by Rory Kress
While surely there are responsible breeders among the thousands who hold a USDA license, the law does not require much of them to stay up and running. The price to obtain a license is relatively small and can range from $30 to $750, depending on how much money the breeder’s operation brings in. Once bred, these dogs are sold in pet shops, online, and in newspaper ads. Like it or not, for many of us, these are the dogs we’re curling up with every night in bed. With most designer puppies selling for anywhere between $1,000 to even $3,000 each, it’s clear there’s money being made on the backs of dogs just like Izzie without adequate oversight or protection that takes their unique needs into account.
So where did I rescue Izzie from?
Sure, she came from Long Island—but I did no rescuing. And when I was told that she came from a USDA-licensed breeder, like so many others, I heard what I wanted to.
I bought the story. I bought the dog.
While my story begins with Izzie, the story of our nation’s laws regulating the breeding of dogs begins with Pepper.
In 1965, Pepper was a five-year-old Dalmatian living on the Lakavage family’s eighty-acre farm just north of Allentown, Pennsylvania. In June, the children let her out back for her evening walk. When the usual time came to fetch her, she did not return. They called her name into the night. She didn’t come running.
Pepper was gone.
In this era before Facebook and microchips, the Lakavages had to conduct the search for Pepper in person: papering nearby towns with MISSING posters and chasing down leads from their hometown in Pennsylvania to a farm in upstate New York to no avail. As the family scoured the region for “Peppy,” she was locked away where they would never find her: in the bowels of a laboratory at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. There, she was used for the testing of an experimental heart surgery to install a pacemaker. She died on the table and was cremated, just nine days after she disappeared from her own backyard. By the time state police and humane societies got wind of the Lakavages’ story and pieced together Pepper’s trajectory—broker by broker—to the operating table, it was too late.2
Julia Lakavage, Pepper’s owner, later summed up her grief to a local paper.
“Dogs are like family members,” she said. “[They’re] children that don’t grow up. They’re almost human.”3
The story struck a nerve with dog owners across the country. At the time, there was no regulated network of breeders to supply the nation’s laboratories with dogs or other animals to be used in experiments. Very few of the estimated one hundred thousand dogs used in laboratories every year at that time came from facilities breeding the animals explicitly for that purpose. Most simply came from the pound or were stolen from their owner’s backyards or off the sidewalk.
“There was something called pound seizure going on. If dogs and cats ended up at the pound and they were not adopted, then instead of killing them—if they were healthy enough—laboratories would buy them,” animal law expert Joyce Tischler tells me. She’s the cofounder and general counsel for the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and is known in her field as the mother of animal law. “[Pound seizure] was definitely in full swing in the 1950s and the 1960s, and there are still some places in the United States where pounds will sell their dogs and cats to laboratories to use in research.”4
But as shocking as it is to hear that pounds are still engaging in this sale of dogs to laboratories today, it was upsetting to Americans even sixty years ago.
“It was a very controversial thing that the pounds were doing because they are supposed to be a safe place for animals. But also what was happening was that there were people making money from stealing people’s dogs and cats off the street, from the backyard, and then selling them to research laboratories,” Tischler says.
As the now-famous Sports Illustrated article from 1965 covering Pepper’s story put it, the plucky Dalmatian’s downfall was likely due to the very traits that made her such a beloved pet: she was trusting, friendly to strangers, and probably easy for a dognapper to coax into his truck without a fight, bite, or bark.5
But Pepper’s plight won more than popular sympathy. It also attracted the attention of Capitol Hill; Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and Representative Joseph Resnick of New York took up Pepper’s battle. Before the Dalmatian’s fate was even known for certain, Congressman Resnick had already decided he would introduce a bill to the House that would prevent the theft of dogs and require records be kept on the breeding and housing of the animals destined for life—and more likely than not, death—in a lab.
“That was the initial impetus for the Animal Welfare Act: to deal with these dog thefts and cat thefts. When people’s companion animals were ending up in research, it was really shaking dog and cat owners,” Tischler says.
Representative Resnick’s bill went on to become the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, putting the federal government in charge of licensing and tracking the dealing of dogs and other animals destined for research facilities. Later shortened to be called the Animal Welfare Act, or the AWA, this piece of legislation appointed the USDA and later its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) arm to enforce the regulations it set forth. Within a few years, this legislation would be expanded to encompass dogs bred to be pets.
Oddly, in 2002, the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal statute protecting lab animals, was amended to exempt rats, mice, and birds from its oversight. As a result, 95 percent of animals used in today’s research are not protected by the law originally known as the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act. However, despite the fact that the USDA was tasked with enforcing it, the Animal Welfare Act has never been expanded to cover the care and handling of animals we most typically associate with agriculture: cows, chickens, pigs, and the like. And from the very beginning, the USDA has had a complicated relationship with the Animal Welfare Act because, by definition, the agency is historically cozy with the agricultural community.
