Latest / The Animal Advocate / How Youth Activists are Taking on Unlicensed Breeders with Steve Hughes of Youth4Animals

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How Youth Activists are Taking on Unlicensed Breeders with Steve Hughes of Youth4Animals · The Animal Advocate

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Welcome back to the Animal Advocate. And if you've been following along
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online, you know that our last episode really struck a nerve.
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We talked about a straightforward but potentially game changing
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approach to tackling backyard breeding, and that's
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requiring all breeders, even the small ones, to
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register and get an identification number and then holding
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online platforms accountable if they publish puppy
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ads without that registration number. And the response has
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really been incredible. We've had listeners sharing it across social
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media and some pretty spirited debates in the comments. As you might
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have seen, it's clear this idea has people thinking
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and more importantly, talking. So let's talk some
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more about this proposed law and also just generally
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about raising awareness about unethical breeders, since
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a lot of people are buying from them without even realizing it.
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So today I'm excited to have Steve Hughes joining us.
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Steve is the founder of Pets in Danger and Youth for
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Animals. And he's someone who doesn't just identify problems like
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this. He works to solve them through Youth for
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Animals. Steve is focused on mobilizing young advocates. I
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love this. To educate others and to push for exactly the kind
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of legislative change we discussed in the last episode. He
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understands that even the best ideas stay on the shelf without
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visible public support. The kind of engagement that we started to
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see after last week's episode and hope to grow. That's what we
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need to create the political will necessary to turn
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proposals into actual laws. So sit back
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and enjoy our discussion with Steve Hughes.
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Welcome to the Animal Advocate, where we arm animal
1:49
lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become
1:53
effective advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison,
1:56
and I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
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since 2006. If you've ever thought
2:04
someone should do something about that, I'm here to guide you
2:08
on your journey to being that someone. You can
2:11
find us on the web@animaladvocacyacademy.com
2:16
and that's where you'll find show notes and resources, and you can
2:19
send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to
2:23
hear on future shows. So, onto today's
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topic.
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Welcome Steve Hughes, to the Animal Advocate. Thanks for joining us. Thanks
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for having us, Penny. It's greatly appreciated. Steve, you and I
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got together because you saw my previous podcast
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on Cracking down on Backyard Breeders, and I know you have
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thoughts and interest in that area. But you and I also
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share the fact that we run organizations that bring young
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people into animal welfare. So why don't you start by telling us
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about Youth for Animals and what it does and what's your mission? Well, I'm just
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going to start first with a little anecdote because the day before I heard your
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podcast, I was sitting here with a buddy of mine who
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is an attorney, but he's a personal friend, and we were talking about this,
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how are we going to stop this epidemic of pet overpopulation
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and so on and so forth. And he and I wrote out a little sketch
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and that sketch was basically a two point proposal.
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And then the next day, or maybe even that same day, later on the afternoon,
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I came across your podcast. I downloaded
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the transcript and it was pretty much exactly
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what we had discussed earlier that morning. I couldn't believe the coincidence.
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Law of Attraction. You put it out into the universe and it came back to
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you. Well, there you go. So, first of all, I'll explain that we have
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two organizations. One's called Pets in Danger on the front end. Pets in Danger
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is all about preventing the epidemic of pet
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overpopulation. We all know how many animals are euthanized in the United
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States every year. We all know that the shelters are
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overcrowded. We all know that all the shelters and the pounds and the rescues and
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the foster groups on the planet can't possibly
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take care of the pipeline of illegitimate
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animals that are being bred by inhumane, incompetent, and
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certainly unlicensed backyard breeders. So
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Pets in Danger is about awareness, public education and
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awareness. It's all about promoting the
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Samson's Law and turning it from a
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proposal into a reality. Now, Youth for Animals
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is our marketing arm, believe it or not. We have students,
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both middle school and high school students, and now college students
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too, who are earning community service hours or
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professional development points by sharing our
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posts and getting involved in a variety of different ways. So Youth for
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Animals is the marketing arm of Pets in Danger.
