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What Is a Puppy Mill? How to Spot One and Help Shut Them Down · The Animal Advocate

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Several years ago, a family member of mine bought a puppy.
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She did what a lot of people do. She Googled the breed she wanted,
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landed on GreenfieldPuppies.com, one of the biggest puppy listing
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sites in the country, and bought a puppy from a breeder advertised there.
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When I found out and told her where the puppy most likely came
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from, she looked at me and said, what's a puppy mill?
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That knocked me back. I've taught animal law in Pennsylvania for
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20 years and Puppy mills draw more questions than
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any other subject I cover. Pennsylvania lands on the Horrible
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100 list year after year, including this year. And
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someone in my own family had no idea what the term meant or
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that she had bought from one.
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Welcome to The Animal Advocate, where we arm animal lovers
0:52
with the information and inspiration you need to become
0:56
effective advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and I've taught animal law and
1:00
advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
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since 2006. If you've ever thought,
1:07
someone should do something about that, I'm here to guide you on
1:11
your journey to being that someone. You can find
1:15
us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com,
1:19
and that's where you'll find show notes and resources, and you can send
1:23
us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to hear
1:27
on future shows. So, on to today's
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topic.
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So, puppy mills. You've been asking for this topic, and
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today we're going to the source because my guest is
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John Goodwin. He runs the Puppy Mills Program at Humane
1:50
World for Animals, formerly known as the Humane Society of the
1:54
United States. His full title is Senior Managing
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Director for Puppy Mills and Equine Protection, and he knows his
2:01
stuff. His team publishes that Horrible Hundred
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list, the annual report on the worst dog breeding
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operations in the country, and they've helped pass pet store
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sales bans in more than 500 communities and counting.
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We start with the basic question: What is a puppy mill?
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Then we get into it. What are the conditions really
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like inside one? Because John's been there. How do these
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operations reach buyers so that we can educate people to know
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when they might be buying from one? And they're supposed to be
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USDA licensed, so what does that mean? Does
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that give you any comfort? And then the question I
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most wanted John to answer: what puts them out of
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business? He decides where a national campaign
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against this industry aims its resources, and he makes a
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clear and strong case for where the rest of us should be aiming ours.
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Here's my conversation with John, then let's get to work.
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So welcome, John. I'm really anxious to talk to you about this topic
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because teaching animal law in Pennsylvania, I
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probably get more questions about puppy mills than anything else. As you know, from your
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position, you released the Horrible 100 list of breeders,
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and Pennsylvania is usually prominently featured. I see
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in 2026, we're still on it. Maybe we can start out, since
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everybody tosses around the term puppy mill but doesn't necessarily
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know what it means, let's start out with a definition. How
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do you define puppy mill? A puppy mill is
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generally a commercial dog breeding kennel. where the
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needs of the dogs are not being met. It's basically a factory farm for
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puppies, and they come in many shapes and sizes.
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There are puppy mills with 10 dogs, and there are puppy mills with
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500 dogs. There are puppy mills where
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dogs are stacked up in cages on top of each other. There are puppy mills
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where the dogs are on the ground, and they have a little doggy door that
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takes them out to a small kennel run. But they all have one thing in
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common, in that They're not the kind of place where you would want to leave
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your dog when you go on vacation because they're places filled with
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misery and deprivation. Wow. So, so the
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definition that I've often heard is, you know, they're people who breed
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dogs and put profit over the welfare of the
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dogs. And that sounds like pretty much what you're describing. Yeah. And I heard
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another person refer to that as wealth
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over welfare. Basically, the dogs are commodities. And
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in fact, a lot of the puppy mill owners will even refer to
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their dogs as livestock, which is, I think, shocking
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to most people who are acquiring a new puppy for their home. They don't think
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of their puppy and their puppy's mother as
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being livestock. Now, of course, we believe in the protection of all
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animals, including animals that are classified as livestock, but still, to
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describe a dog in that way, I think, really does show the mindset
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of the folks who are doing this. I've definitely heard
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Pennsylvania breeders refer to it that way. Now, this is what we do with the
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chickens. And in fact, many of them started with chicken coop
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type housing for dogs, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. In the
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19— post-World War II era, 1940s,
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1950s, that's when factory farming really started to
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take over American agriculture. And a lot of small farmers were
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being put out of business because they You know, had small operations, they couldn't
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compete with the economy of scale that the factory farms had. And so the USDA
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actually promoted to a lot of these farmers to take their
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converted chicken coops or converted rabbit coops and turn them into
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what became puppy mills. And so that's really how this started to be.
