The Alliance Speaks is a fabulous newsletter written by the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation. Here is a wonderful piece they just recently wrote :
Puppy mill cruelty has been a chronic & pervasive problem in Missouri since the 1960's when franchise pet store chains sprouted up across the country. In contrast to mom & pop pet stores that occasionally sold a puppy from an accidental litter or from a local breeder, pet store franchisers saw puppies as a great marketing tool. These cute puppies were not only a way of drawing customers into the store but provided new sources of revenue to the store, not only from the sale of the puppy, but also from the sale of all the pet supplies to go along with the new pet.
In order to stock puppies for this new market being created by pet store franchisers, a new source of dogs had to be found. Most responsible breeders refused to sell their offspring to pet stores and such puppies were too expensive to meet the high markup process that pet stores desired. Stepping in to provide a constant source of cheap puppies for the pet store chains, were small mid-western farmers and out of the way rural breeders who were more than willing to mass produce dogs as cheap as possible without regard for the health or welfare of the puppies and the mother dogs.
As a result of this en masse breeding of dogs, solely for profit, cruel puppy mills quickly cropped up all over the Midwest. As neighboring states such as Illinois, Iowa and Kansas passed laws regulating the commercial dog breeding industry, the number of puppy mills increased dramatically in MISSOURI AND SOON THE STATE EARNED THE MONIKER OF " PUPPY MILL CAPITAL OF THE COUNTRY." In response to the horrific cruelty associated with such breeding establishments, the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation ( The Alliance) was established in 1990. The Alliance immediately began to work towards the passage of legislation to require puppy mills to be licensed, inspected and regulated by the Missouri Department of Agriculture.
This goal was achieved with the passage of the Animal Care Facilities Act (ACFA) in 1992. ACFA was a major victory for animal welfare advocates as it finally brought the puppy mill industry in Missouri under some type of regulatory control. While the standards of care enacted by ACFA were bare minimum requirements, it at least mandated some semblance of care for animals confined in cruel puppy mills. These state audits exposed an appalling and chronic lack of enforcement. The first audit uncovered, among other things, that the inspectors were not even provided inspection reports on which to cite potential violations. All three state auditor evaluations revealed that enforcement efforts were seriously lacking and the law was having little impact on substandard dog breeding operations as offenders were rarely, if ever, punished.
In addition to reviews by the state auditor's office, the Oversight Division for the Missouri Legislature also conducted an evaluation of ACFA in 2000. It revealed that since the passage of the law in 1992, "state officials had not revoked a single license of a commercial dog breeder, no matter how horrendous the conditions." It was no wonder that Missouri continued to be known as the "puppy mill capital of the country." In fact, at one time, Missouri had more puppy mills than the next three states combined.
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