The US Department of Agriculture is proposing to change
their regulations in a way that will affect a lot of border collie breeders.
They have published their proposed changes in order for the public to be able
to see them and submit comments about them. The deadline for comments is July
16. After all the comments are in, the USDA will review the comments and either
go ahead with the new regulations they have proposed, or modify them, or leave
the regulations as they are now. You can read the proposal at LINK
Overview
The Animal Welfare Act is a federal law that regulates
the treatment of animals being sold for research, for exhibition, or for use as
pets. In general, anyone who sells dogs for any of these purposes is required
to be licensed as a "Dealer" by the USDA, and to meet specified
requirements for housing conditions, feeding, sanitation, vet care, etc., and
to keep specified records, and to permit inspection by USDA inspectors. The law
makes an exception for "Retail Pet Stores" they are exempt from these requirements.
Up to now, the USDA regulations have defined "Retail
Pet Store" to include anyone who sells pets at retail as opposed to
wholesale in other words, anyone who sells direct to the ultimate consumer
rather than to a middleman. So border collie breeders who sell pups or dogs to
individuals who intend to keep them have not had to bother with being licensed,
being inspected, or complying with the rules about kennel facilities, feeding,
watering, and so forth. Under the current regulations, most border collie
breeders are considered by the USDA to be Retail Pet Stores, and therefore
exempt from the requirements of the Animal Welfare Act.
Now, however, the USDA is proposing to change the
definition of Retail Pet Store, so that it would mean people who sell dogs only
to buyers who come onto their premises to see the pups, or to pick up the pup
they've bought. Under the proposed new regulations, if you sell even one dog to
somebody who doesn't come to your place to see or get the dog, then you would
no longer qualify as a Retail Pet Store, and so that exemption would not apply
to you.
There is one other exemption that could save you from
being a Dealer, and therefore from the licensing requirements. If you maintain
four (4) or fewer breeding female dogs and/or cats, and you sell only the
offspring of these dogs and/or cats which were born and raised on your
premises, then you would be exempt. But if in addition to these pups, you sell
any other dogs, you could not qualify for this exemption.
The proposed regulations do not define the term
"breeding female," so it's not clear whether it would be interpreted
to mean only bitches who are actually being bred, or if it would be interpreted
to include all sexually mature intact bitches. It's also not clear exactly what
the definition of selling puppies/dogs "as pets" or "for use as
pets" would be, but chances are that if a buyer thinks the puppy or dog
he's buying will be wholly or partially a pet, that dog would be counted as a
pet.
How to tell if you would be affected by the proposed
regulations
If you sell pups and/or dogs, and do not sell them at
wholesale, the following chain of questions will help you figure out whether
the proposed change in the regulations would affect you:
1. Do you sell any pups or dogs to pet homes? If you
don't, you would not need to be licensed under the new regulations. If you do,
go on to Question 2.
2. Do you sell any pups or dogs to people who don't come
to your premises to see them (for example, do you ever ship pups, or deliver
them to their new owner at trials or clinics)? If you don't, you would not need
to be licensed under the new regulations. If you do, go on to Question 3.
3. Do you have more than four breeding females in your
household, regardless of who owns them, or do you act in concert with others to
collectively maintain more than four breeding females? If you do, you would
need to be licensed under the new regulations. If you don't, go on to Question
4.
4. Do you ever sell pups or dogs other than those that
are produced by your four or fewer breeding females and are born and raised on
your premises (for example, do you ever sell dogs you've bought in and trained,
or dogs you've brought over from the UK, or dogs you've bought that didn't work
out, or dogs you're placing for a friend, or dogs you've rescued)? If you do,
you would need to be licensed under the new regulations.
What you can do
If you want to have your voice heard about these proposed
regulations, here are some things you can do:
1. You can submit comments directly to the Department of
Agriculture by going to
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=APHIS-2011-0003-0001 and clicking
on "Comment Now!" Comments can also be submitted by postal mail, especially
if your comments are lengthy. The address for mailed-in comments is: Docket No.
APHIS-2011-0003, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station
3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. The deadline for
comments is July 16.
This is your best chance to make a difference in what
happens. The comments that are most likely to be taken seriously are ones that
tell in your own words the reasons why you support or oppose this change in the
regulations, tell what effect it would have on you or people you know, and
provide any suggestions you may have about what the USDA should do instead.
Scroll down to the Suggestions for Comments section to get some ideas that may
help you in writing your own comments.
2. The ABCA is likely to submit comments as an
organization. For our comments to be the most valid and effective, it would be
very helpful for us to have as much information as possible about how many of
our members would be affected by this change, and what their views are about
the change. So if you are an ABCA member, please let us know why and how the
proposed change in the regulations would affect you, and why you think the
change should or should not be made. You can email this information to Eileen
Stein at USDAregs@bordercollie.org. Also, one of the possible alternatives to
the approach taken in these regulations would be to require those who sell more
than X number of dogs and pups per year to be subject to regulation. Do you
think this would be a better approach, and if so, what should be the
appropriate number of sales which would trigger licensing/regulation? Please
let us know your thoughts.