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Yes, I've heard that as well, that the USDA encouraged it as
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sort of a different kind of crop that you could make money from. Yeah.
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Alternative crop, alternative revenue. Yeah.
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So we're talking about what a puppy mill is, but I also
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wanna give people a vivid picture. So can you
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talk about a puppy mill that you've seen? Because I've seen a lot of
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still pictures of puppy mills and, and, you know, they are
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shocking enough, but I bet you've visited puppy mills
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in person that really helped you
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get the resolve that you have to fight them? So
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when you look at the pictures or the videos of puppy mills, of course, what
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you're focused on is the visual conditions. What you can't
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experience is the smell or the feel of the
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ammonia in your lungs and how it makes you
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feel physically ill. There was a puppy mill in North
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Carolina that The sheriff's department there
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asked us to come in and assist them. They were raiding the puppy mill and
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they needed a large organization that could take all the dogs because their local shelter,
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you know, it's a rural county, smaller shelter, and there are so many dogs.
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And they were largely little teacup poodles. And
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I remember being in there. First off, I was in the cinder block building where
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they had a lot of the dogs. And I'm not on the rescue
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team, so I'm not going on these sorts of things. Constantly like they are.
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I had to go outside every 5 minutes to get fresh
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air because I was getting ill from the ammonia. Now
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think about a dog whose sense of smell is
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so much better than mine, how they must feel.
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And then just, just the ammonia fumes were
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so thick that I was picking up puppies, or well, gosh, they
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weren't puppies or adult dogs. They They were teacup poodles. So, I'm picturing in my
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head a dog the size of a puppy. So, I'm picking up these little poodles,
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hold them up against my shirt, you know, so they're comfortable and feel comforted. And
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then I'm walking them down the driveway to where we have the veterinarians doing the
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little, you know, triage and all that.
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Carried about 5 or 6 of them. I noticed my shirt is damp.
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That's how thick the ammonia fumes were, that I had urine on my
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shirt from the fur of the puppies just by carrying them.
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Down a driveway. And, you know, those poor little
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guys, I remember they would get excited, just spin in
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circles, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, couldn't do anything else. But
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we set up a temporary animal shelter. So, you know, we've got
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rescue team that goes in, they've got these, you know, they've got big, big
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kennels, and they'll get in a nice, you know, warehouse we rent, clean.
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I went to dinner a couple hours, let them set up,
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let the dogs get fresh air. And then I went to the temporary facility after
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dinner and they looked so happy. It was like they,
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even though like they'd only been out of that puppy mill for 4 or 5
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hours and they were still in kennels, albeit much bigger ones, but they're still in
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kennels, but they had fresh air. But they could breathe.
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Yeah. They could breathe. And, you know, you just don't, pick up on that when
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you watch the video. You can't experience that unless you're there.
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Wow. That's a pretty vivid picture.
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So now that we have that picture, let's talk about what we can do
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about it. We talked about the USDA, so let's talk about
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licensing. You know, we don't use a particular number of
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dogs to define puppy mill, but these operations
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generally are big enough to require
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licensing by the USDA, right? That is correct. And when
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you walk into one of these puppy-selling pet stores, they'll oftentimes use,
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these dogs come from breeders who are USDA licensed, as part of the
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sales pitch. And most consumers don't stop to think,
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hmm, Granny down the street who has one litter of pugs a year doesn't
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need a USDA license. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means you have to
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be of a certain size in a commercial operation. That's what it means.
