Sunday Times probes puppy farm

John Mooney’s Sunday Times piece on ‘Puppy Farming’ shows it as a clear abuse of animals for profit. Those reading his article and expressing revulsion at the callous cruelty it reveals would do well to remember a vital fact.

It is consumer demand that fuels this shocking exploitation.

The demand for designer dogs, an unwillingness to join a legitimate breeders waiting list for a puppy, the impulse purchase, all play a vital role in ensuring the John Bolands of this world thrive at the expense of animal welfare. As long as there are people daft enough to buy a pup advertised in a ‘Pets Classified’ without as much as seeing it with its mother the Bolands and many like them will meet the need and get fat at the expense of the animals.

The USPCA has, on many occasions, assisted our colleagues in the ISPCA on raids at farms throughout the Republic. The conditions we uncovered are an affront to the most basic of animal welfare standards. Bitches and litters kept in wrecked cars with a mixture of damp straw and faeces for bedding. Spurious veterinary certificates and false pedigree paperwork. Young barely weaned pups shipped out in cardboard boxes. Is it any wonder welfare charities throughout the British Isles receive numerous calls from heart broken purchasers whose precious new puppy has died from diseases contracted shortly after birth?

With a quick buck to be made a local selection of seedy entrepreneurs have set up puppy farms in NI. The USPCA will do all in its power to confront and close these operations. The existing law is outdated and inadequate, in a few months an updated Animal Welfare Act will come before the Stormont Assembly, this will add bite to the bark.

Meanwhile we hope John Mooney’s article will make people think twice before handing over obscene amount of cash to the puppy farmers and their dealers.

‘Get it wrong and you could end up buying heartache and a season ticket to the vet’.

Click here to Read the article

THE ABOVE PIECE WAS COPIED FROM THE USPCA WEBSITE.