[nifer]

Puppy mills: Guv growls
Hearing the howls of animal activists, he wants more bite in laws that govern a big business among county’s Plain. Lobbyists and kennel owners bark.

By Gil Smart
Sunday News

Published: Apr 01, 2006 11:17 PM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Those anti-puppy mill billboards dotting the county? The stepped-up protests and pressure?It’s had an effect.

A spokeswoman for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said last week that the governor’s recent pledge to toughen the state’s dog laws was prompted in part by the unrelenting campaign waged by animal activists in recent months.

“We get letters every day from people saying they will not visit the state, or certain areas of the state” because Pennsylvania — and Lancaster County in particular — is home to so many large, commercial dog breeders, said Kate Philips, Rendell’s press secretary.

And the governor “wants to make sure Pennsylvania doesn’t have a reputation it doesn’t deserve.”

Rendell’s interest in amending the dog laws, first reported last weekend by the Philadelphia Inquirer, includes several suggestions generated by what Philips called an informal committee of interested parties, including several animal welfare groups.

Breeders, however, say they were never invited to participate in the process. And they’re angry about it.

“If you’re going to talk about someone’s business, it would be nice to have that someone as part of the discussion,” said Ken Brandt of Elizabethtown, a former state representative who now lobbies on behalf of dog breeders. “No one ever contacted us and said, ‘There are new regulations coming down.’ ”

And the 47 pages worth of proposed changes, he said, seem to have been “written by someone who doesn’t want kennels in Pennsylvania.”

For now, the measures remain mere suggestions; Rendell has not officially submitted anything to the state Legislature, and given the clout agriculture wields in Pennsylvania, whatever he does submit might have a hard time making it through.

But animal welfare activists say tougher laws — and such keen interest in the issue on the part of Pennsylvania’s top elected official — have been a long time in coming.

“It’s really a pretty gutsy move on [Rendell’s] part,” said Sue West, a former board president of the Humane League of Lancaster County and current chair of its legislative committee. “It’s a very controversial issue, and not everyone in the state Legislature will agree with [the governor’s] position.”

Dismisses board

That position includes Rendell’s decision to dismiss the 14-member board that advises the state Bureau of Dog Law. The board advises the Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture on dog issues, but Rendell told the Inquirer it has not been “proactive enough.”

Other suggestions include the creation of a “special prosecutor” to handle complaints against breeders, and stepping up enforcement by hiring more dog wardens and requiring them to visit kennel operators who have had their licenses revoked to make sure they aren’t still selling dogs.

“From my perspective, enforcement is the biggest concern,” said Bob Baker, an American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals consultant and member of the ad-hoc group that advised Rendell on the issue. “We’ve found it very exasperating that Pennsylvania doesn’t do more enforcement,” in part because Pennsylvania, unlike most other states, specifically sets aside money from the sale of dog licenses to fund enforcement.

But Pennsylvania, he said, just hasn’t seemed particularly interested in enforcing the laws.

In part, that’s because dog breeding is generating big bucks for farmers, especially here.

More than 200,000 dogs were “produced” here in 2004, according to the state Bureau of Dog Law, and there are more registered breeders in Lancaster County than in any other county in the nation. And many, perhaps most of the breeders are “Plain,” Amish or Mennonite. The emergence of dogs as a cash crop has helped keep Plain families down on the farm. Without the income from dogs, Brandt said last year, “many families wouldn’t be able to pay their mortgages.”

Some animal activists say this has led Pennsylvania officials to embrace a “hands-off” attitude. Libby Williams, of New Jersey Consumers Against Pet Shop Abuse, which has come to the rescue of several sick dogs bred at Lancaster County “puppy mills,” says there’s too “cozy” a relationship between the state officials charged with enforcing the dog laws and the breeders.

Williams says this is particularly true in Lancaster County, where the wardens that inspect local breeders “have been inspecting the same kennels for so long that their relationship can no longer be viewed as professional but rather one of a friendly nature,” she said. New wardens are needed, and she’d like to see the number of wardens doubled here, from two to four.

And Baker, of the ASPCA, says the law needs more “teeth,” as current regulations don’t do enough to stop even the worst offenders.

The Intelligencer Journal reported Saturday that local Humane Society police Officer Keith Mohler charged Aaron L. Lapp, the owner of a kennel in the 300 block of Hopkins Mill Road, Quarryville, with three misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals.

Charges were brought Friday after Mohler raided the kennel on March 16.

That raid was three days after a state Bureau of Dog Law enforcement officer inspected the kennel and found violations.

“This is the first time in all my years as a humane officer that information from a dog law inspector was used to obtain a search warrant,” Mohler said.

Mohler and a veterinarian examined the dogs at the kennel. Three dogs were seized and wiring on the floor of cages was cutting the dogs’ feet.

Puppy Love

Few kennels have been closed permanently, and some — such as the former Puppy Love Kennels in Peach Bottom, which now goes by the name of CC Pets LLC — have been cited repeatedly. Puppy Love owners Joyce and Raymond Stoltzfus last year settled a case with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office after they were sued for selling sick or diseased dogs to 171 customers in seven states. The Stoltzfuses paid $75,000 in fines and are required to provide buyers with proof that dogs are examined by an independent vet at least 15 days before the sale or have the dog examined within two days of the sale.

Commenting on the increased pressure of animal groups over the past year — which included anti-puppy mill billboards on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as well as a major protest featuring Hollywood celebrities such as Linda Blair and mass mailings to Lancaster County residents — Baker said interest in the issue tends to ebb and flow.

“I started visiting puppy mills in Pennsylvania in 1980” as part of an initial wave of protest that culminated in the passage of dog laws in 1982. “Fifteen years later, when we found out [the law] wasn’t being enforced, there was another big emphasis,” which led to the passage of Pennsylvania’s “Puppy Lemon Law” in the late 1990s.

“I think sometimes when you work really hard, get a lot of media coverage and achieve something, you tend to relax,” he said. If it appears the problem hasn’t abated, the campaign begins anew.

While nothing has yet been formally proposed, breeders and some dog clubs are leery.

“Many of the measures in the draft revision are downright silly,” said Nina Schaefer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Dog Clubs and a member of the Dog Law Advisory Board that Rendell wants to dismiss. For example, she said, one proposed regulation prohibits dogs of different sizes from exercising together: “What on earth does one do with a dam and a litter of puppies?” she asked.

Another requires exercise areas to be free of grass and weeds. This is a clear attack on the small breeder who takes her puppies out in the yard to play,” she said.

“By and large it is an effort to impose regulations for which compliance would be impossible for all but the largest and most sophisticated kennels.”

And she said the problem of puppy mills is nowhere as acute as animal-welfare groups have made it out to be. Lobbyist Brandt agrees: “I challenge any of these folks to show me a bad kennel.” he said. “Show me one that’s unlicensed; show me a sick dog. We feel our breeders are highly concerned about the operation of kennels,” and the industry does a good job of policing itself, he said.

Breeders were scheduled to meet last week to discuss the lengthy list of proposed changes that came out of Rendell’s committee — “It’s huge; it’s like looking at the Sears and Roebuck catalog,” said Brandt — and would respond formally to the governor.

Philips, Rendell’s spokeswoman, said that would be good: “This has been a work in progress for some time, and everyone is invited to the table.”