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New York lawmakers are taking steps to introduce a new bill that would ban the sale of animals at puppy mills. The legislation would include dogs, cats and bunnies from an unregulated breeding facility. The sale of those animals would then be banned at pet stores.
Officials have said that puppy mills produce approximately 2 million puppies annually throughout the country. They often spend their lives trapped in cages as they await a pet-owner to purchase them.
Under federal law, it is legal for mills to confine dogs in wire, stacked cages only six inches larger than themselves for their entire lives. To make matters worse, federal enforcement of these weak standards is abysmal.
The new legislation is designed to encourage New Yorkers toward more human sources if they seek a pet. It will also allow pet stores and shelters to host adoption events and drive a push toward adoption over puppy mills. The bill will not impact responsible breeders that don’t sell their animals to pet stores.
According to John Goodwin, the senior director of the Human Society of the United States’ Puppy Mills campaign said that “there are also important consumer protection aspects to this bill. Pet stores often provide misleading information about the origins of these puppies, claiming they are from small, humane breeders.
"Pet store puppies are often unhealthy and unsocialized. Pet store consumers often spend thousands of dollars caring for their sick pet store puppies, sometimes only to suffer the heartbreak of their new pet dying.”
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