Post Dispatch Writes......

In a political season noted for unlimited money and unhinged rhetoric, Proposition B sets the standard in Missouri.

Depending on who’s telling the story, Prop B is either a modest regulatory framework to ensure that heartless dog breeders provide adequate care to their animals, or it is a gigantic conspiracy that ultimately would aim to outlaw animal ownership.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But that’s not always easy for voters to decipher.

For decades, Missouri has had a well-earned reputation as the nation’s puppy mill capital. It is home to about a third of the nation’s federally licensed dog breeders and the country’s largest wholesaler of puppies. Many more breeders operate here without state or federal licenses.

Puppies bred in Missouri turn up in pet stores around the country, sometimes with serious behavioral or health problems that are related to the conditions under which they were raised.

That’s not a reputation that reflects well on the state — or on any of its reputable breeders. On Nov. 2, voters will have an opportunity to change it.

Proposition B, the “Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act,” would significantly toughen regulations on dog breeders. It caps the number of breeding females at any one operation and requires that breeders provide sufficient food and water, veterinary care, adequate housing and enough room in cages so that dogs can “stretch freely, lie down and fully extend his or her limbs.”

Current state regulations allow dogs to be kept in wire mesh cages stacked atop each other so that feces and urine produced by one animal can drip or fall into the cages below. Proposition B would end that.

Opponents say it would put legitimate breeders out of business, costing jobs and tax revenue. They insist that laws already exist to adequately protect dogs. But, as a long string of federal and state investigations and animal rescues has demonstrated, that simply is not the case.

Breeders and agricultural interests can’t defend those practices. They’ve responded instead by attacking the Humane Society of the United States, which helped get the initiative on the ballot and has contributed more than $2 million to the campaign to pass it.

But it isn’t only the Humane Society that has provided evidence of the need for tougher regulations. The Better Business Bureau of Eastern Missouri issued a report last spring that documented scores of unresolved consumer complaints about Missouri dog breeders.

In the face of that evidence, breeders enlisted Tea Party favorite Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher of Ohio to argue that Proposition B is “just a stepping stone” toward a future “with no animal ownership, no meat to eat, no pets, no hunting, no fishing, no service animals.”

Anita Andrews, executive director of the opposition group “The Alliance For Truth,” warns that Proposition B would “put in a standard for dogs that’s higher than the standard for kids.” No objective reading of the initiative bears out such wild-eyed interpretations. None of these claims is true.

Voters should vote Yes for Proposition B.