In the weeks after the “Puppy Mill Initiative” passed in November, the face of a dog that couldn’t have looked happier if it had caught a squirrel was emblazoned on the Yes! on Prop B website (yesonpropb.com). At the time, Missourians who voted Proposition B into law by a slim 1.6 percent could be forgiven if they thought dogs had been spared from inhumane conditions, that Missouri would no longer be known as the “puppy mill capital of the U.S.”
But was it really that simple?
Advocates on both sides of the issue say November’s vote was just the beginning.
For Proposition B’s supporters, there could not have been a more iconic and emotional issue put to a vote in 2010 than the treatment of puppies. For some of them, it remains to solidify what was won at the polls by lobbying the state legislature to ensure Proposition B isn’t neutered.
Meanwhile, some state legislators are keen to revisit the new law after the legislature convenes January 6. For those who opposed Proposition B, the issue is a little different: It’s a matter of already-put-upon farmers struggling to survive in hard times, they say, and of urban voters who don’t know or care about what agriculture entails.
“I’m sure this is going to be one of the hotter issues in Jeff City, besides the budget,” says state Rep. Ed Schieffer, a Democrat from District 11, which covers an area just north of O’Fallon, Mo., and who sits on the Agriculture Policy Committee.
Proposition B, which takes effect in November 2011, will apply to any commercial breeding operation with more than 10 female breeding dogs, limiting its size to no more than 50 breeding dogs and mandating more space and more access to the outdoors for the canines, among other things.
The proposition was crafted and advanced by a coalition of animal-welfare groups, including the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Humane Society of Missouri, and the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation. That last group, MAAL, is a private nonprofit founded in 1990 to lobby for laws that protect the state’s nonhuman animals; it’s the only organized animal-welfare lobbying group in the state, its website claims. MAAL executive director Bob Baker says it expects to bear the burden of protecting Proposition B in Jefferson City this year.
“All of our dreams for the dogs have come true,” Baker said in a signed message on MAAL’s website after Proposition B’s passage. Discussing it, he’s a little less sanguine: “There’s talk in the legislature of trying to repeal or amend it,” he says. “Unfortunately, they’re not going to pay attention to the will of the voters, so it’s going to start all over again.”
For state Sen. Bill Stouffer, a Republican from central Missouri and the vice chairman of the Agriculture, Food Production, and Outdoor Resources Committee, it’s not so much the will of the voters that’s at issue here—no one disputes that a slender majority passed Proposition B. Rather, it’s at least in part a matter of who passed it and how it was passed.
“I think if every legislator voted their district, you would find that it would fail miserably,” says Stouffer. His district—encompassing Carroll, Chariton, Cooper, Howard, Lafayette, Macon, Ray, and Saline counties, and a slice of Clay County—“voted against it about 70–30. When you look at it, it passed in very few legislative districts. I think there’s a misunderstanding here. When you look at where it didn’t pass, that’s where people actually raise animals, and they understand what it takes.”
People who raise animals for a living already put the welfare of their animals above all else, Stouffer contends. For him, Proposition B’s provisions amount to an unwarranted intrusion by government into the business of hardworking people who are just trying to get by, done at the behest of city-dwellers. “One of the things you know if you raise animals is that there have been tons of weddings and graduations and other very important things in your life that you’ve missed because the animals need care,” he says. “And you take care of them before you do anything else. I think that’s one of the things that’s not understood in the urban environment. I think we got a decision that was misinformed.”
Dog breeders “are a great economic boon to these rural areas, and we have a hard time getting jobs out here,” says state
Rep. Tom Loehner, whose rural district lies near Jefferson City and who chairs the House Agriculture Policy Committee. “People out here who know what it is to raise an animal for money, they voted it down,” he says. “It’s a huge difference raising an animal for a hobby or a pet than it is to raise one for a living. People in our urban areas have been so much removed from agriculture that they don’t understand. They were told by numerous advertisements that this wasn’t going to affect the [dog breeders] that are doing it right, and that’s not correct. It’s going to affect everybody that commercially raises dogs in the state of Missouri, period.”