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What is the minimum size for a USDA license? So there's
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2 components to this. Number one, the breeder has 5 or more
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breeding female dogs, and some of
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their customers are buying the puppies sight unseen. Now
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let me explain what that means. If you buy a puppy through a pet
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store, or you order a puppy
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online who is delivered to you You're never meeting the breeder,
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and so that's referred to as sight unseen. And so any
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breeder who has 5 or more breeding female dogs and sells through one of those
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mediums has to have the USDA license. Now, there's a significant loophole,
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though. You could have 1,000 dogs, but if you
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sell all of them through Craigslist, the side of
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the road, in a flea market booth,
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and none of the puppies are shipped to someone else who you never meet, then
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all your— sales are done face-to-face, then you don't need that
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USDA license. That's a significant loophole. It sure
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is. But I also want to focus on what does
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licensed mean? Because you're right that it's like, it's like humane
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washing in the sense that they put that on the pet store
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kennel to give people a level of comfort that, hey, this came
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from an inspected facility and you're supposed to read into that that
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It meets a certain standard and the dogs are getting what they need. What
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standard do they really have to meet for the USDA? They have to meet a
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survival standard. Now, it's better than nothing
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because at least a USDA inspector will go into
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these kennels and, provided they're doing their job the right
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way, they'll identify a dog who has a prolapsed rectum and
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needs to be taken to a veterinarian immediately. They might identify a problem like
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that. And they might identify small problems that, if
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unattended to, could fester and become big problems. But
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it is a survival standard at best, because a USDA-licensed
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breeder can legally keep dogs in conditions that are so
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abhorrent that if you or I did it, the sheriff would be knocking on
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our door. What do I mean? Well, let's talk
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about cage size. Under the USDA regulations, you can keep
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a dog in a cage that's only 6 inches longer than her body. And
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remember, these are animals that are going to be there for years. That's
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torture in my mind. You can keep a dog on,
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you know, coated wire flooring her entire life. Her paws might never
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touch a blade of grass, and that often leads to cysts between their
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toes and other discomfort. The dogs are
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always bred every heat cycle. A puppy mill owner is not going
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to miss out on a heat cycle because that's their bread and butter. So they'll
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breed them, breed them, breed them, breed them, breed them until their bodies wear out.
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They can even kill the dogs when they're no longer productive breeders, and that's completely
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legal. So on the one hand, I'm glad that there's some regulatory
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framework so that certain veterinary issues, for example, can be identified.
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My gosh, if someone gets cited for overcrowding, considering how small the cages
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are allowed to be, I'm glad someone's there to cite them. But the
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standards are woefully inadequate for meeting even basic animal
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welfare needs. Now, they're supposed to prioritize the
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kennels that are not even complying with the existing regulations.
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And, you know, there's logic to that. Survival, like you're saying the existing regulations are
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just survival, that tomorrow you're likely to go out and the dog will still be
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alive, but it could barely be able to move.
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Well, that's true. That's true.
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That's 100% true. I mean, they are survival standards at best.
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I'm sorry, you said they're prioritizing inspecting the facilities that
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don't even meet that survival standard. That means that if they come in and they
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fail an inspection, they don't necessarily lose their license or stop breeding
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dogs. You usually have to get cited a lot before you lose
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your license. Now, I will say that in the last
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year, they have revoked probably about— I know of about
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10 people that were in our last Horrible 100 where they have gone out and
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taken some sort of action. Whether it's revoking a license
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or, you know, some sort of litigation. That's been
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a little bit of renewed thrust on enforcement. But
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you can be completely compliant, never get a
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citation, never run afoul of what the USDA regulations are,
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and keep your dogs in conditions that are clearly cruel.
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Caging a dog is cruel.
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I'm not talking about like, you know, keeping dog in a crate for
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3 hours because, you know, there's some sort of medical issue or something. I mean,
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we're talking about, you know, years at a time. Of course, they'll get out to
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be moved to a whelping pen when the mother's giving birth,
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but it's caged environment. And considering how minimal the size
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requirements are, it's pretty bad. It sounds
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like livestock farming. So let's
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talk about People that are listening,
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probably most of them don't buy dogs, but they might, and they might have friends
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that buy dogs, and they want to make sure that they're not buying from a
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puppy mill. I want to talk about how puppy mills sell their
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dogs and how people can tell this is a puppy mill
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dog because they certainly don't advertise them that way. I'll go
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through the main mediums that puppy mills use to sell to the general
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public. First, let me just say there's one thing that all of these outlets have
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in common. They all keep the consumer far away
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from where the parent dogs live. That's the fundamental
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difference. Okay, so when we talk about
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responsible breeders, those are people that are gonna meet
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you in person, show you the mother dog, ask you questions,
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make sure that their puppies they're breeding will fit your lifestyle, you know,
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that'll, you know, fit your family well, and make sure that it's the right fit.
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etc., etc. Puppy mills are glad for anyone to buy their
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puppies. Most puppy mills sell either
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through pet stores, websites where they'll ship
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the puppies, flea markets, roadsides,
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parking lots, and then a lot are also sold through
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sites like Craigslist, sites that kind of replace the
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classified ads in the newspaper. Right. So, you know, you look, oh,
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look, puppy for sale, And you just have no idea who you're dealing with.
