A rigorous program that stops people from confining animals denying them vet care expose them to a stranger being told theyre going to lose revenue the American Kennel Club prides itself on being the only purebred registry in the United States with an ongoing routine kennel Inspection Program with a dedicated team of field inspectors casey says that it inspects kennels but they dont make any of those inspection records available. They say that theyve got rigorous standards but they really dont announce what those standards are real terms they say that they kick people out but we dont really have a comprehensive record of when theyre doing that or what the consequences are even if they can still keep breathing and they can still keep operating so whats the value of their Inspections Program there in force and efforts for all we know are completely meaningless. We dont know what they even inspect for when they go into these facilities because they dont make their inspection records public quite frankly if they were meaningful inspections there would be no reason not to make them public. While the a k c boasts of a rigorous Inspection Program in 2011 only 1500000. 00 of their 59000000. 00 in revenue was spent to employ just 9 inspectors across the entire United States. Big. Is a group that says its the dogs champion but in practical terms is consistently leading the fight against efforts to establish humane dog breeding standards in the states at the federal level. Over 5000. 00 kennel inspections last year. The American Kennel Club. We make all this possible because you make us possible. Just or your dog the only us registry that matters is an a. G. C. Dot org and were ever we advance that sort of legislation radical not far reaching just basic fundamental anything that a pet owner would think is a minimal standard of care the casey opposes it since 2009 the a k c as opposed over 100 different bills regulations ordnances the protect dogs in 2012 alone the a k c opposed to nebraska state bill that would require commercial breeders to have regular on site visits by a veterinarian a Louisiana State bill that would prohibit all dog owners from stacking crates a rhode island state bill that the a k c deemed dangerous that would make it unlawful for dog owners to keep a dog can fire. And in a penn cage or other shelter for more than 14 hours a proposed ordinance in Shelby County tennessee that would make it a violation to leave a Companion Animal unattended in a vehicle for more than one hour when the temperature is above 70 degrees or below 35 degrees why is the American Kennel Club the dogs best friend opposing this legislation that says that once a year youve got to have a vet examine these dogs or you cant breathe them every single cycle or you cant have more than 50 breeding females at an operation why would a group well they have all that because theyre making money from those large scale operations. While the public does not have access to a k c inspection reports many pet Stores Across the United States emphasize to their potential customers that their facilities are a k. C. Approved and inspected one such company is pet land the largest chain of pet Stores Selling puppies in the United States while most pet lands are independently owned and operated the companys relationship with the a k c is a central focus in nearly every store. Its not unusual to see a dog thats a case a registered in a pet store. A casey could be targeting this major Distribution Channel saying were not going to endorse pet stores if we see our dogs in those stores because we dont feel that is a good means by which a dog is being raced and unfortunately had not taken a position. Where your thoughts were. Going through the other. So i thought. This is really the way. The thing thats not a disease. That. I actually bought my 1st dog from pathway and and. I had i was saving that dog from the cage only because it was way too big for the small cage it was in there was poop and he just likes sake and i went back to visit and visit and visit well that is very pushy if youve ever been in a paddling and they want you to buy the dog no matter what and you know they give you all these options i would visit the doc it just started me looking to the cage and i code you want to go to a puppy play room and then they give you a toy and you get to play with this dog and you started falling in love with the doc and then youre broke and so theyre like heres a credit card if you will help you pay for the dog and you know he would really love to go home with you and so theyre trying to play on your emotions and on your pocketbook your reasoning apparently in store with your family and you can help. You. Through your family and now maybe you are asking yourself where did this come from lets take a look at the journey when puppies make a right at our store. While pet land maintains that it does not purchase from substandard breeders theres no doubt that the vast majority of puppies sold in their stores come from large scale commercial kennels where the parents of those puppies will spend their whole lives in a cage. 2009 the Humane Society of the United States released an exhaustive investigation into shipments over 3 months of more than 15000. 