I am writing about your new ordinance banning “puppy mill” puppies from Oceanside’s only pet shop. This law is so ironic: Local governments are trying to ban the very practices that the federal government requires!
The general public doesn’t see the irony because they don’t know about the federal Animal Welfare Act, first passed in 1966 and tweaked a few times since then. The act requires puppies sold in pet stores or by dealers to be raised in cages. Not only are cage sizes regulated, but almost everything else about how pets are raised is also prescribed in this one-size-fits-all law.
The dogs and puppies are not allowed in the breeder’s house. Yet now the public has decided they don’t want puppies raised in cages. Sorry, folks, federal rules trump local ones. If you want to make changes, make them at the federal level first.
As it is now, anyone in the US who owns three or more female dogs and sells any puppies to researchers or pet shops has to have a license and frequent inspections to be sure they follow the rules. The pet store has no choice; the breeder has no choice. With this background, anyone should be able to see that all this new law does is make purebred puppies progressively harder to find or afford.
It is not about “humaneness” at all. The animal rights lobby (which objects to owning pets and eating meat) is intentionally misrepresenting what this law does in order to entrench it before anyone notices what it REALLY does. This is true of all animal-rights sponsored laws, so, legislators and citizens, WATCH OUT! I don’t understand why intelligent elected officials do not bother to take the time to learn something about a subject before passing new laws.
Bonnie Chandler
Harvard, MA