Puppy mill delivery truck bust
Puppy mills are just one of my favorite topics. Yesterday, the driver of a delivery truck with 51 puppies in it was arrested for animal cruelty outside of Elite Puppies in Webster, MA (read more here). My roommate, who encountered some of the puppies recuperating in Tufts' hospital, reports that the store that was receiving the deliveries is being boycotted. This is hearsay, but she says people had previously asked the store where it got its puppies from, and the store said that they only supported local breeders, but now people are realizing that that isn't true. (The truck was coming from California.)
Whether or not this particular store did tell people that it got its puppies only from loving, local homes, I have heard before that stores will tell people this, and that it's hard to trace the actual origins of pet store puppies. It makes me consider how to make pet stores more accountable, because I really think fewer people would buy from them if it was more obvious where the puppies came from. Legislation requiring stores to provide names and addresses of their suppliers (the original breeders, not the distributors)? Would that be an invasion of privacy for the suppliers? Possibly, but it occurs to me that part of the definition of a responsible breeder is someone who is willing to take their puppies back at any point in their lives, if the animal needs a home. I'm a big believer in being able to track where things come from in general -- maybe part of the price of entering the world of commerce is losing some privacy. If you want a corporate front so that you don't have to reveal your home address, that's fine, but it would make it easier for consumers to tell that the puppy doesn't come from a "home" -- right?
It will be ironic if I end up thinking this approach is a good idea, because I'm so violently opposed to NAIS. I need to do some thinking about how it is different to insist on traceability of puppies versus livestock, I guess. Oh wait, here it is: government insistence on traceability makes it harder for small producers to sell things. I want to support small farmers, so I don't want them to have to provide government-mandated traceability which was designed to be more convenient for large producers. But I don't want to support breeders who sell dogs to distributors, so I am happy to make their lives more difficult.
Anyways, I'm just thinking out loud. I wish we as a society could come up with a better way of dealing with the puppy mill problem. It seems like it ought to be so solvable.
Whether or not this particular store did tell people that it got its puppies only from loving, local homes, I have heard before that stores will tell people this, and that it's hard to trace the actual origins of pet store puppies. It makes me consider how to make pet stores more accountable, because I really think fewer people would buy from them if it was more obvious where the puppies came from. Legislation requiring stores to provide names and addresses of their suppliers (the original breeders, not the distributors)? Would that be an invasion of privacy for the suppliers? Possibly, but it occurs to me that part of the definition of a responsible breeder is someone who is willing to take their puppies back at any point in their lives, if the animal needs a home. I'm a big believer in being able to track where things come from in general -- maybe part of the price of entering the world of commerce is losing some privacy. If you want a corporate front so that you don't have to reveal your home address, that's fine, but it would make it easier for consumers to tell that the puppy doesn't come from a "home" -- right?
It will be ironic if I end up thinking this approach is a good idea, because I'm so violently opposed to NAIS. I need to do some thinking about how it is different to insist on traceability of puppies versus livestock, I guess. Oh wait, here it is: government insistence on traceability makes it harder for small producers to sell things. I want to support small farmers, so I don't want them to have to provide government-mandated traceability which was designed to be more convenient for large producers. But I don't want to support breeders who sell dogs to distributors, so I am happy to make their lives more difficult.
Anyways, I'm just thinking out loud. I wish we as a society could come up with a better way of dealing with the puppy mill problem. It seems like it ought to be so solvable.