00 puppies across the country the report determined that 95 percent of the puppies in pet land stores come from large scale commercial kennels and i work at a gym right next to a pet land and i see it all the time and i even stopped and said you know even to a young couple you know with kids hey do me a favor before you go in there you know google puppy mills we know are popular as i said why are you going to buy a dog. You know rescues that have puppies right now what are you looking for a lot of the dogs that are purchased in pet stores we we end up with them because the families can afford their medical care they have some. Birth defect or some chronic problem or. Parvo or anything that at least animals can pick up in the actual milk and they always seem to be you know we can state always most of the puppies that are coming from these large Scale Factory farming kind of operations are being sold in pet stores so when you go into a pet store and you see that beautiful little puppy thats a jumping out and or really wants the attention from you most people have no idea that the mother and father are back somewhere any factory farm type a setting where it can be on horrendous its not just pet lamb franchises they get the vast majority of their inventory from the primary states for puppy mills independent pet stores choose to seek out these same states a stark example of the supply chain leads directly from Holmes County ohio to a single pet store in patterson new jersey. Petite pups inspection reports obtained by ohio voters for Companion Animals show that in 2012 over 300 puppies from puppy mills and Holmes County were sold wholesale to d n g only one reason would seemingly compel the owner of d n g to seek out breeders located over 7 hours away the price for breeders simply selling to a pet shop thats not about placing that animal with a family for the rest of the life thats really about the money have served our puppy mill puppies because a reputable breeder somebody who cares about their animals and wants to know where theyre going and he breeder that is in it for the love of dogs and they they love what theyre doing theyre good breeder theyre going to have as many questions for you as you have for them no good reputable breeder will sell a dog on the internet or sell a dog to a broker to sell to a pet store thats not going to a good breeder or one of those who you are you. You always have to go and see even the parents of the dog that youre purchasing if a breeder does not want you to see the conditions that the parents are living in theyre almost guaranteed its a puppy mill. This is largely a marketing sort of enterprise were people can register the murders the puppies and you get the halo effect that this isnt a chase scene registered all go or litter when in reality it has no practical meaning when it comes to Animal Welfare they see papers mean absolutely nothing you know and when you come push comes to shove a hasty when theyre backed into oconnor was a mess and theres nothing to do with humaneness or the quality of the dog only means who the mother and the father is there are in favor of breeding dogs and the more dogs that are bred the more money they make if those dogs are registered with the case they for years and years and years in fact even to this day registration aint home registration fees and puppies are subsidizing the dog shows that the a hasty puts on because the registration fees for dog shows dont mean the amount of money or the expenses of putting them on so historically they have always subsidized their dog shows for registry fees so this is why theyre going to see enough of their own money and thats what i always say when people go to the Westminster Dog Show go in there knowing that this show has been subsidized by the croly of puppy mills because the a c. Will not stop papering dogs from commercial dog breeders and they oppose legislation when you go to improve the standards of care. 2010 missouri had an estimated 3000 commercial dog breeders and was the largest supplier of puppies to pet Stores Across the country the nearly 1600 breeders with the u. S. D. A. License was more than the next 3 states combine. Find in the hopes of improving the lives of dogs living in missouri puppy mills national and state Animal Welfare organizations focused on a Ballot Initiative that would later become known as proposition be over 190000. 00 signatures from missouri residents were collected and the measure made it to the ballot in the 2010 election. This is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. What happens to her family daughters in florida the other daughter is buried in 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 plan this than him and what happens in court the. Shock shock is far. We feel that we dont know just for the. End of this unfortunately you truly. Love. All show. The world is driven by dreamers shaped by one person or those with. The dares thinks. We dare to ask. Prob b. Was something that was in the works for many years because missouri is the puppy mill capital of the United States probably simply sought to impose humane breeding standards and limits on the size of the puppy mills you know what i started out here paying for all this stuff and whether churn pictures of puppy mills things id bet after 2 weeks i just forgot all that literature it was a copy of prop because it wasnt that people wanted to support both the bills are cold and the dogs says this is terry that if i did other things it was a campaign of fear and misinformation fear that he was going to mysteriously morph into a ban on all rearing of animals and agriculture you know they said that this would affect farm animals you know and and of course when they were confronted on it and showed the wall theyd say well its a slippery slope but there was still continue to go in a rural areas and convinced everybody that this was going to shut down the family farm and it just created mass hysteria and it made a really Difficult Campaign it didnt deal with cattle deal with pigs it in there with chickens it in the old any other species the language was explicit and anyone whos a 1st year law student could say with definitive precision that it just applied to dogs in space a clear way to one of the dominoes in what i call the line of dominoes out here in eliminating all of domesticated animals you know dogs cats then you go into livestock arena forces and so forth and in a Ballot Measure Campaign