tv Documentary RT April 18, 2020 2:30am-3:01am EDT
2:30 am
i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the cold air the rain the snow the thunder nothing they have no protection yet to show as we take the dog just wants to kish i mean just you know wants the affection. to get you. know it's ok. mom and dad will probably live their entire lives on that facility in
2:31 am
a pin whether it's smaller or a larger size but they're not themselves hence they are breeding stock they they typically don't come in the house and snuggle on the couch. they have no idea what life is is about because they spend 247 in a cage when you came into one of these puppy mills you would just see one on top of another in these little chicken wire crates. you know how cramped it is when you're when you're flying and i was thinking about and i thought it must be like that for the puppy dogs that are in these cages being able to get up and move around and i think that's the 740 seven's comedy 400 people and i thought it's just like taking 400 golden traverse or labs or shepherds and putting them in a sea shore up in the men and. making them live there for 8 years you will
2:32 am
typically smell the facility before you actually walk near the cages and as soon as you can see the cages. i know it's going to be a bad situation when you have the above ground wire bottom cage because that sort of tells us that the person is trying to be very efficient. this is a business people are not for profit for an initial outlay of a couple $100.00 for a few breeding pairs you can be selling puppies for a $1000.00 or more apiece if you breed every heat cycle which is not what you're supposed to do but which many millers do you could be making tens of thousands of dollars within a couple of years they were housed in chicken coops one dog group of so there's probably more dogs and chicken coops no days and their own chickens. they make money on dogs being born. they rarely see of that. that's are
2:33 am
expensive and expensive than that would cut into their profits as far as selling the dogs. it's not good it's really not a good place for going to a. night that i was on the internet and some house and they came over me and said i want a puppy so i googled puppies. online. to delivery person called me to set up a day and time what time the dog would be arriving and he said you know i would like cash upon arrival not a check and that was fine so he. the 1st one i mean i mean i'm at
2:34 am
a rest stop off the new jersey turnpike. i just cut him off right there like that was not i'm not and up on dateline it is not happening. i know i know something's are right and that was one of them. i'm not a nervous person i'm not scared of many things but i was nervous because my children are inside and this guy was delivering a puppy 11 o'clock at night in a van that reeked of cigarette smoke i said this is a street my house and i want to have a real address so he said that's fine i'll call you on the street mr i run it a clock he scored and said he was running late and he showed up at 11 so it was very fast he called he was out front i ran outside and history and he got opened his it was a van he opened his van and there was all crates of dogs puppies in the back and he picked out rufus and he said here's your dog. 2 pieces of paper came with the dog that they looked like i could have printed off
2:35 am
the computer but that's i didn't know any better so i just assumed it was fine. i brought the dog in and it was late so i just put him to play with him for a little bit but he was super tired and he just looked like he wanted to go to sleep so i put his bed in his crate and cry was weird because when i had puppies before they cried in a crate the 1st time he did make a sound that was like the best dog every doesn't make noises perfect baby. oh look up to a dog that was basically having seizures going to the bathroom and throwing up either is going to die. in it that i you know is it's only 24 hours but you bond is a person you just feel super bad for it's a baby you just want to help it. he starts making this horrific sound like he's yelping in pain out of nowhere like just laying down just making this terrible sound off and on and i said this isn't normal and then he threw up and had diarrhea and i said i'm going to take him to our family that i'm thinking that i can't believe that somebody was and this dog here that sec and this is all the money that
2:36 am
we're going to spend and this is crazy because i had no idea what to expect as they said they could stay there for days to get better and i was just i was worried about the money i was worried about the dog at the same time after spending 2 days at north star being treated for hypoglycemia rufus was able to return home at the initial examination the veterinarian the care for rufus certified he was unfit for purchase rufus's cross-country journey began a miller's burge ohio on a farm owned by most troyer this is how lame am after i buy the dog after he's delivered then i start googling move stronger then is when i start and then i was like what was wrong with you why wouldn't i really that's how naïve i was i thought it was going to be perfect and then then i start googling and i hindsight was like i need to find out where these parents are like i was disgusted. less than 2 weeks before nicole purchase rufous online tours u.s.d.a.
