Last evening, Rendell signed House Bill 2525 into law. This bill will stop cage stacking, double the size of cages, ban wire flooring, require dogs to have an exercise program and provide veterinary care for these dogs twice a year.
This bill will also give dog wardens increased enforcement power. It will also require breeders to pay for the costs incurred when their dogs are taken into custody regarding cruelty cases.
What has taken into effect immediately is that only veterinarians are allowed to euthanize a dog in a commercial breeding facility. As many of us are aware, it was Elmer and Ammon Zimmerman of Maxatawny township in Berks County who killed 80 dogs that sparked the outrage over puppymills and how killing dogs was still legal in commercial breeding facilities. NO MORE!! As was said by Linda G. in a comment in the previous post, there are many unlicensed breeders out there and we as private citizens to be vigilant to see who is a licensed breeder or not and we must report them.
It is up to us to report these cases. They are the ones who can still get away with not having to follow the law.
Congratulations, PA! We are moving in the right direction to making lives better for puppymill dogs. Let’s hope we can remove the stigma of being the puppymill capital of the East Coast in time.
But the bottomline is this : Please tell your friends, colleagues, family not to buy a puppy from a pet store because puppymills will still live on if there is a demand. 99% of all puppies in pet stores come from puppymills. If there is no demand, there will be no business for puppymills and they can go out of business. Now that would be great!
Governor Rendell will have a bill signing ceremony for the public to attend sometime late next week. I hope to attend. I will let you know when and where.