tv Documentary RT April 17, 2020 7:30am-8:00am EDT
7:30 am
7:31 am
people who had no idea. i was educated by one story that other people would be. the protests. and the reason we did because that's when people. started placing orders. so when they 1st started we were there. everything else that was a very very long and cold winter. the information handouts for people that are very factual and. that's the biggest thing. i started. experiencing it firsthand. our local store is diabetics pet shop and
7:32 am
we went in there and we saw the puppies and asked them and at 1st they were like from a breeder and they were very open about it and so we asked if we could contact them and so they gave us their card and we made an appointment and we went and we visited the mill and it was it was awful. and i are in general we have the negative temperatures and the very very high temperature and the dogs are forced to live in that 247 and so our protests are every single week and no matter what the weather today we are very thankful to positive temperatures when i left my house this morning with the wind chill it was negative 40 this is cold because on our coldest it is average when 00 but usually air protagonists are between 2 people and 10 people every lead just depends on the weather and what we all have going on it is a priority of everybody we have several people travel from out of town to get here
7:33 am
2 years is a long time to think that we've been in front of here this when we had our young people hang out in front of 5 stars on saturdays because we only had to be out here for 2 hours and the dogs there have to be out here all the time the dogs in the shelters are. going to dress differently. and i think it's going to be in a trance people become more aware of what what a puppy mill me and someone starts in the store actually do or i like to say that it's a ripple effect and i advocate one person who knows how many other people they will tout and so if we can all educate our little corner of the earth that someday we will not have these problems because once the public really knows what's going on they will support and. no matter how upset i am i know the dogs have it i am sorry and so i never even. i consider giving it's never been an option and i will use my
7:34 am
voice be having a child keep doing it and out there and my money. until recent changes the only federal regulations governing commercial dog breeding date back to the passing of the animal welfare act or a.w.a. in 1966 the a.w.a. defined a commercial dog breeder as one who maintains 4 or more breeding female dogs and sells the offspring into wholesale channels any breeder or retail pet store in gauged in the direct sale of dogs to the public was exempt from the a.w.a. . let me clarify that a little bit the animal welfare act only requires that we do annual inspections on research facilities so there is no requirement for the other entities that we regulate. but every facility that's either licensed or registered with us is
7:35 am
assigned a minimum inspection frequency we have a risk based inspection system so based on the risk of finding noncompliance risk of animal welfare concerns the facility may be assigned a frequency of once a year twice a year 3 times a year whatever that system a science to it the a.w.a. does not require a yearly vet check ups access to exercise socialization or protections against extreme heat or cold and allows both wire flooring and stackable cages. for the animal welfare act is passed and requires humane standards of care for dogs raised in commercial breeding establishment and they require as of the department of agriculture go out and inspect these facilities and make sure that they're complying with these regulations i always refer to the regulations that we have today with the u.s.d.a. as survival standards if you comply with the centers of care the dogs will probably
7:36 am
but is that humane no right now and u.s.d.a. regulations a dog requires 6 inches a living space bigger than the dog itself and you're talking about a dog is living in that space for its entire lives and that are part of agriculture really is there promote american agriculture it's not an impartial sort of entity that is neutral you overseeing the laws and for years u.s.d.a. was allied with the very interests that it was supposed to regulate including these folks within the agriculture sector who started raising puppies and started operating puppy mills never in the state of ohio has any breeder been forced out of this. long. standing violations of the animal welfare act if they choose to no longer pay u.s.d.a. license it's because they chose not to renew their license not because inspectors
7:37 am
came out to actually revoke that license i never heard of a regulator coming to pennsylvania no one was getting shut down the feeling of the industry was very we don't have to worry about it so frankly their doors were pretty open the so often if a breeder said violation the animal welfare act they get a slap on the hands and when they get the slap on the hands. off and it is months following the violation and they're given an opportunity to correct the violation and sometimes it may be days months before that inspector returns to ensure that the violations been corrected on it's very rare that they will be given a fine that is truly impactful to their bottom line so they factor it in as a cost of doing business in force with the animal welfare it has been horrendous in and for many many years in fact just 2010 year old office of inspector general issued a very doable report on how terrible their inspections were they documented inspectors
7:38 am
