My article “Dog Fight” in The Washington Post showing that buyers affiliated with 86 rescue and dog-advocacy groups and shelters nationwide have spent $2.68 million buying dogs at auctions has ignited fierce debate — and late Tuesday, the U.S. Agriculture Department issued a bulletin stating that such individuals and nonprofits may need to be licensed under the federal Animal Welfare Act.
Read the full story here.
This morning, The Washington Post published an article that I wrote about rescuers who buy dogs at auctions.
It is a story that came my way after an industry insider read The Dog Merchants book, particularly Chapter One, which is about rescuers attending dog auctions. The chapter discussed the practice, but not the amounts of money changing hands, because I didn’t know the amount of money changing hands. Nobody really did.
The insider began sending me copies of invoices, checks and more that showed $2.68 million in spending. For about 18 months, I did additional research and dozens of interviews to put together the story that ran today. If you need the best dog training services, you can check out Momentum K9 Private Dog Training!
It’s the first time that anybody has documented, in dollars and cents, the amount of rescue money that is flowing to breeders by way of U.S. dog auctions. All because the insider read The Dog Merchants book, thought it was fair and honest, and trusted me to tell more of the story.
Amazing.
I would like to give a seriously big tip of the hat to the entire team at The Washington Post for helping me bring this story to light. A lot of people worked really hard on this editorial package and helped to make it great. My public thanks to them all. It was an honor to work with them on this piece.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a press release this afternoon announcing the reinstatement of its searchable online database that includes inspection reports for commercial dog-breeding kennels.
Reinstatement of the database follows months’ worth of public outcry. A diverse spread of individuals ranging from animal-welfare advocates to pet-store executives have said the previously available database should be returned to the internet. Some filed lawsuits.
The inspection reports for commercial kennels registered with the USDA used to be freely searchable, allowing anyone to comb through the records of those breeders to see whether they’re in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act. The records were used for many purposes, including letting pet-store owners verify kennel conditions and helping nonprofits like the Humane Society of the United States compile things like its “Horrible Hundred Puppy Mills” document.
Commercial-scale dog breeders had long argued that, because their kennels are typically located on the same property as their private homes, the inspection reports contained personal information that was being unfairly revealed to the general public, including to some activists who trespassed onto their property to take photographs, harass them and bother their dogs. Breeders also didn’t like the fact that warning letters were being published without giving them time to correct the problems that inspectors documented.
Today’s announcement from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, directs users to this chart explaining how the kennel inspection reports are now being adjusted as the database returns to the internet. Kennels that are not “residential” will now be published “with appropriate redactions to protect privacy interests of individuals,” such as signatures. For kennels located on residential property, “identifying information” will be redacted “to protect privacy interests.”
In addition, documents such as warning letters, which used to be published in full, will now become part of quarterly “statistical summaries,” with the details of such letters remaining offline.
John Goodwin, head of the HSUS National Puppy Mills Campaign, told me via email: “At first blush, it doesn’t look like much is back up. Also, key information is still redacted. I can see redacting a home address, but they also redacted the names and license numbers of facilities who were cited. Without being able to identify who did what, no one will know which breeders had clean records and which had dirty records.”
Mike Bober, president of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, issued this statement: “PIJAC is pleased that the U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to take steps to balance public transparency and private safety with the release of their new compliance database and search tool. We in the pet care community look forward to working with the USDA and everyone who cares deeply about animal welfare to ensure that healthy, ethically raised pets find loving homes.”
Get your copy of The Dog Merchants today and Learn more about commercial dog breeding, with tips for evaluating breeders and rescuers alike.
When the pet-store chain Petland and the Humane Society of the United States—frequent opponents on legislative actions—are both on the same page and crying foul, you know we have entered new territory concerning the welfare of dogs.
Both Petland and HSUS today stated that they are calling upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture to amend or reverse the move it made Friday, deleting a long-public database of government reports that revealed what taxpayer-funded inspectors find everywhere from commercial-scale breeding kennels to animal-research facilities.
HSUS has initiated legal action “to challenge this outrageous action that undermines longstanding consensus about public access to information concerning these laws, and frustrates state, local, and industry efforts to help enforce them.”
