Pet Store Expose

I really despise pet stores that sell puppies. I mean, DESPISE. I certainly understand retailers needing to make enough money to stay in business, but to knowingly support an industry that churns out dogs like a factory, and then make a lot of money from it is just VILE.

Pets of Bel Air, a high-end pet store with three locations in Southern California, has just been exposed by the Humane Society of the United States as falsely representing where their puppies come from, i.e., not from private breeders as they'd so adamantly been claiming.

Here is an excerpt from today's HSUS press conference at L.A. Animal Services:

The HSUS reviewed records documenting that at least 28 commercial breeders in Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma have supplied Pets of Bel Air with puppies. HSUS undercover investigators also visited five of the suppliers that store management insisted are "private breeders" and not "puppy mills." Each of those five locations, investigators discovered, are actually mass-breeding operations that house 100 to 300 dogs.

State and federal inspection reports examined by HSUS investigators reveal that some of Pets of Bel Air breeder/dealers have been cited for their failure to comply with animal-welfare regulations, including inaccurate or non-existent recordkeeping; inadequate shelter from the elements; rusted, filthy and overcrowded cages; leaky roofs; feces-encrusted runs; filthy food bowls and, at one Missouri puppy mill, a leaking waste disposal system that "allows the waste to flow out onto the ground and on other animals." Two of the breeders did not have a USDA license, which is required for commercial breeding operations that sell puppies to pet stores.

The HSUS investigation, which took place earlier this year inside Pets of Bel Air and at several of the Midwestern puppy mills that supplied the store, reveals that Pets of Bel Air employees are encouraged by management to be dishonest with patrons about some of the animals' origins and medical conditions. Employees deny, for example, that any dogs come from puppy mills, and when puppies in the store are sick, Pets of Bel Air employees are encouraged to downplay the seriousness of their illness.

VILE.

Humane Society of the United States article