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So, and you mentioned Samson's Law, is that is the name that you have given
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to the law about coming down on backyard breeders by going
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after the online advertising platforms. That's exactly right. Actually,
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we are adopters. We've adopted many dogs, my wife and
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myself, and cats as well. But Samson was the
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most illustrative pet that we ever adopted because
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he embodied everything that's wrong with
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backyard breeders, everything that's wrong with what they're
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doing. They're unqualified. They're breeding animals that
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have genetic deficiencies, bred right into them. People
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look at them and they go, my God, they're cute. It's a toy mixture of
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two different breeds. Isn't that cute? What they don't realize
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and Sampson is the perfect embodiment of that is they have everything from
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tracheal diversions to hip dysplasia to
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juvenile cataracts. I mean Samson had it all
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when he was only a few months old. So we decided
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to name it after Sampson's Law because he was a
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little guy and he was fighting an insurmountable. Battle
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because he was kind of a genetic mess. Because as we've talked about,
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backyard breeders don't spend any money on their animals. So they
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don't do any kind of genetic testing and they're breeding them too close
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together. And not to mention that they're spreading disease by not
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vaccinating. If there's a catalog of all the things to do
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wrong as a breeder, they check all those boxes.
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So you're, you're getting young people to get involved in
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this by educating their peers, by sharing, you know, basically doing what
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they're already doing on social media, but sharing this information
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to sort of get more young people aware of not finding their next
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job by googling for it. Well, yes, and we call the
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campaign, we call it Samson's Law, but the other campaign is a dot never
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shop. And it's pretty self explanatory what it means.
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But yes, prevention is the idea of cure
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is not prevention is. I use that old analogy. What's
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less painful and less expensive? Brushing your teeth twice a day or
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root canal. If we get to the students young
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and we inculcate them as to the reasons to
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adopt and never shop. And that means don't shop at a pet store and at
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most, most of all, beans. Don't shop
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online. No matter what those advertisers say they are. They call
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themselves rehomers or whatever terminology they want
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to hide behind. The fact of the matter is they're illegitimate,
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illicit breeders. Stay away from them. One of my pet peeves
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there, if I can call it that, is sort of the co opting of words
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like adopt by breeders to convince people that
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they're doing a good thing when they're really purchasing a puppy whose
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parents are somewhere suffering. It's a money making business. I'm going to
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give you a quick, quick story before we get into what we're trying to accomplish
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here. But I'll just tell you that my wife once thought she was doing
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the good thing, but she went on Craigslist and she saw this little dog
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and it was cute and she said, oh, this lady up and
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wherever it is, doesn't matter, can't take care of this animal anymore.
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But I want to do the good thing and drive three hours each way and
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rescue this animal. And she paid this distressed
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lady a few dollars and then she brought back this animal. And I
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said, that is really nice, but what you've really done is
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you've empowered this lady. And what she did
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is she simply went to her local animal shelter, got
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a tightered, totally vaccinated animal for
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65 bucks, turned around and resold it on
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Craigslist for 450 bucks, thereby
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giving her enough money, enough profit to turn around,
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adopt 15 more animals and turn around and sell them
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puppy flipper, puppy flipping, rehoming whatever
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terminology you want to use. So tell me about the young people.
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And how they get involved and what kinds of programs you have you mentioned that
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a lot of young people need to have community service hours
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and you get involved in helping them meet that requirement. We do, and
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we started off in Florida because we are vetted by
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the four main school boards in Florida. We intend to be
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vetted by more of them as the school year starts in another month,
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actually, and their requirements for community service hours do
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change from board to board. But what we do is we issue a
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letter of completion and then they present it to their
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school and they get their community service hours. As far as
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college students are concerned, they call them professional development
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points, again, depending on what jurisdiction and what state you're in.
