05.26.10
PUPS Act – Good or Bad?
Dog Breeders, USDA, and the PUPS Act – Amy Peterson
In response to a scathing report by the USDA Inspector General (IG), critical of the government’s handling of puppy mill investigations, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) today called for immediate changes at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) and promised to work with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on administrative and legislative reforms:
- APHIS’ “enforcement process was ineffective against problematic dealers.” The IG report shows that more than half of the dog breeding facilities found to be in violation of the Animal Welfare Act repeatedly violated the law — some as many as a dozen times.
- APHIS “inspectors did not document violations properly.” According to the report, 30% of inspectors failed to correctly report violations, resulting in some known violators receiving less frequent inspections and escaping strong enforcement. The report also says the reporting failure resulted in nearly 50% of all administrative hearings with problem dealers being compromised due to lack of evidence.
- “APHIS misused guidelines to lower penalties for violators.” In over 30% of cases, APHIS misused their own enforcement guidelines by inconsistently counting violations, applying penalty reductions without merit, and arbitrarily changing the gravity of some violations.
- Large puppy mills “circumvented the law by selling animals over the internet.” Because of a loophole in the Animal Welfare Act, large puppy mills that sell dogs online are exempt from APHIS inspection and licensing requirement.
We as dog breeders should be concerned about these issues. However, the resulting bill from Senators Durbin and Vitter raise questions about which every hobby breeder should be concerned. Called the PUPS bill, or Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety act, it calls for the following:
- Require licensing and inspection of dog breeders that sell directly to the public and sell more than 50 dogs per year.
- Require that dogs in commercial breeding facilities have appropriate space and opportunity for daily exercise.
As hobby breeders, we need to ask the following:
- What constitutes an internet sale? If a breeder has a website and receives inquiries from that site, are they categorized as internet sales?
- What constitutes the seller of puppies? Does this have the potential to affect owners of co-owned bitches? Per AKC regulations ALL the owners of a bitch must sign the registration papers. So if Owner A has one litter of five annuall, but co-owns a number of bitches who also have litters, will these “count” toward the number of dogs Owner A has sold?
- How are the exercise requirements going to be enforced? Will there be someone observing the number of hours of exercise each dog gets? And what constitutes exercise? If you turn a bunch of elkhounds out into a running yard at anything over about 75 degrees, they’ll just find a place in the shade to lie around! Similarly, if you turn an IG out in anything but about 50 degrees, all she’ll do is look for a warm place to lay! I think exercise requirements are NOT something that is a one-size-fits-all category.
- If our current laws are not being enforced by our inspectors, then who is going to enforce the new laws? Would it not be better use of funds to hire additional inspectors and provide appropriate training (and pay) for them?
In some ways, this bill does attempt to close some loopholes; however, both the USDA report and the introducing Senators agree that the problem appears to be in the enforcement of existing laws. This bill in no way provides for additional enforcement of existing laws, nor does it provide for the additional inspectors that would be necessary for enforcement of the new Act. As with all bills, this bill requires input from hobby breeders and animal husbandry experts. It is very important that all concerned hobby breeders contact their US Senators and Representatives and express their opinions. This bill is at the federal, and not the state level, and will impact every state in the nation. Please be an involved hobby breeder and take the time to research this bill and any legislation that may impact you, and the fancy!
Here are some additional comments on the bill, written by Margo Milde
The PUPS bill is up:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.3424:
Just a few brief comments to start with. This bill provides a new category of breeder, “High Volume Breeder”, as one needing USDA licensing. They define a “High Volume Breeder” as:
`(B) HIGH VOLUME RETAIL BREEDER- The term `high volume retail breeder’ means a person who, in commerce, for compensation or profit–
`(i) has an ownership interest in or custody of 1 or more breeding female dogs; and
`(ii) sells or offers for sale, via any means of conveyance (including the Internet, telephone, or newspaper), more than 50 of the offspring of such breeding female dogs for use as pets in any 1-year period.
They have defined “breeding female dogs” as:
`(A) BREEDING FEMALE DOG- The term `breeding female dog’ means an intact female dog aged 4 months or older.
The sticky question of “co-ownership” immediately raises its ugly head. Many AKC breeders “co-own” a number of bitches (and dogs, for that matter) that do not live in the home of the breeder. Regardless of where these bitches are maintained, is appears that one interpretation of the defined number includes any bitch who is “co-owned” by an individual breeder. Even worse, “breeding female” includes any intact female over 4 months of age (personal comment: it’s probably no coincidence that MSN laws have been introduced, and passed such as in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, with a 4 month S/N requirement. See, the dots all connect!!!) Thus, “breeding females” includes puppies not intended to be bred until a more mature age, or even those puppies still of a biologically non-breedable age; or elderly intact bitches well past a breedable age; or bitches left intact for reasons of veterinary recommendation, or left intact for show, working ability, or any other purposes, even if the bitch was not intended to be bred that year (or ever.)
“50 puppies” may sound like a lot, but when you add up puppies from co-owned bitches who don’t reside with their breeder, assuming that will be the interpretation given, you will then realize that who this bill targets is the typical AKC (or UKC) hobby breeder!!! Additionally, to make matters even more complicated, and as any long term breeder knows, the number of puppies the breeder “offers to sell” in any given time period does NOT mean that all those puppies were sold! Perhaps, for example, the number of puppies produced was not the optimistic number that the breeder had actual buyers for, or perhaps a poor economy forced buyers to back out of the deal at the last minute. Yet, the breeder would still be classified by the number he or she “offered to sell”, as opposed to the actual number of puppies sold.
That AKC (or UKC, etc) home hobby breeder that would be included under this law will need to be licensed, and to ensure that their facility (i.e., their home) meets the engineering standards required for a commercial USDA-licensed kennel. Think that is easy? Think again. Your home may be spotless, and the care of your dogs immaculate, but it is highly unlikely that your home can meet these USDA APHIS standards, unless you keep your dogs separate in a special addition to your home, so that they don’t reside in your “human” home proper.
Additional requirements include exercise requirements, which can be very problematic in interpretation; and a ban on “wire flooring”, despite the fact that well-designed wire floors keep puppies warmer, drier, and healthier than a cold concrete flooring.
These are just my initial speculations. I am waiting to see more official interpretations of this bill.
Here’s a few additional resources on this bill:
AKC is still examining the potential impact of this bill (personal comment – I hope they don’t take too long in doing so!! Really, the bill is relatively short and doesn’t take that long to read):
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/canine_legislation/PUPSlegalert052710.pdf
Please see links included in above AKC document to APHIS inspections requirements and regulations for USDA licensed breeders, and then ask yourself if YOUR home could meet these standards.
Pet World’s Steve Dale is opposed to this legislation, and asks the million dollar question: why aren’t existing USDA APHIS regulations being enforced?
Please go comment on Steve’s blog and tell him you agree!
Finally, the USDA Inspector General report on commercial breeder deficiencies can be read at this link:
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/33002-4-SF.pdf
I suggest strongly you read the entire IG report for yourselves. You will see that there are known major problems with existing enforcement for repeat violators, as detailed in this report. Why aren’t existing laws enforced, and shouldn’t that be the focus of our efforts, and not “new laws” that would allow the substandard breeders to continue on their merry way, while shutting down the responsible breeder?
Margo Milde
