Files 121 and 2292 are examples. Both of these bills included unrealistic definitions of “commercial breeders” that included owners of as few as six animals, failing to understand the many issues of scope and scale relating to breeders that keep a thousand or more breeding animals. But that is only the start of the problem with past bills.
In the case of Senate File 2292 - the bill provided a virtual exemption for large-scale commercial wholesalers of dogs, those licensed by the USDA, from complying with any new care standards created by the State of Minnesota. For this reason, Senate File 2292 would have been better titled “The Minnesota Puppy Mill Protection Act”. Its passage would have been a big win for the commercial dog breeding industry in Minnesota. The failure of Senate File 2292 could, in a way, go down as a success in Minnesota.
However, Minnesotans need to do better than kill bad bills. We need comprehensive legislation that will help the State oversee an industry that has commercialized animal abuse, at the expense of the State.
Going Forward
What Minnesota needs is a puppy mill bill that clearly and reasonably differentiates between small, responsible breeders and large, commercial wholesalers of puppies. We also need a structure that ensure that fines and fees paid by commercial breeders will go directly to local law enforcement efforts to regulate these facilities.
As things are, puppy mills get away with violations because local law enforcement does not have the resources with which to regulate these enterprises. The costs of confiscating and holding the animals at a single large-scale, commercial breeder could easily run into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Given that these facilities often exist in small, rural communities, it is not surprise that little enforcement action is taken against the largest of the abusers. The communities cannot afford to take such action. A viable puppy mill bill in Minnesota will direct resources from application fees and fines to enforcement officials responsible for overseeing these facilities. Failing to do so would be the equivalent of creating an unfunded mandate. We all know how well those work out.
And, lastly, we need a puppy mill bill that does not cast aspersions on the many small, responsible breeders in Minnesota, who are not the problem and who make virtually no money from breeding animals. Some breeders are working to maintain or improve breed standards. They should not be penalized because of the greed associated with the commercial breeding taking place in Minnesota’s puppy mills.
A viable puppy mill bill in Minnesota has yet to be written. However, with the help of our friends and partners in animal welfare, veterinary medicine and related fields, Animal Ark expects to deliver one or more during the 2009 legislative session. With your support we will add Minnesota to the list of states that have successfully regulated this dirty industry. |  | Related Links:
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