“If you look at the cases today involving the USDA and the Animal Welfare Act, the USDA refers to regulated industry as its customers—its customers! So [the USDA] has a long history of having been coopted by the very industry that it’s supposed to be regulating,” Tischler says.
The agency did not deny this charge but told me it has many customers to answer to—including the breeding industry and the animals themselves.
So while the Animal Welfare Act is now primarily a document concerning the breeding and handling of dogs and other pets, it remains entirely insufficient even in this specialized area. Because when it comes to ensuring that dogs bred for life as our companions are brought into the world safely and respectfully, animal welfare experts tell me the legislation does not go nearly far enough.
Bioethicist Bernie Rollin, a professor of animal sciences and bioethics at Colorado State University, has a long history of attempting to reform the Animal Welfare Act. In 1982, he testified before Congress, calling for a sea change in how lab animals were treated, to take their pain into account, and require the use of anesthetic for the first time.
“I wrote the federal laws for laboratory animals that passed in 1985 to require pain control of animals that you hurt because it was not flat done. It was not done,” Rollin tells me, still disgusted by this policy omission.6
As a result of his own involvement in amending the statute, Rollin is very familiar with where it is lacking.
“It’s a bent reed to rely on if you want to make sure the animals are treated well,” he says. “It’s a biblical term: a bent reed won’t hold anything up.”
Among animal welfare advocates, the very name Animal Welfare Act is seen, at best, as a misnomer if not a cruel joke. Mary LaHay is the president of Iowa Friends of Companion Animals. The Hawkeye State has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of puppy mills, and LaHay has dedicated her career to shutting them down. She recalls a conversation with one of the attorneys on the board of her organization as they were working through the regulations in the Animal Welfare A
ct.
“[The attorney] stopped and looked up and said, ‘This isn’t the Animal Welfare Act. This is the Keep ’Em in Business Act,’” LaHay says. “That’s [the USDA’s] purpose: their focus is to keep people making money… And if that means some dogs suffer in the process, so be it.”7
So what, exactly, are these rules and regulations that the Animal Welfare Act lays out for dog-breeding operations around the country? And are they really as inadequate as these animal welfare advocates tell me?
I took the Animal Welfare Act’s list of regulations for commercial dog breeding to Dr. Karen Overall to help me better understand.
Overall ran the prestigious behavior clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School of Medicine for more than a decade and is currently a senior research scientist there. As a veterinarian, specialist in behavioral medicine, and a PhD, she has devoted her life’s work to researching the neurobehavioral genetics of dogs and the ways in which canines develop normal or abnormal behaviors. She is a frequent consultant for lawmakers and various local, state, and international governments on canine-related legislation. In 2008, she was appointed to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Canine Health Board and has been instrumental in the commercial breeding reform efforts in the Keystone State. One by one, I ran each of the regulations in the Animal Welfare Act for commercial dog breeding by Overall’s scientific mind.8
CAGE SIZE
Animal Welfare Act
Find the mathematical square of the sum of the length of the dog in inches (measured from the tip of its nose to the base of its tail) plus 6 inches; then divide the product by 144. The calculation is: (length of the dog in inches + 6) x (length of the dog in inches + 6) = required floor space in square inches. Required floor space in inches / 144 = required floor space in square feet.
Translation
For those of us who didn’t excel in math, this is the Animal Welfare Act’s formula for calculating the size of a dog’s enclosure in a breeding facility. The space must be secure and free of debris with no rusting or jagged edges. If housing one dog alone, this equation roughly works out to a minimum space requirement that measures only about six inches longer than the dog itself and six inches taller than the dog’s full height when standing.
Let’s use my dog as an example: Izzie is twenty-six inches from the tip of her nose to the base of her docked tail. Using the Animal Welfare Act’s equation, she’s entitled to about seven square feet of cage space for the duration of her entire life. That amounts to a cage that’s just a little over two and a half feet by two and a half feet—or thirty-two inches by thirty-two inches.
When I attempted to launch into the finer points of this regulation with Overall, she was quick to bring my mathematical dithering to a quick halt.
“Stop right there,” she said. “Dogs by nature are not cage animals… No dog natively would choose a cage to be raised in or on. And no cage adequately meets a domestic canine’s cognitive or physical needs. Period.”9
I then asked Overall why the Animal Welfare Act would go to the trouble of painstakingly specifying calculations for how to determine cage size if it was simply impossible to humanely keep a dog in this fashion. Surely, I insisted, there must be some science behind those carefully dictated numbers.
“They have made it sound like science, but it is pseudoscience,” Overall scoffed, pointing out that there is no scientific grounding in any of the current cage size requirements. For its part, the USDA has confirmed to me that the cage size regulations were based on common sense, given that there was not much science to go off at the time the Animal Welfare Act was written. However, unlike the authors of the Animal Welfare Act, my own, personal common sense best aligns with Overall’s scientific opinion that no dog belongs in a cage.
“It’s like the climate change deniers [who say] ‘Well, the science isn’t in…’ Well, the science is in, the science has been in, and the science that’s coming out is nailing nails in their coffin like crazy,” said Overall. “You know, I could be talking to the local meeting of the Flat Earth Society.”