you dont necessarily need to convince people that your position is right you just need to sow enough confusion so that people maintain the status quo and vote no was no way to defend having this so instead they want to change the subject. All these other animals that people will respond to an emotional way this isnt really about puppies this is about your chicken and your beef and your pork and this group wants to take those off your dinner plate its about emotional triggers that theyre going to theyre going to press those buttons to get people to respond emotionally oh its basically a form of lying i mean lets just cut to the chase the way this proposition was about dogs but initially wants you to think its about all these other animals because that will scare the hell that. Really is an issue for anyone to like speak meat protein in their diet thank you very much thank you kelly smith marketing and commodities director for Missouri Farm Bureau much more to come on this and other issues as we broadcast from the Missouri Farm Bureau offices here in Jefferson City missouri stay with us its half time on average. Interestingly my wife and i had made a plan for we settle we put on a piece of paper what our dream of a farm was. After a long search i will show this. Matched exactly. So thats why were here. We lived our lives here pretty much you know or happy leave with we raised our family we raised our kids we feel very comfortable here. We didnt feel threatened at all you know and i mean i would have never at that time suggested to you that clean air was a vital important thing in my life. They were going to raise hogs ok and at the time i did not know how many hogs were going to raise and it turned out that now they raise 80000. 00 hogs and 3 miles north of. The farmland food facility in milan missouri is owned by Smithfield Foods the largest hog and pork processor in the world with revenues. Seating 13000000000. 00 in 2013. The operation north of me is called green hills. There isnt a single pig in there that ever seen as the green hills there isnt a single pig down there that ever sees the valley. So these are wonderful names but in this are these factory buildings where these hogs are housed in these big barns with little fresh air with no sunlight with Little Movement with no grass no nothing you hear the name valley view and you think all little piggy riding on green grass you know just kind of smooching out there living in the sun you dont see that. These are feeder pigs in the amounts awaits are just incredible and you sit in your backyard with your family and you eat dinner or you sit outside on a warm summer night and all over sudden this thing rolls in and i were caught in a trespasser it just trespasses on your property gulfs you and its there in the media just like its just like if a visitor coming that you have not invited relationship with the Missouri Farm Bureau radically changed when he began to complain about the daily waste and odors emitting from Smithfield Foods that 3 farm while he assumed the farm bureau would support a local independent farmer against his new corporate neighbor. Was left to fight alone. I felt abandoned and also felt that i was working for the wrong organization for for so many years because almost sudden this operation this organization backed allen and it supposedly is a Farm Organization these supposedly supports individual independent farmers and all of a sudden they were siding with industry and they are siding with industry to this very day they campaigned against prop b. Began immediately after it was approved for the ballot and again. Thring of the most powerful agricultural forces in missouri at the Stinson Morrison and hector law firm in addition to members of the dog breeding industry the meeting included the leadership at the Missouri Farm Bureau the Missouri Pork Producers Association and the Missouri Soybean Association at this meeting these groups agreed to fight prop be in a coordinated effort with the dog breeding industry. To front groups emerge from the meeting one which would eventually be called missouri farmers care and the alliance for truth while these front groups seem to have sprung out of thin air it was actually a highly coordinated effort financed largely by corporate agriculture nearly 82 percent of total contributions to missouri farmers care originated from 3 corporate agriculture trade groups and their respective Political Action committees. The Missouri Farm Bureau the missouri pork producers and the Missouri Soybean Association while the missouri farmers Care Campaign highlighted the positive role of missouri farmers in society the alliance for truth was focused on misrepresenting the clear language improper be the majority of the funding for the alliance for truth was funneled through missouri farmers care by the same agricultural trade groups the trade groups involved represent the interests of their member corporations in missouri these corporations include some of the largest agribusiness is in the United States months sent to Tyson Cargill and Smithfield Foods while these trade groups use their vast Financial Resources opposing prop b. The corporations that ultimately provided the majority of the funding for the campaign remained silent simply put without the Financial Support of corporate agriculture the puppy mills of missouri. Not of had the ability to mount the alliance for truth or missouri farmers care which were largely responsible for the opposition to proposition b. Alliance for truth that could be for anything you know but they cant call themselves you know friend group in favor of herding dogs so they have to come up with them other word to just totally distract you from the issue at hand its not about the dogs its about liberalism growth of government in rouge and into your life during has a proud tradition