2:37 am
license was cancelled currently no u.s.d.a. or state commercial license is issued for this address i've got like giving up a couple times a i said no one's call me back this is so frustrating but then i kept thinking it wasn't about the money it was the fact that this was a life that no one cared about they are just like oh take the puppy that was 6 weeks old 5 weeks old away from its mom and just shove it in a van with creeps stirrer and then called a day like no one cared. of state highway $53.00 in the middle of ohio this is a puppy mill not unlike the one that rufus was likely born and it's where his parents will remain until they're unable to produce the puppies in profits expected by the owner there's no natural light no human contact except for the red pickup that stops by want today to scatter food and fill water bowls unregulated and under
2:38 am
the radar. was. the often we find that on the east coast many of the puppies are coming from what we call ground 0 for large scale volume bring puppy mill bring and that's holmes county and it is really the heartbeat of where a lot of the puppy mills and a lot of the issues have started in the state of ohio when you consider that they have 43000 population and you have over 500 canales that's a lot of camels for the number of people in that general area. and holmes county alone in 200720088 was a $9000000.00 business. now when you consider that the average family income for a family of 4 is probably less than $30000.00 in holmes county that's
2:39 am
a considerable amount of production that is coming out of that particular area in amish country. rufus his journey to new jersey is similar to the one thousands of puppies travel from holmes county ohio in the years since rufus arrived at nicole's house and the driver has made multiple journeys to the east coast delivering puppies sold on the internet from puppy mills throughout holmes county. there's times where we here where the puppy was actually transported by someone just like john public and they load him into a vehicle and so when the puppies arrive it's not unusual to have a vehicle full of puppies and some of those puppies are very sick and some won't make the trip whatsoever they assumed ban puppy mills places they always meant like the mall the puppy store in the mall or the puppy store the inside the street i just never thought that it was like on the internet i really thought when i bought rufus that he was in pennsylvania running through
2:40 am
a field happy night and think it was a puppy mill dog at all. pennsylvania farmers began breeding dogs probably about 30 or so years ago there were actually breeders in missouri who came up to pennsylvania specifically because of its large amish and mennonite farming communities here we had one of the worst states for puppy mills i we were called the puppy mill capital of the east and that was primarily because pennsylvania's number one industry is agriculture. in the minutes are more likely to view these animals as cash crops as agricultural products we've heard that over and over again and i believe that to be true. not all amish families or not all minimally families breed dogs but the large majority the overwhelming majority of the people that we deal with the breeders are from
2:41 am
illinois it was something that farm families could do between when you harvest in the fall and when you plant the spring. as commercial kennels cropped up across pennsylvania in the late 1960 s. the welfare of the dogs trapped in puppy mills was not viewed as a priority of the pennsylvania department of agriculture inspections were few and far between the regulations were ill defined and the program was clearly underfunded so the regulators were completely tied by the laws and just the the van ness of all of them so what we really needed was in forcible measurable standards you would see inspection reports time and time again where a warden is a morning operator to do something. and this didn't go on for like one or 2
2:42 am
inspections in a year's time you're talking about years and years of warnings for many of the same offenses there was so much opposition from within the industry itself that the regulations were just going nowhere. and it became very apparent that we had to do a legislative fix. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy for and let it be an arms race on all fronts very dramatic development the only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk.
2:43 am
that's. just to. show. the. new prince not just. so these 2. throughout the years efforts to improve the lives of dogs in pennsylvania puppy mills would ultimately die in the legislature at the hands of powerful lawmakers was not until a simple billboard was put up in lancaster county that the general public began to
2:44 am
learn of the problem our 1st billboard we did it with a postcard and we had a family in our car and they were all waving across the top and yellow script just like a postcard said welcome to. hometown. puppy mills and we received over 3000 phone calls and e-mails in 2 days and the majority of those phone calls came from people who lived in lancaster county who were thanked us for finally doing something about what their neighbors were doing i think the issue gained a lot of traction through the media you know more reporting on the issue it became sort of something that was that was out front it was no longer confined to you know what happened behind the party doors after witnessing the overwhelming response to their billboards in pennsylvania mainline animal rescue placed a new billboard this time oprah winfrey studio in chicago when we were on oprah and the aftermath we watched up here in the kennel i realized that it really didn't
2:45 am