This would seem to be precisely the kind of resistance Baker anticipates. Politicians who want to gut Proposition B wouldn’t be so artless as to come after it under the banner of cruelty to animals, after all. But the issue is the same, Baker says. “For us, it’s just, why would you want to do this anyway, repeal this? It’s all about”—and here he measures each word—“the humane treatment of animals.
“These are dogs, for God’s sake. They take a lot more care than chickens and cows and pigs, and they’re just not being given that care.
“I’ve been investigating these dog-breeding facilities since 1980. I’ve been to over a thousand facilities throughout the country and several hundred in Missouri,” he says. “And these facilities, it’s all about how much money they can make. They’re not selecting the breed stock carefully; they’re looking for the cheapest way to breed puppies. When a dog gets sick, they just let it languish without care, hoping it will get better. And if it doesn’t, they’ll replace it.
“It’s just blatant cruelty.”
According to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, there are approximately 1,450 licensed dog breeders in Missouri. No one knows for sure how many unlicensed breeders there are; estimates range from several hundred to more than
a thousand.
The law that regulates the commercial breeding of dogs, the Animal Care Facilities Act, took effect in 1994. It’s become a touchstone for legislators who worry about what Proposition B will do to commercial dog breeding. They say that under ACFA’s aegis, farmers have been able to survive by breeding dogs.
“We’ve had tremendous stress in the hog industry and the cattle industry,” Stouffer says. “The way families have stayed on farms is, they’ve branched out into the dog-breeding industry. And they’ve done a tremendous job with it. There’s a ton of kids who have put themselves through college by breeding dogs. It’s a $4 billion business in the state of Missouri, when you look at all the vet services and whatnot. And it’s going to leave a big hole if we allow it to go away—which it will, if we don’t leave it the way it is. It’s going to eliminate the dog industry.”
“I had several people call me after the election saying, ‘What can we do?’” Loehner says. “They were just devastated. Some of them were talking, ‘Well, we’re going to move to another state.’ And I said, ‘At least give me until the end of this session to get something done.’ You’ve got to try to help them. I’ve got a family next to me, there’s five of them taking care of 200 females, probably. So they’re going to have to sell down to 50 and three of those children are going to have to try to find a job—and you know how hard it is to try to find a job in this economy. So what are you going to do?
“My idea would be to grandfather in licensed facilities,” he says. “Any licensed facility that has not been in violation under the existing law would be exempt.”
There is a certain irony to this, at least for Baker. MAAL was formed to combat puppy mills. It lobbied to get the current law passed. The same forces that oppose Proposition B today opposed the current law in ’92, he says.
It was “what we could get passed in that time,” he says. “It required them to have licenses. If you complied with that standard of care, the current standard of care, the dogs would survive—for the most part. But the idea was that we would go back and try to amend it. What we’re trying to do with Prop B is to get them to comply with a humane standard of care.
“I disagree that it’s going to eliminate the dog-breeding industry,” he continues. “It’s going to eliminate the breeders that are in it for a quick buck. It will protect consumers and it will protect responsible breeders, who won’t have to compete with disreputable breeders. Right now, we have the moniker of the ‘puppy mill capital of the country.’ Once we get rid of that, it will be good for everybody.”
Labels such as “puppy mill” and “animal-rights activist” played a significant role in the first round of the Proposition B battle. It was fought with images as much as incontrovertible facts, and it was a campaign in which the pro forces heavily outspent the opposition.
In the second round, currently under way in Jefferson City, money could be a less overt lever. Imagery will still count, though.
In what might be a taste of things to come, Loehner talks about the financial burden he believes commercial dog breeders will have to shoulder if and when Proposition B goes into effect as written. The size of some kennels will be reduced, he says, while the costs of care will increase. And then Loehner unlimbers the big guns.
“To have a good kennel and everything, and keep it clean like they’re requiring, you’re going to have to try to be there all the time,” he says. “And with the number of dogs you’re allowed to have, that’s going to be pretty hard to do, unless the price of pups goes up. So then you’ve got this grandmother, she just wants a little dog, you know? Just a little dog—and how’s she going to be able to afford that now?”