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I mean, you know, it's kind of like that person you might chat with on
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the internet. You have no idea who that is. You have no idea. You have
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no idea what that picture is, that picture of a puppy out in a green
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field, or, or I've heard stories of, you know, the same
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puppy being pictured for years. Oh, they steal
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photos from each other, people all the time. And now, of course, you know, you
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can easily, you know, if you've got a relatively new laptop,
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you're going to have Copilot or something on there. You can create an image just
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like, you know, 10 seconds. So you You just really can't trust that kind of
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thing. But sometimes the puppy mills will say, well, we'll do FaceTime.
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And you can see, okay, but listen, if I lived in a
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dump, I could show you the corner of the dump that doesn't look like the
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dump. Yeah, that makes sense. In fact,
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what you just said made me think that maybe there's a
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positive development here because I used to always warn people,
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when you go to Greenfield puppies, Lancaster puppies, you are
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not seeing pictures of how these puppies are actually raised.
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I think people had a harder time getting used to that idea. Now
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that everybody's used to AI, they can immediately say, well, is that
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photo real? I think it's almost an advancement that it makes people question.
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That's a good point. There's a different approach, too, that the
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companies like Petland and some of the other puppy stores have used to manipulate people.
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That's when you go into some of these stores, they'll have couple flat-screen TVs
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up above the kennels or the little glass
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display cases, whatever they're calling them, and they'll have
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videos playing of dogs running through lush grass-green fields.
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They'll say, oh, these are our breeders. This is where the puppies come from.
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You'll notice a couple things if you have the observing eye and you know
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dogs. Number one, those videos are very, very
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carefully edited so you're not seeing Where the dog lives. And
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number 2, anybody who has, you know, a couple dogs
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that in a backyard that's fenced in where they can kind of go out there
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and run around and play, uh, your grass doesn't stay that perfect
18:28
very long if you're letting your dogs get out very much.
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So you mentioned Petland. Yeah.
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You mentioned Petland and I know they're sort of a, I guess maybe your nemesis
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and because they're the biggest pet store chain that is still
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selling puppies that are sourced from puppy mills? I mean,
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maybe I back up a second and say, do any responsible breeders
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sell through pet stores? Absolutely not. No responsible breeder will
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sell through pet stores. Here's an interesting thing. The American
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Kennel Club, the AKC, of course, I think one of their
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slogans has been they're the dog's champion. They're not the dog's champion. They're the puppy
19:07
mill's champion. They're basically a trade group for puppy mills at this point. Woo-hoo!
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Yay! Yeah, because they lobby against everything we do to try to crack down
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on puppy mills. That said, the AKC is a club of
19:18
clubs. They're made up of breed clubs, the Yorkshire Terrier Club,
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the Pug Club, the Rottweiler Club, etc., etc. About 90%
19:26
of those breed clubs have in their code of ethics that their breeders should not
19:30
sell to pet stores. And then AKC turns around and lobbies
19:34
against legislation to stop the sale of puppies in pet stores. Total disconnect. There's
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a disconnect between what they do and what the codes of ethics of their member
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clubs say. Yeah. They came in when we were passing the
19:45
moratorium on unlicensed dog breeding in Philadelphia. The AKC came
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in strong against it, even though, as you say, if you want to get
19:53
a license, you'd still be able to breed. So they were really defending the people
19:56
who weren't willing to get a license. And because in Pennsylvania, we license them
20:00
separate from the USDA and anyone can get a license. So it was
20:03
shocking to me. It shouldn't be shocking anymore to see them coming in on
20:07
behalf of people who don't want to get a license. Well, they tend to take
20:10
very extreme positions. I can give you a horrible example. It's
20:14
just a disgusting example. So we have a
20:18
staffer who spent a number of years getting laws
20:22
passed in a lot of states to
20:25
criminalize animal sexual abuse, or bestiality,
20:29
and the AKC opposed some of the bills that she put
20:32
forth on that, and the reason was because of artificial
20:36
insemination and certain acts that are conducted in the process of, you know, doing
20:40
artificial insemination. Okay. Which you could easily exempt,
20:44
but— That's, that's exactly my point. What you're supposed to do
20:48
if you're a rational actor is come to the bill sponsor and say, I'd like
20:51
a friendly amendment, completely support the goal of what you're trying to do
20:55
here, everyone should be against bestiality, we'd like an amendment to make sure this doesn't
20:59
apply to, you know, collecting materials for artificial
21:02
insemination. Instead, they just post the bill. Animal fighting
21:06
paraphernalia. You know, they've opposed legislation to prohibit the possession of
21:10
animal fighting paraphernalia because they're, you know, rather than
21:13
work out like the context of when a dog might legitimately
21:17
exercise on a treadmill as opposed to when it's being used to condition a dog
21:20
for dog fighting, they just wanted to oppose, oppose, oppose. And it's
21:25
mind-boggling why an organization that claims to care about dogs would just
21:28
take reactive positions instead of You know, getting into the
21:32
nuance a little bit to come up with good policy to protect animals.
