Missouri really has to get over this thing with its animals.
When state legislators bemoan the way social mores changed in the ’60s, they’re talking about the 1860s when it comes to the animal kingdom. It has only been in the past 13 years that the General Assembly could bring itself to outlaw cockfighting (a loud battle) and bestiality (a quiet one).
Last year, the House actually passed a bill that would have enabled Missouri to become the horsemeat-producing capital of the nation, but it died in the Senate. That would be horsemeat meat for people to eat. Really.
Now comes the saga of the puppy mills.
The state is indeed the national capital of the puppy-mill industry, so much so that a staggering 30 percent of all dogs bred in the U.S. would have Missouri on their long-form birth certificates were they not churned out like laboratory rats and shuffled off to dog brokers by the hundreds of thousands.
These are dogs that often live in squalor, without adequate food and water, with virtually no medical care, confined to tiny wire cages their entire lives. Rest between breeding cycles is bad for business and seldom tolerated. The dogs’ suffering and even their diseases are simply passed along to the buyer.
A female dog producing multiple litters of multiple puppies for multiple years—each dog fetching hundreds or more—can mean big bucks to a breeder. Such a dog is essentially viewed as an agricultural crop.
This is serious business—actually, we’re told “a way of life” in the state’s nether regions—so when an urban-inspired, statewide-ballot referendum to regulate puppy mills passed last November, it was time for a good old-fashioned dogfight. And Missouri, at least a swath of it, loves a dogfight.
Claiming district-based, citizen mandates of their own, numerous rural legislators unapologetically made a priority out of overturning the ballot measure known as Proposition B. In their minds, the citizen initiative reflected the ill will of the people. And besides, the measure had only won by “a narrow margin.”
In fact, Proposition B carried by 61,680 votes, or 3.2 percent, with a final tally of 51.6 percent in favor, 48.4 percent opposed. For perspective, that’s roughly a 10 percent larger margin of victory than Gov. Matt Blunt enjoyed over Claire McCaskill in the 2004 gubernatorial election. No one tried to overturn that one.
Missourians didn’t try to eradicate all breeding of dogs with Proposition B. They only tried to put an end to the worst evils of a puppy-mill industry that had become gigantic thanks to the state’s permissiveness. It represented a big step forward.
Instead, the legislature voted to nullify the voters’ action, placing Gov. Jay Nixon in quite a conundrum: Doing the right thing with a veto meant walking the plank politically outstate, where the opposition would be seething.
Had Nixon backed up voters, it would have been appreciated in the urban areas, but would have yielded him little gain. The political cost of a veto dramatically outweighed its benefits.
So in perhaps his most adroit act as governor, Nixon engineered a “Missouri solution,” whereby he would allow the repeal of Proposition B in exchange for legislative support for a watered-down substitute that reflected enough reform as to win the backing of many state and local animal-related groups. At the time, it seemed statesmanlike.
Upon reflection, the outcome doesn’t look so good, especially if you happen to be a dog residing in a puppy mill. Actually, that is supposed to read “a dog residing in a large operation.” An indignant part of the legislature’s repeal of the “Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act” was to remove the politically incorrect phrase “puppy mill” from the bill and, by extension, from the lexicon.
Puppy mills got a lot more than a name change out of the “Missouri solution.” Rather than being reined in and subjected to a range of specific regulations that would have placed canine health above profit, the mills will merely have to curb the worst of their excesses.
Conditions will be less atrocious than they were, and a new fee structure will provide for more inspectors. Nixon’s compromise represents modest progress for animal welfare.
But the bottom line is still the bottom line: Missouri, first in nothing else, remains the nation’s puppy-mill central. And with the issue laid to rest, further legislative reform seems out of the question.
The provision that would have had the most immediate impact on some of the worst of the mills—limiting to 50 the number of dogs in an “operation”—was completely removed. So were specific requirements regarding kennel conditions, exercise, time between breeding cycles, and other humane concerns addressed by Proposition B.
On one important provision, the amount of space provided to dogs in their enclosures, Nixon’s compromise gives puppy mills five years to comply with new standards, eliminating the November deadline provided by the citizens’ ballot (although newly constructed enclosures must comply sooner). That means four more years of substandard housing, albeit slightly less substandard than what exists now. Again, a fine compromise, unless you’re the dog.
