Matthew Margolis

The Beginning of the End of Puppy Mills?
What comes to mind when you think of West Hollywood, California? Swank hotels, celebrity sightings, organic meatless hot dogs and a famously gay population? Well, yeah. But this incorporated village in the heart of Los Angeles is also a strong and fervent leader in the prevention of animal cruelty.
In a unanimous decision last Tuesday, West Hollywood city council members voted to ban most sales of dogs and cats in the city’s pet stores -- that is, “companion animal” stores. In 2002, WeHo city code was rewritten to replace “pet” with “companion” and “owner” with “guardian.” And in 2003, it became the first city in the country to outlaw the inhumane practice of cat declawing.
In a city where you’re much more likely to share a park bench with a dog than a child, none of this is surprising. What is surprising is that more places haven’t done the same.
“The West Hollywood ordinance, which provides exemptions for ‘humanely bred, reared or sheltered animals,’ is the second of its kind nationwide,” reported the LA Times. South Lake Tahoe passed the nation’s first such ordinance last year. But support for this movement isn’t limited to the West Coast.
At the time of this writing, the verdict is not in on Maryland Senate Bill 505, which would prohibit the commercial sale of puppies fewer than 9 months old. If passed, the bill will go into effect in October of this year. And West Hollywood City Councilman Jeffrey Prang told the LA Times that “his office had been inundated with calls from city officials across the country seeking advice on how to craft similar ordinances.”
The urgent goal of all this legislation is twofold: 1) to put a stranglehold on the business of puppy mills and kitten factories, and 2) to encourage people to turn to local shelters and rescues when looking for their next companion animal.
According to Humane Society estimates, some 3 million to 4 million homeless dogs and cats are euthanized in the United States every year. Since the housing bust and the economic fizzle in late 2008, the nation’s 3,500 shelters have struggled to stay afloat as donations and volunteers ebbed and the influx of dogs and cats swelled. The mass production of pets is the enemy of their good work.
Puppy mills and kitten factories are not referred to as such for no reason. They are large-scale breeding facilities that churn out animals like car parts. But hubcaps don’t require TLC.
The products of this mass-breeding industry include sick animals with genetic defects that receive no healthy socialization and little if any veterinary care, and are subjected to unsanitary and often inhumane living conditions. Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, underscored the importance of this legislation, saying, “At the very time that we’re paying for the pet overpopulation problem, we’re allowing pet stores to continue the problem by churning out dogs from puppy mills.”
Pet stores, along with unscrupulous brokers and illegal breeders, are the lifeblood of puppy mills and kitten factories. Cutting them out of the equation is like taking a scalpel to a malignant tumor -- a necessary first step to stopping the spread of a lethal cancer.

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