21:36
That would be nice. Hopefully we will see that in the future. I have not
21:39
seen it yet. So I guess in terms of the public
21:43
knowing when they're buying from a puppy mill, one way is you walked into
21:47
a pet store. If you're in a pet store, you're probably buying from a puppy
21:50
mill. You probably are. Yeah. What about online?
21:55
You probably are. I would say that
21:58
responsible breeders want to know where their puppies are going.
22:02
Responsible breeders will agree to take your puppy back if something
22:06
happens in the future. They're supposed to love the offspring of their
22:09
beloved dogs. I think responsible breeders do feel that way,
22:13
and they want to be ready to help any dog who they helped
22:17
birth. That's not going to happen when you order a puppy off of
22:21
Lancaster Puppies or puppies.com or PuppySpot or any
22:25
of those sorts of websites. But if you find your next pet by
22:29
Googling golden retriever puppies, that's exactly where it's going to send you.
22:33
Yeah, that's exactly where it's going to send you. And listen, I understand that
22:37
people are busy and the shopping environment's changed and people are
22:41
used to packages being delivered to their door. But I would
22:44
just say to anyone listening that might acquire a dog
22:48
that way, or anyone who's talking to a family member or friend who might want
22:52
to acquire a dog, That way. Remind people,
22:56
you're beginning a 12 to 15 year commitment when you acquire a
23:00
puppy. So if you're gonna make such a
23:03
commitment to bring this living being in and
23:07
provide good care and, and, and have this animal
23:11
incorporated into your family, become a family member, it's okay
23:15
to take a little time to research. If you're, if you're not, if you're skipping
23:19
shelters and rescues, let's say you've got your heart set on like an 8-week-old Yorkshire
23:22
Terrier and that's just what you gotta have. It's okay to research.
23:26
It's okay if you have to drive for 4 hours to meet
23:30
the breeder because you're making a 12 to
23:33
15 year commitment. It's really a small investment in the big picture. Well, that's
23:37
good advice because I do want to get into what we can do. We
23:41
don't want these puppy mills to exist anymore. I see everybody online saying,
23:45
well, the first thing we should do is ban puppy mills. We have
23:49
federal, state, and local involvement in this issue. So
23:53
maybe we want to start at the top. I know you attended a meeting at
23:56
the White House. Do you see anything happening at the federal level?
24:02
A little bit. There's been a little bit more enforcement of the existing regulations.
24:06
There have been a few more licenses that have been revoked, so that's a good
24:09
thing. So I do think that there's been a little bit of progress on that
24:13
front. Unfortunately, the
24:17
Trump administration released a list of
24:20
proposed rules that we can expect to see from various federal
24:23
agencies over the next, I think it was up to 6 months or something like
24:26
that, and there wasn't anything in there pertaining to puppy mills. So we
24:30
were disappointed about that. I
24:34
will say that when someone says, why don't you just ban puppy mill?
24:38
Well, the issue is, how are you defining that? How are you? Because to ban
24:42
something, you have to have a tight definition. And you don't
24:46
want to define it in a way that's so tight and narrow
24:49
that a bunch of places that are doing bad things are
24:53
completely off the hook, because then they can say, look, legally, we're not a puppy
24:56
mill. This is a legal operation. That could actually be counterproductive.
25:01
You don't want it to be— I think as somebody who's written statutes, I don't
25:04
know how I would define puppy mill that would be the perfect bright line
25:08
to exclude everyone you wanted to exclude and include everyone you wanted to include,
25:11
because it's not on a number of dogs. Because if you try to say you
25:15
can't have more than X number of dogs, then you just have a bunch of
25:17
facilities in a row that each have the maximum number of dogs. It's just, you
25:21
can't do it. Yeah, I've seen dog fighters do that where like,
25:25
you know, they would maybe live in a city and,
25:29
you know, they didn't have enough room to have a whole bunch of dogs out
25:32
on those big logging chains. But, you know, they'd have them kind of like satellite
25:36
operations. Buddy over here has got one, buddy over here has got one. So that
25:39
can definitely happen. I think the best thing we can do is, number one,
25:43
try to eliminate the sales outlets that are predominantly used by
25:47
puppy mills. That's the first thing. And number two,
25:51
dramatic upgrades to the standards of care of the dogs in puppy
25:55
mills. And I'll say, in 2015, we submitted
25:59
a rulemaking petition to the USDA that called for 10 significant
26:03
reforms to their commercial dog breeding standards. And
26:06
these— this was not an ideal list. We went with what was possible.