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But the bottom line is we can use everybody from middle
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school students, high school students, and college students. And
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there are a lot of ways that they can get
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involved because we need everybody, whether
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they're a high school student, if they're a college student, and they're working
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towards a certain career path, we have it all laid out. So if
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you register with us as a volunteer, we're not going to give you an
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automated answer. Oh, thanks for signing up. We're going to give
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you a specific questionnaire as to what
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you want to do, how you want to accomplish it, how many hours you can
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deliver towards the achievement of that. And they will customize your
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volunteer experience accordingly. And again, in college, it
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has more to do with the actual curriculum they're following and these
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specialty that they eventually want to graduate with. And I can go into
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more of that. Depends on how much detail you want. That sounds
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great. And I would like some more detail because as somebody who teaches at
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the law school level, I often have students ask me
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how can they get more involved either in a paid way
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or a volunteer way. And it seems like it might also be
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an experience that a college student could use to Start to get
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experience in the animal welfare field. If they want to eventually have
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their career, there's. Yes, exactly. So I got a call yesterday, by
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the way. We got four student volunteer
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registrations between 1 and 4am this
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morning. So it tells you that students are out there sitting on their
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computer at all hours of the day looking for volunteer
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opportunities, not only because they want to earn community
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service hours, because there are many ways they can do that, but also
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because they want to earn them while achieving something for a really good
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cause. So let's get on to, if you will,
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onto where college students can work with us. Now,
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we had a college student, actually, she just graduated
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from Rhode island, but she's a Hong Kong international
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student, so she spends half the year in Hong Kong and she's a
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social media specialist. She's a digital marketing specialist,
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but she also spends the other half of her year in Rhode island and or
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New York. So what she's going to do is she's going to form a dream
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team of the students in her, I think it's called Hong
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Kong Polytech University there, and she's going to form an
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equivalent dream team in New York when she gets back.
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What that dream team will be involved in is several
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things. First of all, digital marketing. Digital marketing is
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everything from shooting videos at a local shelter, editing them,
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voiceovering them, et cetera. So becoming a
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digital marketing content provider, that's the
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first thing, and that's the most important thing, because original content
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on doesn't matter what your platform is, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or
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TikTok or Twitter or whatever, videos and short reels
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have the most effect. So the first thing they can do is become a digital
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marketer and shoot videos at their local shelter. The second thing
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they can do is get into public relations and community outreach. So if you, if
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a student wants to join a dream team at their school
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and their ultimate goal is to get into public relations or community
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outreach, that's easy. They can get us on every podcast, every
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vlog, every blog on the planet. They can connect us with every
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animal welfare organization and group on the planet. That's
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amazing. That's great. You know, when you talk about, you know, going in, taking
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videos, really what they're doing is witnessing, and they're
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witnessing on behalf of other people who might
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either not have the opportunity or be afraid to go into a shelter
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and see what's there. And then they come out. And the way I
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described it, with the young people that are involved in Hanta Paw, my
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organization is that they're now humane ambassadors, and they,
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they know why animals end up in the shelter. They know how we might be
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able to prevent it, and they can go out into the community and be an
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ambassador for animals. I think that you and I are both interested not
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just in animal welfare, but in changing policy. And I think
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that if you get teachers on board and you get that many students in a
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room, you can start with adopt, never shop, but then move into,
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how can we change policy? And how can you have the power, even as
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a young person, to spread the word and get pressure to get these
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bills passed? That's why I started the podcast and the website,
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because I've taught animal law for 20 years, but I can
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only teach 20, 25 people in the classroom. And this lets us
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reach a lot more people because we many, many people out there love
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animals enough to spend some of their time advocating for them. So
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I want to get more people involved and teach them how to be effective. That's
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why I like to encourage people to think locally. I think
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there's a lot of people that feel powerless right now, and I think,
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you know, that may be true if you think about giant issues like
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factory farming, but I don't think that's true for things
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that you can change on a local level and you can get a quick win
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that way. I think it would be great to have people working together at all
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levels. My law students, your high school and middle
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school students, and college students. That would be great. We need to
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build that much momentum so that legislators think that their
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constituents care about this. And that's going to be something we're
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hopefully pushing in all 50 states. So thank you so much for joining
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us, Steve. I know you and I will be working together in the future, and
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maybe we'll have you back on after we've made some progress on this initiative. Bye
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Bye. That was
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great. I'm really looking forward to working with Steve and all the students
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involved in his organization to tell everyone why they should
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never search online for puppies and to help us get
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laws passed that promote transparency and accountability
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for backyard breeders. And if you're a student who would like to get
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involved or a teacher who would want to bring a program like this to your
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school, check out their website. Its use four
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and that's the number four animals.org
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youthforanimals.org and you can go to their registration page
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to sign up to start getting involved in animal advocacy
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through them. That's it for today.
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The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy
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topic related to animal law, go ahead and email them to
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16:28
and remember, compassion is great, great, but compassionate
16:32
action is infinitely better. Look forward to speaking with
16:36
you next time. Take care.