Consumers need to get wise - now
Last night’s shocking exposé of puppy farming by BBC Scotland followed the supply chain in Scotland and Ireland, and the puppy farmers getting rich from a ruthless business. The programme exposed pet traffickers and uncovered breeding facilities operating on a scale that experts did not believe existed - until now.
A third of all puppies bought today are believed to have come from puppy farms.
Reporter Sam Poling’s six-month investigation into the multi-million million pound trade included meeting a Scottish puppy dealer who tried to sell her a puppy in a car park in a 45-second transaction. Despite having been prosecuted and banned in the past, it appeared that this dealer continued to trade over the internet using a variety of different identities.
Other dealers in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, were shown sourcing pups of all different breeds from intensive puppy farms in the Republic of Ireland, bringing vanloads into the UK via Northern Ireland every week.
And a massive breeding unit in Northern Ireland contained literally hundreds of dogs, apparently stressed and traumatised and deprived of even basic socialisation and human contact by a mechanised feeding system.
The head of the Scottish SPCA Specialist Investigations Unit described the profits that criminals can make in the industry, with specialist breeds, such as French Bulldogs, selling for up to £1,500 in cash. So the motive for determinedly pursuing the trade is clear. The mystery is why members of the public - who cannot be unaware of the concerns about puppy farms - continue to hand over large sums of cash in shady car parks to strangers for a little live creature with no paperwork. Why they risk falling in love and then losing their pet when it succumbs – almost inevitably – to disease and death.
Coincidentally, a Eurogroup for Animals initiative to ensure that all EU breeders and sellers of pets have to register themselves from 2020 onwards was backed by MEPs, Member States and the European Commission this week. An amendment to the forthcoming EU Animal Health regulation -due to come into force later this year - will prevent Member States allowing groups of operators involved in pet breeding and selling to continue their activities without registration.
OneKind welcomes the strengthening of the Animal Health regulation, but it still has to be implemented and the law still has to filter down to the enforcement authorities and the puppy dealers. Legislation is essential but it is not a cure-all. As long ago as 2004 I worked with Christine Grahame MSP to create legislation designed to regulate the importation of puppies to be sold on by dealers in Scotland. Yet the programme showed consistent breaches of the simple welfare measures provided by the law when it was finally passed in 2009.
Sheila Voas, the Scottish Government Chief Veterinary Officer, commented on the programme footage: "It was barbaric. It was a production line. It was using animals as a commodity."
As Sam Poling wrote yesterday in her blog:
“If, when buying a puppy, we did it with our heads rather than our hearts, perhaps the trade wouldn't be as profitable for those abusing not just the system but those at the centre of it all - the dogs.”
This is a disgraceful trade that must be shunned. Why is it so hard to get that message over?
The Dog Factory is available to view at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05qqf00 until 14 May.