26:11
If they had done everything we'd said, we still wouldn't really be where we need
26:14
to be. It would just be better. But it was completely
26:18
realistic in hopes they would do something. No response. No response.
26:23
I think everybody has a frustration with, if this is something that's controlled at
26:26
the federal level, I probably can't do anything about it. We would love to see
26:30
the USDA raise the standards, and we'd love to see them enforce
26:34
the standards with meaningful penalties that aren't just a slap on the wrist, or we'll
26:38
come back another time. But if we assume that we,
26:42
as advocates, probably can't get that done, we rely on
26:45
HWA and organizations like that to get that done, what can we do
26:50
at the state or the local level? Well, when I
26:53
became an animal advocate a long, long time ago, I was still in high school,
26:58
and I wish someone had given me the advice I'm about to give animal advocates.
27:01
I wish— there's a lot of advice people had given me back then because I
27:04
think I spent about a decade Making mistakes every day, but
27:08
but local action
27:11
start local. You know, like I immediately got into this. I wanted
27:15
the first thing I wanted to do was in the fur industry, and I was
27:18
like, "I'm going to take down the whole fur industry nationwide." I
27:21
wish that I had had a little bit less ambitious goals, more realistic goals to
27:25
focus on my local community, doing things in my local community, things that within my
27:29
control where I can actually make an impact, and a lot can be
27:33
done at the local level. Animal advocates in Pennsylvania and other states.
27:37
have been going, you know, city by city, municipality by
27:40
municipality, for example, getting ordinances passed to ban the sale of
27:44
puppies in pet stores. Humane World for Animals, we've worked with Revolution
27:47
Philadelphia and some other really wonderful organizations around the state. A
27:51
really great group of activists in Pennsylvania and, you know, in
27:55
other states as well. And so much can be done at the local level,
27:59
and that leads to state
28:02
reform, which leads to national reform. You are
28:06
speaking my language, and that is exactly why I started this podcast, because I
28:10
want people to feel like they can make a difference. And in
28:14
your community, you can. Your commissioners,
28:17
whoever is your local governing body, they don't have a big
28:21
constituency. A group of 10 people that comes forward and
28:25
wants this can really make a difference. You think
28:28
about if you're a staffer in a congressional office, and then compare that to being
28:32
a staffer in a city council office. Congressional office,
28:36
first off, you're representing about 800,000 people and
28:40
you're getting those form emails by the thousands
28:44
every day from every interest group, from every issue, every
28:48
cause. City council,
28:52
you probably sit there for 4 hours before an email comes in from a constituent.
28:56
And you might hear some stuff about the pothole and the schools and the police
28:59
and the fire department and the things that are kind of the core
29:03
city council functions, but these sorts of social issues, you're really
29:07
not hearing from anybody. And so when a
29:10
grassroots advocate takes the time to get
29:14
polished, practice making the
29:18
pitch for why they should pass an ordinance that prohibits sale of puppies
29:22
in pet stores, maybe stops using animals in dissection,
29:26
maybe stops cruel circus acts, whatever it is,
29:30
They're going to stand out because not many other people are going in there to
29:33
have those conversations with city council. Absolutely. Yeah.
29:37
And I think there's— what you said is also true, and I've seen it here,
29:41
is that something that you might have trouble passing at the
29:45
state level, particularly in an agricultural state like Pennsylvania,
29:49
you can start getting passed at the local level.
29:53
And as those pockets of local laws change, you can build the
29:57
momentum to go to your state capitol and say, here are all the cities in
30:01
our state that already are in favor of this? Oh, I'll give
30:04
you a perfect example. And now this isn't a state necessarily known for being
30:08
agricultural, but there was a time when I think we would
30:12
all be shocked that an entire state would ban the sale of puppies in
30:15
pet stores. Now there's a bill on the governor's desk in Delaware he's going to
30:19
sign soon that would make them the 10th state to ban the sale of puppies
30:23
in pet stores. Well, the first state to do that was California, only
30:26
after 36 cities
30:30
in California passed these ordinances. Once we had the big
30:34
cities, LA, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, San Diego, all the ones you
30:38
know, plus a bunch of smaller ones, then we were able to go to the
30:40
state legislators and say, look, you know, 2/3 of the population in
30:44
this state already lives in places that have this law. The sky hasn't fallen.
