Gap, Pa. – The colorful, hand-painted signs offering puppies for sale at farms in scenic Lancaster County only add to the allure of Amish country. Some visitors cannot help but go home with a dog.
But animal activists say many of these seemingly innocent farms are a front for lucrative, virtually unregulated operations that crank out hundreds of purebreds, sometimes amid miserable conditions.
There are dogs without teeth or a leg, activists say, as well as diseased animals and dark barns where animals are confined for breeding purposes. Those unfit for sale are destroyed, not always humanely.
A Senate subcommittee this week is to hear testimony on legislation that would give the Agriculture Department the power to regulate breeders and dealers who sell directly to consumers. Some breeders, and even some animal-rescue coordinators who sell the dogs they have saved, worry that the bill will place unneeded regulations on them.
Pennsylvania, which some have called the “Puppy Mill Capital of the East,” is not alone in the problem, according to animal- rights groups. The Humane Society of the United States lists it with Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma as the worst violators.
A puppy mill, says the Humane Society, is a breeding facility that produces purebred puppies in large numbers. Potential problems, it contends, are overbreeding and inbreeding, substandard food and shelter, overcrowded cages and inadequate veterinary care.
The Internet has made high- volume operations more profitable because they are exempt from federal regulation yet can reach a national market. Consumers can have purebred puppies shipped to their homes or pick them up.
The Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1967, set standards for the treatment of animals by breeders, exhibitors, transporters and researchers. It exempts “retail pet stores,” and large breeding operations are considered retailers by the USDA if they sell directly to consumers.
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., says changes to the Animal Welfare Act are needed to protect not just animals but consumers who buy dogs with behavioral and health problems. His bill would give the USDA authority over those who sell more than 25 dogs a year. People who raise up to seven litters a year on their own premises would be exempted.
