Puppy Mill Bills Moving Through House and Senate

Puppy Mill Bills Moving Through House and Senate

After the merging of language from various puppy mill bills at the Minnesota Legislature, Senate File 7 and House File 253 have emerged as the best chance for viable legislation in the state to regulate large-scale breeding facilities in the state while protecting smaller hobby breeders from unnecessary and unintended consequences that could result from regulating the breeding industry.

Primarily, the new language in these bills seeks simply to provide resources to the Board of Animal Health and local units of government so they may inspect large-scale, commercial pet breeding facilities and better enforce animal welfare and cruelty laws that are already in place.

Prepared by a broad and diverse group of stake holders, representing responsible breeders, animal welfare organizations and veterinarians, this bill proposes:

That commercial breeders who keep 20 or more adult animals capable of breeding on their property, and that produce 5 or more litters of puppies or kittens per year for sale be permitted by the State of Minnesota.
To provide funding for the State of Minnesota to oversee and inspect commercial breeders to verify compliance with existing animal welfare and cruelty laws.
To ensure that small hobby breeders are not negatively affected by unintended consequences resulting from the passage of the bill.
To provide an objective framework with which the State may, for the first time, begin to enforce existing animal welfare and cruelty laws at large-scale, commercial pet breeding operations.
To provide resources to local units of government seeking to take legal action against large-scale violators of animal welfare and animal cruelty laws.

Fundamentally, SF 7 and HF 253 seeks to reduce the systemic, large-scale animal abuse at Minnesota’s commercial pet breeding facilities which has been well documented in local and national press. The bills do so by making effective use of existing animal welfare and cruelty statutes, and by providing needed resources for inspection and enforcement.

New langauge in SF 7 and HF 253 make them the official "consensus bill", with broad support from the stake holders that put it together.

"Some past bills have gone too far and would have impacted too many small breeders, creating an impossible situation for the State to deal with," said Marlene Foote, President of Animal Ark. "Other bills have not gone far enough."

While other bills have either been considered too soft on breeders, or too far reaching, the new language is meaningful, and not over-reaching.

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Comments from readers:

On 03/17/2009 Karen Batdorf said: Make it more visible!
Can you change the design of this item on the web page so it is REALLY prominent??? I almost bypassed it because it was a small heading over the article with the cat photo beneath it!!!
Also, I don't remember getting an email asking me to call, like I have for other action items-- could that be done, or done again???
I want to see this succeed! Karen