30:48
We've had, you know, it's been good. Then they're like, okay, we'll do it.
30:52
So local led to state. And that's a great example.
30:56
And it illustrates why, because you can take some of the fear out
30:59
because a lot of the opposition to the laws that we want, it sort of
31:03
catastrophizes what will happen. You'll ruin the economy and blah, blah, blah.
31:07
And when you can say, hey, it's already happened, like you said, and the sky
31:10
hasn't fallen, it really deflates those arguments.
31:13
100%. Those were key arguments
31:17
for us to make. So in Pennsylvania,
31:20
for years we have had Victoria's Law pending, which is the
31:24
ban on the retail sale of puppies here in Pennsylvania, puppies and kittens. And,
31:28
um, we had a hearing on that in the last
31:33
6 months, uh, before the Consumer Affairs Committee of the
31:36
legislature. And there was testimony in
31:39
favor of it from advocates, and there was testimony
31:43
against it from the industry and from the Pennsylvania
31:47
Veterinary Medical Association. So the PVMA
31:51
also opposes this bill. And their
31:55
rationale is, well, if you prevent
31:58
pet store sales, then you're pushing everybody online
32:02
and there's no regulation in the online world. So
32:05
that's even worse. So how do you respond to that?
32:09
So first off, the talking point is 13 years out of date
32:13
because the puppy mills that sell over the internet have been
32:17
regulated under the exact same USDA regulatory
32:20
framework as the puppy mills who sell through pet stores since
32:24
2013. So that's just factually wrong.
32:28
Now, do bans on the sale of puppies in pet
32:31
stores shift the sales online? I want to give you a 2-part
32:35
answer, but the end result is no. Okay, first off,
32:39
it's irrational to assume that a store that sells, let's say, 1,000 puppies
32:42
a year and they go out of business, oh, all of a sudden some
32:46
website's going to sell 1,000 puppies. No, of course not.
32:50
First off, some of those customers, some of those sales just won't happen at all
32:54
because, you know, people walked into a pet store and made an impulse purchase. Some
32:57
of them will go to a PetSmart and see an adoption event out front
33:01
and adopt one of those dogs. Some will go to a responsible breeder. Some will
33:05
go to a puppy mill. on accident through some other outlet, but it's not
33:08
going to be all of them. But remember that I just made the point
33:12
that the USDA has been regulating the people that sell online since
33:16
2013. Since we have started to
33:19
really push bans on the sale of puppies in pet stores, the number of
33:23
USDA-licensed kennels has both declined and the average
33:27
size of the USDA-licensed puppy mill has shrunk
33:31
from an average of 87 adult breeding dogs in 2012
33:35
to an average of 57 adult breeding dogs today. So
33:40
if these sales were just transitioning online, we wouldn't have seen that decline in
33:44
those numbers. So I just think that they're— That's actually really good evidence,
33:48
right? So, so as, as states and cities
33:52
have banned the retail sale of puppies, you've seen a decline
33:56
in puppy mills. Yeah. And in fact, We were saying that since
34:00
2020, that there had been a 14% decline in
34:04
USDA licensed puppy mills because of these pet sales bans.
34:07
Now, it was a little hard to estimate the number because you get a
34:11
Class A license with USDA, you might be a puppy mill, but you
34:15
also might be a breeder of lab animals, or you might be breeding
34:19
other regulated species sold through pet stores like rabbits, for
34:22
example. So, and also you could be a Class B license for
34:26
broker, but brokers can breed. So we made an estimate 14%. The
34:29
CEO of Petland put out a letter to the pet industry a
34:33
few months ago, though. Of course, he was complaining about this,
34:37
but he said actually it had been an 18% decline in the number of
34:41
USDA-licensed puppy mills since 2020. So we estimated on the conservative end.