3. This proposal is for a change in the regulations of
the Department of Agriculture. It is not a proposed new law, and therefore
Congress will not be directly involved in whether the change is made or not.
But even though your Senator or Congressional representative will not be voting
on this, it still might be useful to make your views known to him or her.
Suggestions for Comments
The USDA estimates that about 1,500 dog breeders could be
affected by this rule. No basis is given for this figure, which seems to be an
extreme underestimate. It is likely that hundreds of owners of working
stockdogs and livestock guardian dogs alone would become subject to regulation
under these proposed changes.
The term "breeding females" is not defined in
the regulations. There should be no presumption that intact females above a
certain age are "breeding females." Those who breed dogs for
livestock work must train young dogs until they are close to two years of age sometimes longer--before they
can be sure which dogs are worthy of breeding. During that time the dog must
remain intact, even though it's unknown whether she will ever be bred.
Federal regulation should be reserved for high-volume
breeders, but under these proposed changes, many breeders of working stockdogs
would become classified as Dealers and subject to regulation even though they
breed no more than a litter or two a year. They may maintain more than four
breeding females, but those dogs are not confined and bred continuously; some
of them may never be bred. They are being trained to determine which of them
are worthy of breeding, they are herding and/or guarding livestock daily, they
compete in sheepdog trials, they are temporarily in the breeder's household
while being trained for their owners, etc. Even those who own fewer than four
breeding females, and breed fewer than one litter a year, would become subject
to regulation as Dealers if they sold a dog they didn't breed. This is a common
practice in the working border collie world, where dogs who may have been
bought in for training or imported and did not work out as stockdogs are sold
to pet homes, as are the occasional rescued dog or dog retired from a trialing
career. If even one dog was delivered to its new owner at a trial or training
clinic, or shipped to its new owner, the breeder would be required to be
licensed and regulated.
Because stockdog breeders tend to breed relatively
rarely, a large percentage of stockdog puppies are born and raised in the
farmhouse kitchen or elsewhere in the owner's home. It would not be practical
for these owners to build and maintain facilities to the specifications
required under the AWA regulations for full-time, high-volume wholesale
breeders, nor would it benefit the dogs and puppies to be moved out of the
household into such facilities. High-volume breeders can offset the cost of
such facilities against their income from puppy sales, but the low-volume
breeders cannot, unless they greatly increase the number of dogs they breed,
which would be undesirable.
If these proposed regulations are enacted, they will have
a damaging effect on the quality and welfare of stockdogs, which in turn will
harm livestock producers all across the country who depend on these dogs in
their livestock operations. In an effort to avoid burdensome regulation, the
knowledgeable breeders who maintain working ability in the border collie breed
will be forced to change their practices for the worse. They may reduce the
number of dogs they take in for training, so as not to be in a position of
maintaining more than four breeding females at a time, with the result that it
will be harder for farmers and ranchers to obtain well trained stockdogs.
Females will be spayed before their merits and value to the gene pool can be
fully assessed, in order to avoid exceeding the four-breeding-female limit.
Breeders will be less willing to import dogs or to buy dogs from others because
of the risk that those dogs might not work out, and selling them would deprive
them of the 2.1(a)(3)(iii) exemption, with the result that desirable bloodlines
and combinations of bloodlines will be lost. They will be less willing to take
in an unwanted dog to find a home for it, because any payment they received for
that dog even if just enough to ensure the good faith of the adopter would mean
that they had sold a dog not born and raised on their premises, which would
deprive them of the exemption. And if breeders seek to retain Retail Pet Store
status by no longer selling dogs or pups to anyone who does not come to their
premises, the availability of high-quality stockdogs to many parts of the
country will be curtailed or eliminated.
Adding thousands of low-volume breeders to the numbers of
Dealers subject to federal regulation is a poor use of USDA resources. Some of
the added breeders will be large facilities which do pose more risk to the
welfare of animals, but as the proposed regulations are worded, the great
majority of added breeders will be small-scale and occasional producers who are
not the subject of complaints and not the target at which this initiative is
aimed. As a result, the benefits to be achieved are small, and the cost will be
high, either in terms of greatly increased enforcement costs or the diverting
of resources away from inspection of large commercial kennels, where inspection
is most needed.
Regulations which would authorize federal inspectors to
enter and inspect people's homes because they occasionally sell pups and dogs
as pets drastically violate the liberty and privacy rights of Americans.
If large
Internet retailers have become a problem, the
issue should be addressed by Congress, which can target legislation more
precisely toward remedying it. Broadening AWA's coverage to include retail
sellers is not the answer.