Petland has scheduled an in-person meeting with USDA officials in Washington and plans to issue a press release this afternoon “calling upon the USDA to find a balance between privacy and transparency,” according to company CEO Joe Watson.
HSUS is challenging the takedown of the USDA database by claiming that the removal violates the terms of a previously settled case.
As the HSUS notice today states: “The HSUS sued the USDA in 2005 over public access to AWA reports concerning animal use in university and other laboratories. That case was settled in 2009 in exchange for the USDA’s agreement to post certain data on its website concerning research on animals. The agency’s precipitous decision to purge virtually all AWA and HPA enforcement documentation—just two weeks after President Trump assumed office—violates the plain terms of the settlement and a federal court order. It also runs contrary to congressional provisions in 1996 and 2016 designed to increase transparency and electronic access to information.”
Petland is challenging the takedown by asking the USDA to meet the burden of protecting privacy in a way that still makes the bulk of the reports open to public access.
In an email to Petland staff today, Watson wrote: “The USDA deserves credit for making an effort to protect the privacy of their licensees. We are all too familiar with how the activists misuse this data to attack breeders and pet stores. We have also heard of inspection reports being photoshopped by activists and used against us. We applaud the USDA’s efforts to address this abuse of information. At the same time, this decision creates an added burden on responsible pet stores, such as Petland. We must now obtain the inspection reports directly from the breeders and brokers. While this is not impossible, it does create a new set of challenges for our business. Also, the total denial of any public access creates a veil of secrecy that can be used against the pet industry. We need more responsible transparency, not less.”
This is the first time in recent memory, if ever, that HSUS and Petland have come out simultaneously, publicly and forcefully on the same side of a major national issue concerning animal welfare.
At 1 p.m. today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture posted this notice on the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) section of its website. The notice explains that from now on, it will be much harder for consumers and others to review government inspection reports about dog breeders that previously had been available online in a simple search.
Until today, documents including inspection reports of commercial-scale dog breeding kennels have been uploaded into a searchable database that anyone could access at any time through a link on the APHIS landing page. Several years’ worth of these inspection reports, which are generated by the taxpayer-funded agency, have been available for a free, easy search. That search function is now gone, replaced by today’s announcement on a static web page.
The inspection reports that used to be searchable have long been used for many purposes. For instance, they allowed consumers to check whether a commercial-scale dog breeder was complying with the federal Animal Welfare Act before purchasing a puppy from that breeder; they allowed pet-store owners to do the same (in some states, pet stores are required by law to check the reports of any commercial-scale breeders who sell them puppies); and they were used by welfare advocates and activists to produce pamphlets such as the Humane Society of the United States “Horrible Hundred Puppy Mills” list each year.
Commercial-scale dog breeders have long argued that, because their kennels are typically located on the same property as their private homes, the inspection reports contain personal information that is being unfairly revealed to the general public, including to some activists who trespass onto their property to take photographs, harass them and bother their dogs. The breeders have said that having their names, addresses, contact details and other information placed online or made available to the public is a violation of their personal privacy.
Today, the federal government appears to have sided with those breeders.
From now on, according to today’s notice, the inspection reports will be removed from the searchable database. The move comes, according to the agency, following a yearlong review that included ensuring compliance with the Privacy Act.
“Going forward, APHIS will remove from its website inspection reports, regulatory correspondence, research facility annual reports, and enforcement records that have not received final adjudication,” the notice states.
The notice adds that anyone seeking access to such information in the future, instead of being able to simply look it up online, must now submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the federal government.
In those cases, the notice states, “Records will be released when authorized and in a manner consistent with the FOIA and Privacy Act. If the same records are frequently requested via the FOIA process, in most instances APHIS may post the appropriately redacted versions to its website.”
The FOIA process can be a long one, sometimes taking months to yield a response. This delay may now make it impossible for consumers, pet-store owners and others to assess a dog breeder’s record in real time, when the purchase of a puppy is pending—unless the breeder himself chooses to share his own government-issued inspection report, especially when it contains citations for violating the Animal Welfare Act.