walking by dogs and just leaving of there you know that writing up these people and putting them out of business suspended really really bad the inspector general found several major problems with them foresman of the a.w.a. including finding a massive loophole that allowed breeders to sell puppies over the internet without a license and delaying confiscation of suffering animals to give violators a final opportunity to take corrective action before confiscation can occur even in extreme cases where animals are dying it is called the animal welfare you know it's not the the kennel really well for it it's the animals and yes even some of the good inspectors were there were inspectors in made sure that the building was clean and they had good shelter from the extreme. temperatures but the dogs of. the photo a lot of the focus of that was on inconsistency in some of the things our inspectors were citing and the length of time it took to get to enforcement so we
7:39 am
put. some an intensified training in place for our inspectors some a different oversight or inspection process and work with our branch to find different ways to expedite the enforcement process since and we've also worked on some nontraditional or non regulatory solutions if we can help somebody come into compliance without having to resort to enforcement action and get those animals in a better welfare situation quicker that's what we're going to do. since being elected in 1907 senator dick durbin has introduced legislation in every session that would dramatically improve the lives of dogs in commercial kennels and would close the internet loophole. the way people sold dogs changed and has it changed it was no longer going to the individual breeder oh longer just going to the store now was online sales and they were exempt from the kind of regular
7:40 am
inspection that would protect the puppies and their mothers so we had to make sure that our bill really filled the scale up and provided the protection for those online sales and the pups that were part of it even in the midst of the hyper partisanship of the u.s. senate on the issue of puppy mills senator durbin found willing partners on the republican side of the aisle my 1st co-sponsor was rick santorum one of the most conservative republicans from pennsylvania he was on the spot with me and then after he left the senate i had senator vitter from louisiana another very conservative senator so it turns out that when it comes to humane treatment of animals and dogs in particular this is very bipartisan if a bill like pops went to the floor of the house of the senate it would be an overwhelming yea vote for the measure it would be $9095.00 yes votes in the senate you know be $400.00 or so yes votes in the house out of $435.00 the problem is
7:41 am
on an a wall for legislation the congress is that many of the bills you get track to the house and senate committees on agriculture and those committees are populated by the most rural lawmakers aligned with the biggest agribusiness interests in the united states. south and they have their seats and climate change on us going to continue with us but that's them. but you're going closer to the.
7:42 am
you put it's not just. the stories that we're told to this point are going to seem. instantly and we're going to have a whole busy new generation of storytelling moving forward our very definition of what a hero is one of no one is what's. are all of that change smoothing into the future our whole value system aside shifted and changed. that is just every small cycle. with.
7:43 am
the law in the. making the city zealot in the police will. take you straight pool shots walk next don't. assume the. sort of the. throughout the years members of the senate agriculture committee have received enormous campaign contributions from agriculture giant including month santos tyson smithfield and cargill the sides these direct contributions each of these corporations spent millions of dollars each year lobbying congress. seemingly afraid of how
7:44 am
a theoretical slippery slope protecting dogs in puppy mills could hurt their operations corporate agriculture sided with commercial breeders they get loads of campaign cash from these agribusiness groups because that's the funnel for the legislation that these agribusiness groups want who doesn't want to protect dogs and yet somehow interest to find a way to twist it around and make you scared into voting against those commonsense positive public policies so they typically oppose any animal welfare legislation because they think they're going to be next and they think that if you have a society that it is incrementally building animal welfare standards it's eventually going to lead the society to examine their thought even with strong public support for common sense. changes to the animal welfare act none of these bills were allowed out of committee recognizing the original intentions of the a.w.a.
7:45 am
and the advent of commercial breeders selling exclusively over the internet the u.s.d.a. moved on their own to update the regulations so the administration seeing the enormous number of senators and u.s. representatives backing of legislation and getting hundreds of thousands of callers from h.s. u.s. members and other animal welfare advocates they finally passed a rule to bring these internet sellers under the regulatory authority of us to before the change in regulations nearly $7500.00 facilities across the united states were subject to inspection besides commercial breeding facilities this includes research facilities zoos circuses marine parks transport vehicles television and film productions involving animals state fairs camel right petting zoos elephant right and traveling and or roadside. in 201-3115 u.s.d.a.