matter what the legislators wanted or what they didn't want because people started contacting us and people were horrified horrified by what was happening in lancaster county it was happening in pennsylvania what was happening in missouri and oklahoma nebraska and they couldn't believe that animals were being treated this way and they wanted to do something about it. this was 100 percent a public effort it was really because people were hearing about the plight of puppy mills on the news on oprah reading about it in their newspapers going home and looking in the faces of these little pooches that are sharing their you know tables and beds for most of us and saying oh my gosh what if that had been my dog and it became very very personal to a huge number of people who started picking up the phones and calling their legislators through this whole struggle and it was a struggle and it was hard it was very very difficult i never lost sight of the fact that the people have the power to change things and when the legislature realized that they did not want to go home in an election cycle and face the constituency wondering why didn't you do something about this the bill got legs and
2:46 am
this was a 2 year long is like 2 to 3 year long legislative battle in pennsylvania many. the dogs that the law was was pushed through many of the law the dogs that we wanted to protect are now dead so i'm hoping that it's that the dogs in the future dogs the dogs that are in these places in the future are helped by what we've done but most of the dogs the majority the dogs that we wanted to help are gone now and they never got the relief that they deserved or that the law afforded. union boilermaker out of pittsburgh. despite every free town life i have is basically in their own work and and i work in a 10 hour shift i'm working on saving dogs. everybody has their own little parts and i think that was that was my call and you know go into the mills and that's what i want them to dogs so i know there are
2:47 am
a lot of pads are covered in your and they're covering and they've got fleas what i like to do is take them in and hold them and pad on to say they're a bit touched a they ok so i don't mind they got all over him because i want to separate it were different you know you're leaving that life and i want their you know the rehab to start as soon as we take the dogs. and it's sad because you can't save all said it hurts i mean there's plenty of nights you stay up at night and you can sleep with a lot of rescues or you know deal with the puppy mill dogs now that i mean loosely you know it's costly running through your mind about the dog you left behind i don't know i went to the guys bringing the dogs out in there so many dogs inside the puppy mill that when a dog started barking when he went in to get the dogs the side of the barn was actually shaken and. there's no force was good they suppose he this year and last year in kind of both pennsylvania and ohio
2:48 am
made the laws better but they are they they passed the laws but no one's in force and. a lot of people think when you say rescue dogs from puppy mills i think we went in took the born down take the dogs but that's that's all we did because the because mills are legal now i think a lot of people don't understand that you know these puppy mills are legal they're allowed to explain to him how you know we wait for the amish to contact you know then we set up a day when we can go get the dogs and then we know will load up the. ours you know them will drive you know made on their property get the dogs. i don't know about.
2:49 am
they said oh god that all they want is love so hard to get away. with you know the economy i mean. in my name is eugene deep as well and i'm the pennsylvania auditor general. we make sure all money is spent legally ineffectively but we also audit state programs so it's not just a question whether the financial side of it is the you know the the account ledgers
2:50 am
are matching up but also what is the effectiveness of the program so we get to go in and say ok the money might have been spent legally but was it spent effectively it was a program run effectively while inspections and prosecutions dramatically increased after the pennsylvania dog law came into force within a few years noticeable concerns began to emerge i started to receive reports confidentially from within department reaching out to me dog wardens administrators people who had worked for the department and had left that are an area. who were concerned that the new head of the office of dog law had no idea what she was doing so reviewing inspection reports and in 2011. indicates that there were virtually no citations issued just like any other law it's only as good as the enforcement of it and early on in in the law there were some concerns
2:51 am
that it wasn't being enforced properly so and the audit of the dog or program began . in a scathing report under general di pascali found the dog law program from its introduction in 2008 through 2012 showed an intentional lack of enforcement of the state's dog law and the commercial tennille canine health regulations. enforcing the law in the kennel meaning the partner agriculture said this during the audit that they weren't enforcing it because they knew the kennels weren't complying is say that again they were enforcing it because they knew the kennels were in compliance but the goal of the law is to get people not to do it the goal of the dog all was not to find camps it was to get kennels do improve the conditions in their facilities. for the animals that's the goal of the program and we were getting the troops ready to really make a huge deal out of the lack of enforcement of this very popular law and all of a sudden there was a one in 80 of the department and they hired
2:52 am
a director of enforcement who was one of the best dog wardens that we've ever seen but here is the big big issue and it's not just his it's anything we do the people matter who are running the programs right now i think the administration needs to get if you can strides into who is running the program but the people that are actually running the program sometimes you know that their faces bureaucrats to the general public and i understand that but the actual individual who's in charge matters and it's important governors where they began. mark radical republican you know i just put people in because of the considerations but also the qualifications of the individual but i do think that that is the case now that you are a top notch professional there and that i think is a big reason why you're starting to see a turnaround in the world. while progress has been made the challenges of regulating and inspecting licensed commercial breeders and finding
