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Health & Fitness

Pet Store Task Force Now Underway

By now you may have heard about the "puppy mill task force", more correctly known as the "Task Force Concerning The Sale of Dogs & Cats at Pet Shops."
The task force was created earlier this year by the state legislature in response to a previous proposal to outright ban dog and cat sales to the public by pet stores.

The basis of the issue is the concern that the sources of the puppies are poorly managed commercial kennels in other states, where the adult breeding pairs are considered to be poorly cared for. The thinking is that by banning retail puppy sales here, we can economically damage the poorly managed commercial breeding operations elsewhere and they will eventually be eliminated.

Some state legislators, working in concert with animal welfare activists, are sympathetic to this effort, inasmuch as some have had adverse personal experiences with animals purchased from pet stores. The activists generally believe that dog breeding should not be allowed, and ownership of purebred dogs should be discouraged among the public.

The proposed ban on pet store puppy sales has been framed as a simple shift to using an alternate source of animals for pet stores to sell. In this new business model pet stores would serve as outlets for shelter/rescue sourced animals instead of young puppies of defined breeds. The word "ban" while accurate relative to the proposed elimination of future pure breed puppy sales by pet stores, is avoided when describing this very different model, euphemistically termed "humane sourcing."

It is not clear to me that the same future pet owners, the customers who seek young puppies of a defined breed from a pet store, would necessarily be willing to accept an older dog of no particular breed. Thus such a change in business model risks the viability of the involved pet shop businesses and the jobs of their employees. I expect the task force will want to explore these issues in due time.

Another issue is the restriction that would be imposed on consumers if a pet store puppy sale ban were to be enacted. Pet store puppies are generally less costly than home-based pure bred puppies in almost all cases, and home based breeders do not annually produce anywhere near the numbers required by those looking to add a young puppy to their household each year. What is the message to the public should a new law make ownership of a pure bred puppy unavailable to families of more modest means? This remains unexplored and unclear.

My role on the task force is solely to represent the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Association's (CVMA) interest in seeing only healthy animals imported into our state from any source. In so doing CVMA helps ensure both animal health and consumer protection in Connecticut, an integral part of its mission statement. I want to state here, and for the record, that I have no personal agenda, neither for preserving pet store puppy sales nor for eliminating them.
I want only to see a rational approach taken to animal health and consumer confidence.

Still, an outright ban seems a bit draconian to me. There ought to be a way to ensure that pet stores only purchase puppies from wholesale sources that fully comply with USDA regulations on housing and raising dogs in commercial settings. The public ought to be able to make their own choices about where they obtain their dogs and from who. It's the American way!

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