of dog breeding for hunting home companionship and just best friends to enforce existing law against animal abuse but vote no to the Big Government liberalism or proposition paid for by a life for truth Mark Paterson treasurer i mean they would be fending of goes with the thing i mean alliance for truth is literally just a front so there has been a tremendous amount a shocking amount of organized opposition to efforts to increase the standards of care for dogs bred in commercial breeding facilities and most of that opposition quite frankly is coming from huge agricultural groups and industry these are groups that have nothing to do with dogs have to do is look at who is funding these fans to see whos really benefiting from them its not the individual farmers who man choose who you know may believe in some of the messaging that these groups are putting forward but its really the Major Players in big ai with business who are benefiting and its the industry why defense thats going on is not to protect the poor rancher i mean those guys are getting screwed i have to stink interest in the future of this farm and the future of this community. Corporation their interest is making money their interest is not in the community their interest is not what is being left behind community interests. You 0. Product be very specific it was a bill that he dressed. Breeding dogs not chickens not cows not picks but thats what the opposition says that thats the misinformation that they gave to people in the state of missouri to scare people it was purely fear tactics on their part and it really ended up being at the expense of the thousands of dogs that suffer on a daily basis in the state of missouri every signature beyond the bell was signed by a missouri every vote that passed property in the law was passed by a missouri Rosie Missourians here and this was not i doubt a state you know they say no those are the same interests that you know they might have right in the money so we can get the word out that they didnt go to the polls obviously it was missouri residents who voted for this. Waiver so oh you know as though theyre. Going by to do one of the have for some became very close fortunately because of those mass hysteria that was just being spread in the rural areas and they really do people really believe i mean i talked to one on one that they really believe this was going to close down the farms it made me take you for joining us all i hear on missouri governor jay nixon will he find a bill changing proposition b. Even though voters already approved it probably used during the emotions of missourians on both sides of the issue but it was ultimately approved by 51 percent of voters the court of altering it is an outrage and it was supporters controlling a couple of 100 lawmakers have come to treated their judgment for the judgment about a 1000000 voters nancy weller says she cant bear to see another dog pulled out of a puppy mill she and more than a 1000000 other missouri voters pushed for prop be the very bill wall makers are now working to change the ink wasnt drawing on the formalizing. Of the final Election Results when state lawmakers. Were going to repeal several of them. In its entirety. Of the people you know were not out of business we just want them to comply with good standards here but instead they wanted. Me through it all it was just 5 months after missouri voters approved a tough new puppy mill all the laws they even changed the name of the lawn. Act to the canine coolly prevention act and it does remove the breeding dog limit the requirement for the Living Conditions of animals it is a constitutional process and when citizens decide they can do that the legislature should defer to the will of the people how do you run a government when the voters go to the polls they will and its just ignored there is an election thats the way things run and i have to think what is best for these new rules you know and sit down and work out something or im going to take the high road in and say no to taking everything we want all i know you have to do whats best for you. It is. Self going to put on a chain on the spot thats them. On their own that it does. Vocal just a little. Show. And you produce not just one cuts and you will not a monolith so these 2 stuff. Just. Seem wrong well we just dont all. Get to shape out. And. Equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. There are a lot of lawmakers in the state of missouri that we know received huge financial contributions from agricultural Industry Groups those are the groups that oppose d proposition b. And there is no doubt in our minds that those same groups pressured lawmakers to overturn proposition b. And before the session even started there were bills that were pretty filed to do just that you feel bad because it was repealed but you know all of your work all of your effort paid off as made a dramatic difference for this i mean just the fact that over almost half of these facilities are out of business who couldve been vision that things are definitely much improved with many of the worst operations but you still have chronic while leaders who are operating you still have any humane treatment of the animals and you still have this defiant attitude that some folks believe they can do whatever they want there are so many issues out here so many porton issues and everybody is struggling in their own way that we dont necessarily want to pick up the other guy struggle eventually i have to go back into my town and face this neighbor and face the other neighbors and i will meet them at church meet them at the Grocery Store a meeting at the restroom at the sale barn and im responsible i am responsible. And i think this is where the buck ends we individually have to take responsibility as producers and also as consumers but i mean i think for the public