Puppy Uniform Protection Statute

Puppy mills are a highly profitable business, as puppies sell for thousands of dollars each and the money is untraceable and untaxable, and this undeclared income is often a supplement to welfare.  They are kept in business due to the high demand for purebred dogs.  According to the Human Society of the United States (HSUS), 2-4 million dogs bred in puppy mills are sold each year to uninformed, eager consumers (http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/pets/puppy_mills/advocate_guide.pdf).  I liken Eric Wolfe's (Europe and the People without History, 1982) capitalistic mode of production (where the dogs are the means of production) to Karl Marx's commodity fetishism theory.  Marx wrote at length about the ways in which commodification reflects a process whereby certain material things came to stand for more than what they are materially.  Like the diamond, which is falsely inflated by a controlled market through the media, dogs and cats are the commodity and purebred animals have come to stand for more than what they should be worth in a culture because people think owning a purebred is prestigious.  According to the 2007 U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook, around 63 percent of all U.S. households (71.1 million) include companion animals and more than half of these households have more than one animal (http://www.avma.org/reference/marketstats/sourcebook.asp).  We are relentlessly indoctrinated with this commodity fetishism, which requires a preoccupation with obtaining things, but not attaching so much that trading-in for the newest models would be delayed.  

In 2008, fortunately, puppy mills received a surge of media attention by reporters such as Lisa Ling on the "Oprah Show" ( http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Investigating-Puppy-Mills).   The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) conducted a series of major investigations into all facets of the puppy mill issue and raided mills throughout the country. In 2008, they passed legislation to ban the import of dogs from foreign puppy mills with an amendment on the federal Farm Bill.* They also worked with other groups to pass legislation in Pennsylvania--"the puppy mill capital of the East"--to crack down on the thousands of operations there, and made legislative gains in Louisiana, Virginia, Connecticut, and Tennesse as well.

For the third time since 2008, HSUS is fighting for legislation called the Puppy Uniform Protection Statute (PUPS), which would require that breeders obtain a license from the USDA if they raise more than 50 dogs in a 12-month period and sell directly to the public.  It also sets forth reasonable standards of animal care for commercial breeders, such as exercising dogs everyday.  Responsible dog breeders are not the target of this legislation, but hopefully it will put the puppy mills out of business. Please help the ASPCA secure passage of the PUPS Act—contact your federal legislators now (http://capwiz.com/aspca/issues/alert/?alertid=48395556). 

* With the evolution of Internet commerce, puppy mills have sprouted up all over the world to provide poorly bred puppies of every imaginable breed and designer mix directly to the consumer.  As a result, the U. S. market was flooded with imported dogs in bad health and/or possibly carrying diseases that could harm people and other animals.  Because foreign puppy mills are not subject to U.S. regulations--such as the standards set forth in the Animal Welfare Act--many of these dogs are bred and raised in extremely inhumane conditions.  In a major victory, in May 2008 the ASPCA and other animal welfare groups successfully fought for an amendment to Congress's 2008 Farm Bill that prohibits the importation of puppies under six months of age for the purpose of resale.