34:45
Actually, the numbers were a little better. That's a strange correction to make,
34:49
but that's great because that feels statistically
34:53
correct, that if you can prove that the number of puppy mills is going down
34:56
and the average number of dogs in a puppy mill is going down, These bans
34:59
are having an effect. They're definitely having an effect. I, you know, of all the
35:03
work that people have done on puppy mills, I think cutting off the sales outlets
35:06
is probably the most important thing people can do right now. Now, what
35:10
do I mean by that? Well, 80%
35:13
of the USDA-licensed puppy mills are in 7 states: Missouri,
35:17
Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas,
35:22
Kansas, around that area. All of those states are states with
35:25
large agricultural economies where big agribusiness has tremendous influence
35:29
in state legislature. And it's made it impossible to get enough
35:32
reforms that it would actually make a difference for the dogs in puppy mills.
35:37
So I made the decision when I took over the puppy mills program
35:41
at Humane World for Animals, okay, let's set that on the back burner and
35:45
wait for the climate to change. And in the meantime, we'll
35:48
focus on ending the sale of puppies in pet stores because the pet stores are
35:51
in areas where organizations like ours are going to have more
35:55
influence. And that would be a more productive way to shrink the problem. And that
35:58
has been working. I do hope, though, that at some point
36:02
that the lawmakers in those states will realize
36:06
that it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter how red or blue the
36:09
state is. Everybody wants puppy mills done away with. And I'm hoping that at
36:13
some point we can get into those states and get some meaningful laws passed.
36:18
One more thing I wanted to cover, and it's kind of a legal concept, but
36:21
it's important now because there's a lot going on on
36:25
the preemption front. And So let's talk
36:28
about that. That's, you know, it's sort of a defense mechanism
36:32
of the industry to try to
36:37
stop these local efforts that we're talking about. So talk to me about preemption.
36:42
So one of the shields that companies like Petland uses to
36:45
protect their inhumane business model of selling
36:49
puppies from puppy mills is to try to pass state laws that
36:53
take away localities' rights to regulate pet
36:56
stores. And we also are seeing pretty
37:00
radical animal use extremist groups, like the
37:04
Cavalry Group, push what they call Working Animal Protection Act.
37:08
And they'll make that— they'll say, oh, this is just to stop people from doing
37:11
ordinances that'll prevent rodeo. But they'll say working animal or
37:15
animal enterprise, and that or animal enterprise makes those much
37:18
broader than just making sure the Animal Advocates can't do anything
37:22
about rodeo. And so there's a real concerted push by some of these
37:26
industry groups to try to pass these laws to preempt local ordinances.
37:30
And then they'll say, oh, well, you know, we don't want this patchwork of local
37:34
regulations. Just do it at the state. Okay.
37:37
But then they introduce legislation in the Congress like the Save Our Bacon Act that
37:41
would preempt state laws that protect farm animals. And
37:45
it's a brilliant strategy if you're on their side because they're
37:49
trying to move the decision up to where money
37:52
talks. And I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah,
37:56
yeah. So that's their ploy. So we spend a lot of money fighting
38:00
them on preemption. And this year, we did defeat the working
38:03
animal preemption bill in Kentucky and a pet store preemption bill in
38:07
Oklahoma. So I hope that the opposition sees
38:11
that even in states where they thought that they might have a better chance, that
38:14
we were able to hold them off. We've beaten them on the floor in Tennessee.
38:17
We've beaten them on the floor in Georgia, in the 2 respective Houses of
38:20
Representatives. But they do, they do still keep
38:24
bringing those bills. I mean, if Petland was listening to this, I'd tell them,
38:28
you know, you're at the corporate level, you've lost money 4 years in a row.
38:32
Why are you spending money pushing these preemption bills when you should be using your
38:35
money to change your business model? But I just don't think that their
38:38
leadership is— I don't think their leadership has good business sense.
38:42
Wow, that's quite the indictment. I do think that it's not a red or
38:46
blue issue. So I have the same hope. So in
38:50
terms of sending people out with something they personally can do, one
38:54
of them is lobby for a local ordinance, and another one is even simpler, and
38:58
that's talk to your friends and family about how to
39:02
recognize that you're buying from a puppy mill. Be an advocate in
39:05
your own little corner of the world so that people don't
39:09
unwittingly support these things. Well, we live in an
39:12
attention economy, and attention is the
39:16
currency for any issue, whether it's a social issue, a Foreign
39:19
policy issue, whatever. Those voices
39:23
that can amplify the message about puppy mills are so
39:27
valuable. Well, thank you, John. Thank
39:30
you so much for all you do. I think you gave everybody a lot
39:34
of tools they can use to hopefully get rid of puppy mills sometime in the
39:37
future. I hope so. Thanks for having me on to discuss this, a very
39:41
important topic. Thanks so much.
39:46
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