7:46 am
inspectors conducted between 101-1000 inspections on these various facilities approximately 3000 of those inspections were conducted on commercial dog breeding facilities since this change in policy will now also require commercial breeders selling on the internet to obtain a license the u.s.d.a. estimates that there will be up to $4600.00 additional new facilities under their inspection umbrella based on their own projections a total of between 101-2000 facilities will now fall under the inspection provisions of the animal welfare act this change will increase the workload of their 115 inspectors buying nearly a 3rd. the u.s.d.a. has no plans to add additional inspectors i think since the real big came into effect the number one way that we've gotten contacts are people's names as people
7:47 am
suffer porting we do we have looked at breeder registries to get i did get numbers we watch the internet a look at. marketing promotional things from folks that sell over the internet so this is a good move for dogs that it's now part of the animal welfare act but again our question's going to be how are you going to enforce that because you're having a very difficult time in forcing a law that was already in place and now we've just added a new dimension to it we've got a 115 people. stationed across the country to do our inspections. their workload is prioritized by risk based system so we get them to those places where they're most needed and at this point in time we do feel like we have resources to be successful in doing this you know i worry about that what a time or cutting back on spending appropriations in every direction and they say they have enough to get started and i want to keep an eye on it i even documented
7:48 am
u.s.t.a. inspectors who had their old puppy mill themselves documented supervisors of inspectors who were out working as roofers during the day and they're supposed to be out check you know their inspectors and enforcement was absolutely atrocious and has bad since the inception of the act and it was just recently in the last couple years that u.s.d.a. has really turned around and started to enforce the laws but on the books since 1000 words seeing a closing of this loophole that a lot of internet sellers and we just have to continue now with our effort to educate the public that the best place to get holes is a shelter or rescue group or a responsible breeder who is really treating the mother dog like a pet and not a breed. machine. usually have a number so he actually has a tattoo on his ear as he's optioned and that's my bird it's not that my business
7:49 am
name once we got him he was shaking a lot because he didn't know what to do he was trapped in this tiny little wired cage. we don't need the crate with him he will stir freaking out and he won't let us read even anywhere near and. that is a. lot of e-mail robbie mail. let me ask me a little and i don't know now camarines i'll be known as i guess that's me at least yeah i wanna know when we're out there let me know. and i say well so are these really really cute nice stuff these are all you know your body your skull and these 2 in here came from a hoarding situation in philadelphia we took in 39 a little blue show while our doctor makes this. guy.
7:50 am
our our. dog was probably about 9 months old even months old and the dog was so full of joy and just wanted to get out run around and the dog was down on the salvos playing him and it was in a rabbit hutch standing on wire but it desperately wanted to get out and i can we take this dog no i just got the dog are breeding the dog i'm just starting to breed or so this was years ago and then every time we went back i would see this dog and the dog was getting older and older and he didn't want to anymore because she was in a good breeder and i was looking at her and her eyes were dead and within i would say about a month beast she started to come around and i could see the dog that i remembered from before and it's a shame that she had to go through all that you know her entire life just consisted of this misery. and we need people to start realizing that these poppy mills exist these puppies in
7:51 am
pet stores come from puppy mills whether you believe it or not that's where your dog came from a puppy. thing that needs to be to trust because they're not rescuing are saving a puppy by by buying their dog what they're doing is they're sentencing the mother that dog to a lifetime of misery you know you know the general public doesn't stop buying poppies i stop going to change it's just it's not going to stop i'll be down as the day i die and i owe a lot i hope i hope i don't have to spend my days gonna save dogs we americans are treating dogs like members of the family we allow them in their beds to sleep at night we spend money on them we give them life saving better and care a society that values dogs is not a suicide it's going to tolerate this abuse of dogs on puppy mills. until the
7:52 am
public is willing to forgo the purchase of a puppy on the internet or in pet stores no regulation will and the suffering of thousands of breeding dogs trapped in commercial mills across the united states and humane societies rescues in pounds millions of dogs are awaiting the chance to join a family if the general public decides to adopt and not shop the factory farming of puppies would and. the power really does lie in the people what we have as a movement is a 1000000 households who care about animals and who are willing to pick up the phone and being able to tap that power that is what should make any puppy miller terrified the other side has a much more difficult. they've got to convince people that keeping dogs in confinement for their entire laws denying. vector exposing them to obtrude of even
7:53 am
gold is an acceptable way to treat go these are alike to officials and they work for us and we're going to make sure they work for us we know we're up against a lot of corruption and consumer fraud and animal cruelty but i think it's every time you educate that one person that could be the next person who makes a difference at the state house or at the local level or even at the federal level success may gone. home i do think it's really important people they see something going on especially i mean i mean just as they should bring it to people's attention you know people to know what's going on out there and. they just feel otherwise change is not possible. 20 years from now we'd all like to look back and we know what's going to happen we're going to what back and we're going to say thank god we don't have anymore i can't believe the way we allow people to treat these dogs.
7:58 am
endemic has gone its course how has the beginning changed economy and is there any chance every journey endemic fish. humanity is on the edge of a precipice thanks to continuing destruction of the natural world. we just laid out a lot of good results a group will receive a closing remarks a while later if you. let them have anything you can. prevent. i think they've got that or. they're there or that. person. doesn't have feeling. in the muslim world as
7:59 am
8:00 am
russia's president postpones the upcoming 75th anniversary victory day parade. commemorations will still go ahead later on the new. french teachers and doctors criticize president plan to reopen schools by midnight pulling a premier chore and dangerous. on the french aircraft carrier is the latest nato warship to suffer a bored outbreak of covert 1960 general young stoltenberg turns his focus onto alleged russian aggression. father thanks for.
24 Views
Uploaded by TV Archive on
![](http://athena.archive.org/0.gif?kind=track_js&track_js_case=control&cache_bust=1806706613)