EXERCISE
Animal Welfare Act
Dogs housed individually. Dogs over 12 weeks of age, except bitches with litters, housed, held, or maintained by any dealer, exhibitor, or research facility, including Federal research facilities, must be provided the opportunity for exercise regularly if they are kept individually in cages, pens, or runs that provide less than two times the required floor space for that dog… Dogs housed in groups. Dogs over 12 weeks of age housed, held, or maintained in groups by any dealer, exhibitor, or research facility, including Federal research facilities, do not require additional opportunity for exercise regularly if they are maintained in cages, pens, or runs that provide in total at least 100 percent of the required space for each dog if maintained separately.
Translation
If a dog lives alone in a cage that is twice the minimum size requirements, his breeder does not need to engage him in any additional exercise whatsoever.
For Izzie, this would mean that if a breeder kept her in a cage that was about 3.75 feet by 3.75 feet (or fourteen square feet), she would be allowed to spend the entire duration of her life enclosed. Under the Animal Welfare Act, she would never be entitled to set a single paw outside that crate.
Dogs kept in groups are assumed to be capable of providing adequate exercise for their cage mates. In fact, dogs kept in groups have no exercise requirements at all so long as their enclosure meets the minimum space requirements.
These are the Animal Welfare Act’s requirements—or lack thereof, really—for exercising canines in a commercial breeding facility.
I read these regulations aloud to Overall, although she already knew them well. She responded by referring me to the Five Freedoms, a list of animal welfare protocols developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. They include the freedom from hunger and thirst; the freedom from discomfort; the freedom from pain, injury, and disease; the freedom to express normal behaviors in an appropriate habitat; and the freedom from feeling fear and distress. Humane organizations and veterinary groups around the world, including the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) here in the United States, have since adopted these guidelines as standards for humane treatment of animals. The Five Freedoms are not, however, included or referenced in the Animal Welfare Act. As Overall and many other canine experts see it, these Five Freedoms must be taken into account as the most basic standard for care.
“When you look at the Five Freedoms, one of them is the freedom to exercise normal behaviors… There are basic exercises that every dog would want to go out and do,” she explained. “They want to go out and sniff the urine and feces of other dogs. They want to stand and smell the breeze. They want to walk through a variety of habitats and explore them… I mean, come on. There are basic needs that every dog shares. Meet them. And if you don’t meet them, you can’t [be a breeder].”
And for a dog, none of those Five Freedoms can ever be met in a cage.
TEMPERATURE
Animal Welfare Act
When dogs or cats are present, the ambient temperature in the [indoor] facility must not fall below 50°F (10°C) for dogs and cats not acclimated to lower temperatures, for those breeds that cannot tolerate lower temperatures without stress or discomfort (such as short-haired breeds), and for sick, aged, young, or infirm dogs and cats, except as approved by the attending veterinarian. Dry bedding, solid resting boards, or other methods of conserving body heat must be provided when temperatures are below 50°F (10°C). The ambient temperature must not fall below 45°F (7.2°C) for more than 4 consecutive hours when dogs or cats are present, and must not rise above 85°F (29.5°C) for more than 4 consecutive hours when dogs or cats are present… When their acclimation status is unknown, dogs and cats must not be kept in outdoor facilities when the ambient temperature is less than 50°F (10°C).
Translation
Whether indoors or outdoors, the temperature m
ust not dip below 45° for more than four hours. If temperatures spike above 85°, the breeder must provide fans or air conditioning. Exclusively outdoor facilities are generally prohibited without approval from a veterinarian. If approved, however, dogs must be able to access shelter from the elements and receive additional bedding when temperatures dip below 35°. It’s up to the local veterinarian hired by the breeding operation to say which dogs are able to tolerate outdoor facilities depending on the region.
I asked Overall if these standards were appropriate for a dog destined to be a companion animal.
“No,” she began. “For [a dog] to be able to work with those temperatures, [it would] need a primo diet and primo access to escape conditions and water and things like that.”
Overall then offered the example of the Beagle Brigade, the team of dogs who are employed by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to inspect luggage that comes into our nation’s airports for banned agricultural goods. To get these beagles ready for duty, they are trained at the USDA National Detector Dog Training Center in Georgia, generally a hot and humid climate.
“Every one of those dogs has group and individual shade available for their outdoor runs,” Overall said. “They have kiddie pools because they know that [beagles] can’t self-regulate and they need to give them both sets of options. You would think that [commercial breeding] dogs should be treated at least as well as those [beagles].”
These beagles that Overall was referring to are, interestingly enough, employed by APHIS, the same division of the USDA tasked with regulating commercial dog breeders.
On the flip side, Overall noted that working dogs in cold temperatures are not only genetically selected for their ability to withstand those particular conditions, but also are provided a highly specialized diet to handle the day-to-day energy requirements that are necessary in extreme situations.