No-brainer for pet stores to be banned from selling commercially-bred cats and dogs

There are several jurisdictions in the United States where pet stores have been banned from selling cats and dogs bred in puppy mills which means breeding establishments where they have inadequate standards of animal welfare and where commercial profit trumps the welfare of the animals.

Puppies at a puppy mill in Tennessee. Image: Humane Soc.

And in these jurisdictions pet stores can adopt out shelter animals with whom they work in partnership. That is my understanding of the aim of another jurisdiction namely the state of Michigan which is debating a new bill called HB 4838 which would ban the retail sale of commercially-bred animals in pet stores.

California enacted a similar law in 2017 and they were the first state to ban such sales according to the Associated Press. Other states followed such as Maryland which banned the sale of cats and dogs in pet stores. This caused a pushback from pet store owners of course and the breeders who supplied them. They challenged the measure in court.

Illinois followed along the same lines a year later. And New York band pet stores from selling cats, dogs and rabbits near the end of 2022.

Clarification needed

I am reading some reporting which appears to be misleading. These laws are meant to allow pet stores to adopt out rescue animals but not sell commercially-bred animals.

But some news outlets such as the Huron Daily Tribune state that there will be a ban on the sale of cats and dogs at pet shops. This appears to be an absolute ban. And it implies that you will be unable to adopt a cat or dog at a pet store in Michigan when the law is in force.

However, the bill's title states that there will be a requirement in pet shops for them to sell only certain animals. That comes direct from the bill itself.

So, my understanding of this is that pet stores will be able to sell some animals but not commercially bred cats and dogs (and rabbits) and they will be able to adopt out rescue animals. When a customer wants to adopt a rescue animal from a pet store, they will have to pay a fee of some sort I expect. This is not strictly speaking a purchase but it would be an adoption fee as I understand it.

No-brainer from animal welfare standpoint

I would like to see clearer reporting on this to be honest. But the concept is a no-brainer as I stated in the title. Why is it they no-brainer? Because of the obvious reason that there are too many unwanted cats and dogs in America in many jurisdictions where they are in shelters and where some of them will be euthanised because they cannot find a person to adopt them. These will be healthy animals. So, it's killing not euthanasia.

To be killing animals in one place i.e. shelters and then selling the same species of animal in another place i.e. pet shops is simply untenable and it is certainly unethical. That's why HB 4838 is a good bill and I would expect it to become law which is planned for July 1, 2025.

I also believe the law will refer to rabbits as well by the way. The Huron Daily Tribune also quotes a part of this bill which apparently states the following: "Beginning July 1, 2025, a pet shop shall not sell, adopt, exchange, or transfer, or offer for sale, adoption, exchange, or transfer, a dog, cat, or rabbit."

That confuses me as well because it's stating that a person coming into a pet store after the bill has become law would not be able to adopt a rescue cat or dog or rabbit from the store when this is the whole purpose of the bill.

If someone can clarify that then please do so in a comment.

It works

Here is a comment by Nathan Winograd:

Such laws do three things:

1. Encourage people to adopt/rescue;
2. Educate the community about dog and cat (and rabbit) abuse in mills;
3. Stop that abuse.

And they work. Thanks to the passage of these laws nationwide, the number of commercial breeders in the U.S. has declined by 30%, and “Nebraska Department of Agriculture records show that half of the state’s commercial dog and cat breeders have left the business.”

Roswell Animal Services in New Mexico killed Giles, a 2-year-old dog, despite a rescue commitment

This is another disturbing story from Nathan Winograd, one of America's greatest animal advocates and the founder and campaigner for the No-Kill movement which has already saved countless thousands of lives in animal shelters.

Image supplied.

He reports that a two-year-old dog named Giles was killed by Roswell Animal Services, New Mexico despite a commitment to rescue the dog. In other words, there was somebody there to rescue this dog and to give them a good home. Despite that for some reason the dog was killed by the agency.

Nathan Winograd reports that, "The only excuse the City of Roswell could offer was that the staff had a busy day and accidentally killed Giles with a bunch of other dogs."

He provides a quote which I believe comes from the agency's administrators:

"Monday at the animal shelter, there was staff training taking place, rescue groups coming in to retrieve multiple animals, and a number of new animals coming in. As some of these things were occurring simultaneously, the busyness resulted in some confusion and a lack of the standard communication among staff and between staff and rescue groups. Unfortunately, that resulted in the dog in question mistakenly being taken to a veterinarian’s office as part of a group of several dogs to be euthanized."

As he says, the pound described the killing as a mistake but Nathan Winograd rejects this excuse. He rejects it because this kind of accident happens when the systems (MO) in place are poor. And they are poor because of bad attitudes leading to poor management, which leads to many mistakes occurring.

They happen every day across the US he says. And to highlight this he says that if you Google the search term "shelter mistakenly euthanized a pet" you will receive 177,000 search results. He makes the point cogently that far too many mistakes occur at animal shelters resulting in the unnecessary death of the animals in their care.

Nathan Winograd is a very particular and precise person. He is a former lawyer. He wants animal shelter administrators to be as precise as him and as caring as him to find ways to save lives. He believes that many shelters are simply too sloppy and don't employ enough systems and methods to save lives and rehome their animals. And he's correct. Nobody knows the American animal shelter system better than him.

He believes that this particular shelter and others should be held accountable to prevent these so-called "accidents" from happening again.

He believes that administrators of animal shelter should be high quality people and that the administrator of this shelter should be fired. And he wants legislation in place in America I presume at either the state or county or even federal level to "legislate away their power to kill" in order to achieve the goal of a No-Kill nation. And when that happens you will not get such a huge number of Google search results when searching for animals mistakenly killed at shelters.