[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by Woogie Man

I agree with you completely that there are 'bigger fish to fry'. Just take a look at Petland. They have over 140 stores in the country. Using a conservative figure of average store sales being 2 pups per day, that works out to over 100,000 dogs a year, and that's just Petland. There's also the smaller pet shops, websites from commercial breeders/brokers and the fake rescues (no relation to the genuine rescues) that are outlets for these mega-breeders. Add them all up and you're tlaking about a huge number of dogs. The breeders supplying dogs for these outlets are the real problem.

Petland is similar to the Hunte Corporation, and both buy their puppies from numerous commercial kennels. Petland sell directly from its stores, whereas the Hunte corporation sells to many pet stores across the nation. Most pet stores buy through brokers; brokers buy from the puppy mills. The brokers are the ones who are making the most out of pet sells, and they are ones with the most powerful lobbies. It sounds like some of you believe if we up the limit to 20 litters or more we can stop some of the bigger fish. This is simply not true. The big fish buy from "little fish". Here's a video of the Hunte Corp who says that that they inspect the breeders facilities and,

"Only the best breeders who meet our exacting standards of breed quality, health, nutrition, and compassion and care, bring us their puppies."

View Investigation Report

Do a search on the Hunte Corporation, and you will find that they are one of the big fish many of us would like to stop. These bills may not stop them, but they will raise the conditions in which dogs are being breed, and that very important. Petland isn't buying from Hunte, however, they are probably doing the same thing as Hunte, and have a large group of the same caliber breeders as the Hunte Cooperation from which they purchase. Here's an interesting link that discusses Petland and the Hunte Corportaion, and explains why the USDA doesn't work:

The USDA's head veterinarian, Ron de Haven, admits that only about half of the roughly 4,000 USDA-licensed facilities even meet USDA's minimum regulations, a disgraceful example of the USDA's failure to enforce existing animal-protection laws.

De Haven attributes this failure to the USDA not having enough inspectors, but even when the inspectors find problems, fining and closing down puppy mills is very rare. The USDA's mission is to support agriculture, and apparently it considers puppy mill owners to be "dog farmers" worthy of its protection.

Petstore Cruelty