About Those Pet Store Laws (Redux)

I learned recently that Illinois passed Senate Bill 1882, called the "Safe Pets" Act which governs dogs and cats sold in pet stores. The new law does not prevent pet stores in the state from selling animals which are sourced from breeders. This comes as no surprise. Petland, the most prolific pet store chain in the country which sells dogs, already has eight retail locations in Illinois. The state cannot enact a law which would affect commerce for Petland because the stores are already open. The new law does state the following (among other provisions):

• Pet stores may not obtain a dog or cat to sell obtained by someone required to have a USDA license and does not.
• Pet stores may not obtain a dog or cat to sell obtained from someone who received a direct or critical non-complaint citation from the USA in a 2-year period before the dog or cat is received by the pet shop.
• Pet stores may not obtain a dog or cat to sell from someone who received three or more non-complaint citations on a final inspection report from the USDA relating to the health or welfare of animals and the violations were not administrative in nature.
• Pet stores may not obtain a dog or cat to sell from someone who received a no-access violation on each of the 3 most recently final inspection reports from the USDA.

This new law in Illinois is part of what I consider a national reckoning regarding pet stores that sell dogs and cats.  More and more places across the country are enacting laws about how pets stores or pet shops function in their communities. Having a USDA license or being free of citations or violations is no real indicator of standards, but it is better than nothing.

Many of these local laws go much further than the new Illinois law and I first blogged about them last year. These are locations where there are no existing pet stores like Petland selling dogs. The lack of those retail locations means that municipalities have the ability to enact pre-emptive laws to keep the stores from opening in the first place. The local ordinances I have advanced in some cities in my state require pet shops to source animals from shelters and rescue groups, prohibiting them from getting animals from breeders, brokers or from rescue groups which obtain animals from breeders or brokers for compensation (often referred to as the "rescue model.")

As I have written about before, I obviously support these ordinances, resolutions, bills and laws which are, at their core, consumer protection laws. The Illinois law has limitations because Petland stores are already open there, but the language of the law makes it clear that it is also focused on consumer protection. And for good reasons. The Internet is replete with stories about people who bought a dog at a pet store, only to have that dog be terribly ill or have some genetic defect which results either in thousands of dollars of veterinary bills to treat/manage or which results in the death of the animal. The CDC has done multiple studies about pet store dogs spreading diseases to people, in some cases resulting in litigation. Then there is the less publicized scam in buying a pet from store: when the person who buys the animal does not understand they have leased the animal and it does not belong to them.

I've heard a number of arguments against these laws, none of which are persuasive for me and some of which are just absurd.

The laws take away personal choice. No. They do not. I admittedly promote adoption of animals from shelters and rescue groups. As much as I would like others to feel the same way, I cannot force them to share my values through magical thinking. I know plenty of people who get animals from breeders and cannot be persuaded to do otherwise. If someone wants to get a dog from a breeder, these laws do not prevent them from doing that. In places which have enacted laws about pet shops, that sale is just not facilitated in a retail setting. That does not mean the person cannot seek out a breeder of their choice who does not sell animals in retail stores. I read a blog on the website for the American Kennel Club which claims, "the purpose of these measures is get at not only retailers, but also breeders." We hear all the time that no "reputable" breeder would ever sold a dog or cat in a store, so people who have chosen to breed animals either for love of the breed or as a source of income are not affected by these laws. They are free to sell those animals directly to consumers just like they always have.

These laws are only aimed at shutting down "puppy mills". It is true that the fewer pet stores in our country which sell dogs from large dog breeding operations (which I consider mills regardless of how well the dogs are cared for), the less profitable those operations will be.  But to say the laws are only enacted to try to close those places loses sight of the primary purposes for the laws. Consumer protection. Perhaps a time will come when enough of these laws are enacted across the country when it will have a huge impact on those people currently breeding dogs for sale in those stores. The more stores which close or which switch to the rescue model, the fewer places there will be for the dogs to be sold. That time is a long way off. Millions of dogs are bred in the United States each year and this is a huge industry. The dogs are sold on the internet on websites which look polished and which leave the impression the parent dogs are well cared for. Dogs are also sold at auctions and in some cases, the dogs are being purchased by rescue groups which claim they are saving the dogs they buy from a fate worse than death while at the same time remaining willfully ignorant of the dog or dogs who will take the place of the dog they bought at auction using the money they paid.

The laws prevent people of color from getting a dog of their choice. This is a new argument I first heard a few months ago and the explanations go something like this:  1) Many shelters and rescue groups making adopting an animal incredibly difficult (this is often true) which; 2) negatively impacts people of color; so 3) those people who have not been able to get a pet from a shelter or a rescue group need the ability to get a pet of their choice from a pet store as an alternative. I am the first to admit that there are shelters and rescue groups which make adopting an animal so difficult that people just give up. There have been a couple of recent articles about this in the New York Times and in The Cut. We had a panel discussion as part of the No Kill in Motion series (from No Kill Movement) recently in which we talked about this subject. Organizations like CARE - Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity are working hard to shine a light not only on the lack of diversity in shelter leadership, but also on how difficult some shelters make it for people to adopt because of their judgment of the worthiness of those people. The work of CARE is invaluable and it is long past the time when we should be having these discussions about inclusion and equity. But for every shelter and rescue which makes adoption difficult, there are many more which are doing all they can to place pets in need by making adoption exceedingly easy by using open adoption counseling and providing animals who are fully vetted and microchipped, sometimes with the adoption fee being incredibly low or waived. To say that people who have been turned away from a shelter or rescue should go to a pet store as their next option is not compatible with the argument that there are scores of reputable breeders across the county who do not sell pets in stores. I plan to take up this issue of how these laws affect people of color with James Evans of CARE to get his take on the argument.

I have written many times about the subject of puppy mills and pet stores. I have often wondered how different our country would be had the UDSA not tried to help struggling farmers some 70 years ago and recommended breeding dogs as a way to make money. We would still have dog shows and people would still breed dogs, but would we see the production and sale of millions of dogs a year like we do now while at the same time destroying millions of dogs in places we call shelters? We will never know. I have also wondered how people would feel if we had never sold dogs or cats in stores from commercial breeding operations (many of which house dogs in conditions we would consider criminal) and we suddenly started doing that. Would people be outraged? I'd like to think so.

I hope a day comes when we see an end to the sale of dogs and cats in stores and when people instead get companion animals from shelters, rescues or from responsible breeders as a direct purchase. Stores are great for a lot of things. Furniture. Clothing. Food. Not for pets. It's time for that to end. The sooner the better.

(image of pet store puppy courtesy of Hector Parayuelos)