An extreme move, but an interesting one. Here are the details:
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed into law a bill that will ban the sale of dogs, cats and bunnies by retail operations starting next December.
Animal welfare advocates applauded the new law they say will eliminate the market for unscrupulous commercial breeders that have provided pet stores with living merchandise in bulk but don’t provide their animals adequate food or care.
But the mood was very different inside of Astoria Pets, where a small golden puppy lay asleep atop a bed of shredded paper inside a glass case facing Astoria’s bustling Steinway Street — its body curled and its head tucked into its tail.
George Flanagan, who has worked at Astoria Pets for 22 years and grew up on a farm, said they had been expecting the ban for a few months now, and have been devising a back-up plan in preparation.
“It’s heartbreaking, I put my life into this place,” the 47-year-old said in a soft and deflated voice as he stood next to twin golden retrievers eager to greet every passerby. “They’re all my little babies, they’re my little monsters.”
The idea here is straightforward enough: Banning the sale of puppies and kittens in petshops is clearly encouraged to discourage dog and cat breeding for commercial reasons, and to encourage people to get their pet from a rescue shelter instead. But is it a good idea, or, more importantly, an appropriate use of Government power?
In answering the first question, the obvious point is that the law bans sales by “retail operations”, meaning that if you really want a puppy, you can presumably go straight to the breeder, which would be a wholesale operation rather than a retail one. Alternatively, you could search for one of the endless caches of “accidental” pups that end up being made, every year, “free to a good home”.
On balance, I think it is a good idea. One of the problems, since the internet became as all-pervasive as it is, is that people have a tendency to lock on to “cute” breeds of dog, at the expense of others. This has led to an explosion in the popularity of French Bulldogs, and Cockapoos, and all the other “trendy” breeds, leading them to be bred on an industrial scale. All the while, most western countries have dog shelters full of unloved and unwanted mongrels. Breaking the commercialisation of the dog trade seems to me to be a good idea, especially if it leads to more adoptions, and fewer unwanted dogs.
But will it?
There are legitimate reasons for wanting a puppy, over a shelter dog, or for wanting one breed over another. With the best will in the world, a person living in New York might find it easier to give a home to a small puppy from a small breed, which can be trained, than to a hound from a shelter that once lived on the streets. A person might also want a dog to grow up with their children, rather than one that has to come to terms with a new family. People can have these priorities and not be motivated by either selfishness or cruelty.
Which is why I wonder whether it is an appropriate use of Government power. Ultimately, and perhaps wrongly, the law in western countries treats dogs as property, not living things with rights of their own. In legal terms, they are essentially a consumable item, albeit with some obvious laws around cruelty. The Government, here, is taking an action which is likely to put some reputable and decent pet shops out of business for the sake of a blanket ban.
I think it’s the wrong target: The regulation should be targeted at dog breeding, instead. There should be strict limits on the number of litters of puppies a single dog can have in a year, for example. And there should be a tracing system, like we have for beef, where you can trace your steak back to the farm where it was born, down to the cow which birthed it.
Anyway, as we run into Christmas, it’s an interesting story. We’ll see how it works out in New York, and it’s one that animal rights activists will be looking at with interest. If it makes things better, you can expect to see calls for similar laws right across the west.