In place of most of the specific requirements in the ballot measure are phrases such as “what is recommended by a licensed veterinarian as appropriate for the species, age and health of the dog.” Or “in accordance with regulations promulgated by the agriculture department.”
Understand that many veterinarians—especially outstate—have a vested interest in the success of dog-breeding “operations.” When the Missouri Veterinary Medical Association came out against Proposition B, it claimed that existing laws were adequate and that Missouri’s puppy-mill “problem” was the result of lax enforcement.
But why haven’t these same veterinarians—the animals’ presumed protectors—been speaking out before about the need to enforce these laws? Where have they been?
Certainly, the veterinarians weren’t alone in fighting Proposition B. Powerful groups such as the Missouri Farm Bureau claimed that national animal activists had descended upon the state. Using an NRA-style nose-in-the-camel’s tent mentality, they warned darkly that hogs, chicken, and cattle would be next. (Being patriotic, the group didn’t specifically mention camels.)
To be sure, many dog breeders are farmers who raise dogs for supplemental income, or they are individuals who turned to breeding after giving up farming.
The breeders aren’t just an industry in rural Missouri; they’re an ingrained part of it, so the Farm Bureau support is no surprise.
That doesn’t excuse the atrocities of puppy mills, but it does help explain why it’s so important to the breeders to keep regulations close to home. This became about protecting home turf as much as anything, and when Proposition B sought to bring Missouri up to national norms for canine care, the fight was on.
Still, relying upon the subjective judgment of the breeders’ own veterinarians, closer to home, is a bad strategy for seriously altering the puppy-mill landscape. For that matter, so is placing trust in a state bureaucracy that has failed animals for decades.
In fairness to Nixon, he tried to make the best of an awful situation. And there’s evidence that his administration had already done more than his predecessors in cracking down on unlicensed facilities.
Nixon continues to call for better conditions for the dogs. But in announcing his “Missouri solution,” he also complained that the state didn’t need the help of “outsiders” in addressing its problems, a nod to the breeders.
The reference was to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which chose to focus on Missouri with Proposition B because of the state’s horrendous national reputation. The organization became quite a lightning rod for the Farm Bureau and others.
HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told me he remembers being hated by state legislators for a successful campaign in 1998 to outlaw cockfighting, a surreal struggle “that shows you how retrograde the legislature is.”
But Pacelle says this year is even worse.
“The only reason the measure was needed was that the legislature had neither the resolve nor the ethical compass to do anything about the situation,” he says. “And when the voters took it into their own hands, it thwarted the will of the people before the new law could even take effect.”
The best answer going forward, he says, would be a new ballot initiative—this one a proposed constitutional amendment—that would require a majority of 75 percent of both houses of the legislature to overturn a statewide ballot vote. Called the Voter Protection Act (VPA), its wording was approved for circulation by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
It’s an unusual coalition, ranging from the conservative National Taxpayers Union to the HSUS, according to its website (protectvoters.com). Whether it makes it to the November ballot, or any other, remains to be seen, but the repeal of Proposition B may be the fuel needed.
This, of course, goes beyond the animal kingdom. In 1999, another Proposition B—to allow carrying of concealed weapons—was rejected by voters (with nearly the same margin and the same rural-urban split as the puppy-mill measure). Four years later, the legislature ignored the outcome and passed the measure into law.
This year, legislators tried overturning a 2007 initiative that tied the minimum wage to the consumer price index. Previously, they rewrote a 2008 measure requiring utilities to increase their investment in renewable energy.
As Pacelle points out, if 51 percent of lawmakers agreed with an initiative petition, there wouldn’t be a need to pass one in the first place. He says 11 of the other 20 states that have initiative processes have safeguards in place to prevent legislatures from nullifying initiatives with simple majorities.
Government by referendum isn’t the greatest format in the world, but if ever there was a place to restrict politicians’ ability to overturn the will of the people, it’s in Missouri. The bar needs to be raised for legislative reversal of democracy.
Expect puppy mills and big-moneyed interests on all sides to oppose this idea. Their control of the legislature through campaign funding and friendship far outstrips their influence over statewide voters. So passing this reform will be quite a struggle for the would-be reformers.
Unless, that is, we let dogs vote.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