2:53 am
unlicensed breeders in pennsylvania continues in the heart of lancaster county millwood kennel aka millwood puppies provides a prime example of the bureaucratic shell game played by some large scale breeders . david and iommi stalls fus have been breeding dogs on their property in lancaster county since the early 1990 s. having obtained both a pennsylvania license and a u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license from 2003 onward pennsylvania inspection reports clearly indicate dogs were suffering in a facility that was not meeting even minimal welfare standards after a further string of harangued us inspection reports in 2008 david still sfusd voluntarily relinquish both his pennsylvania and u.s.d.a. license but the dogs remained at the same puppy mill though the name was changed to millwood puppies and ownership passed to david's son matthew stills foose matthew
2:54 am
quickly obtained a u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license at the same address. immediately the violations continued under the new license when millwood puppies was inspected in october 2009 the violations were so severe that the commonwealth of pennsylvania brought multiple charges against matthew for violations under the dog law. before pennsylvania district judge isaac stalls foose all charges against matthew were summarily withdrawn and all cases closed in 2010. at no time with the dogs removed from the facility by either state or federal authorities. around this time matthew found a new very lucrative avenue to sell his puppies the internet since 2010 it's estimated that matthew has sold over $3000.00 puppies online ranging from 302-2800 dollars each in 2013 alone millwood puppy sold
2:55 am
472 dogs more than a dog a day during this period matthew maintained a pennsylvania kennel license but in january 2014 he applied for a new u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license for millwood puppies l l c this was the 3rd u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license and the 2nd pennsylvania license issued for this one address in the past 8 years i think one of the most remarkable things that we actually were able to illustrate on the oprah show that one of the dogs that we picked up from know what chemicals we kill it was either millwood kennels at the time or millward puppies was a yellow out a male yellow lab and i'll never forget he's a really beautiful dog but he had never been off water for some beautiful beautiful young and the amish breeder if you stop astride the dog down the hill we put take the dog up and put a dog in the band and we put the dog down on the solid floor and in the lobby he started to walk like he had never been here ever going to south or again he started
2:56 am
walking up the wall he tried to walk up the wall of our lobby because he had never been solid for it before and it's just amazing to me that they would expect an animal to live his or her entire life unpaid for wire flooring and they wouldn't do it themselves. matthew's large scale puppy breeding business was not his only interaction with the u.s.d.a. during the same time period he was receiving farm subsidies from the u.s.d.a. the total $56624.00 in commodity subsidies associated with. his dairy farm lancaster county pennsylvania has a total population of a little over 536000 residents from 1995 to 2012 farmers in the county have received 100 $28000000.00 in taxpayer funded farm subsidies from the u.s.d.a. . an extensive investigation for this film found numerous examples of u.s.d.a. license commercial breeders receiving multiple violations from the animal health of
2:57 am
vision on one hand and large taxpayer funded farm subsidies on the other while the programs are viewed as distinct and separate by the u.s.d.a. the fact remains that license commercial breeders with multiple dog welfare violations continue to receive taxpayer funded farm subsidies in lancaster county and many other rural areas throughout the united states these commercial breeders are exploiting a federal agency by receiving a taxpayer funded handout while simultaneously receiving major violations for failing the dogs in their care. humanity is on the edge of a precipice thanks to continuing destruction of the natural world.
2:58 am
through just being laid out a lot of bills also. a later period. where you have a panel. with them having it. up and you. have a couple of the war. there or the. only dealing. as a. as. shit mc that. human activity has brought us to the brink of the world's 6th major extinction of it and the people in this film just can't take it anymore.
2:59 am
this is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young in the streets. what happens to her family a daughter is in florida. the mother daughter is there isn't a cemetery it really messes with your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the police needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in courts be . shocked shocked as far. as i feel. we don't know just for. the end of this
3:00 am
unfortunately you. will still not know she'll just. live from the world headquarters of the r t america in our nation's capital this is the news with rick sanchez hi everybody doing our part to keep you informed i'm rick sanchez and we want to welcome all of you who are watching us of all over the world especially those of you who are watching in places like indonesia and pakistan and parts of europe in india where we understand so many thousands of people are tuning in by the hour let's start with this there is some sense of light at the end of the tunnel today as the white house has finally unveiled a plan it's just a plan mind you but it's something right for opening the u.s. economy and gradually ending the nation's coronavirus locked out this plan will ease restrictions and air.
36 Views
Uploaded by TV Archive on
![](http://athena.archive.org/0.gif?kind=track_js&track_js_case=control&cache_bust=2033358907)