Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is introducing two bills to crack down on puppy mills.
The Better Care for Animals Act gives the Department of Justice the power to remove animals, impose penalties and take action against puppy mills.
Another piece of proposed legislation, Goldie’s Act, would require the Department of Agriculture to inspect, report and remove animals while holding breeders accountable. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture is failing to enforce the law,” Blumenthal said.
Dan McCabe, the president of Dog Star Rescue, said dogs are stacked in crates on top of each other. The non-profit uses foster families to house dozens of dogs, running an opposite business model of puppy mills. McCabe said the mills breed for profit and push more dogs onto rescues like his.
“We’ve been contacted by puppy mills,” McCabe said. “The whole premise of rescue is to take dogs from bad situations and put them in good situations, and these people are creating the bad situations.”
10 Facts About Puppy Mills
- A puppy mill is a commercial dog-breeding facility that focuses on increasing profit with little overhead cost. The health and welfare of the animals is not a priority.
- Female dogs are bred at every opportunity with little to no recovery time between litters. When, after a few years, they are physically depleted to the point that they no longer can reproduce, breeding females are often killed.
- Every year in America, it’s estimated that 2.11 million puppies are sold that originated from puppy mills, while 3 million are killed in shelters because they are too full and there aren’t enough adoptive homes.
- In puppy mills, dogs can spend most of their lives in cramped cages, with no room to play or exercise.
- Often times, the water and food provided for the puppies is contaminated, crawling with bugs. Puppies can even be malnourished.
- Puppies in mills are found with bleeding or swollen paws, feet falling through the wire cages, severe tooth decay, ear infections, dehydration, and lesions on their eyes, which often lead to blindness.
- In most states, puppy mills are legal, but mills sometimes bribe pet stores to label their pups as “rescues.” It is important that future pet owners seek rescue dogs from their local shelter or buy pets from a trusted breeder in order to put mills out of business.
- It is estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. Fewer than 3,000 of these are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which makes it difficult for the government to crack down on their operations.
- Most puppy mills have no veterinary care, climate control, or protection for the animals from weather (hot, cold, rain, or snow).
- With limited or no regulations or enforcement, puppy mills have no cleanup control. This means that dogs can be living in urine and feces for indefinite periods of time.
- It’s common to find dogs in puppy mills with collars that have been fastened so tightly that they have become embedded in a dog’s neck and must be carefully cut out.
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