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And before the session even started there were bills that were pretty filed to do just that you feel bad because it was repealed but you know all of your work paid off just made a dramatic difference for this i mean just the fact that almost half these facilities are out of business who could have envisioned 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 a humane treatment. And you still have this defiant attitude. Some folks believe they can do whatever they want there are so many issues out show 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 ill meet them at the Grocery Store for me to make the rest. And responsible. And i think this is where the. We really have to take responsibility as producers and as consumers but i mean i think for the public very clearly you know you have a choice in the product that you get the store. In your own backyard if youre going to try to fix it i felt more like a hypocrite if you cant defend the rights of all dogs if youre going to ignore the problem down the street. At 1st it was i wanted to educate people who had no idea like i did and so i knew about it and somehow i was educated by one story that other people would be. The protests started black friday of 2011 and the reason we did that is because thats when people started buying christmas copies placing orders for christmas copies and we wanted that to stop so when they 1st started we were there. Every single saturday that was a very very long and cold winter. Protest peacefully we always hold our signs are we always have. The information and i have handouts for people that are very factual and we dont. Thats the biggest thing. If you friends and i started going around to the mills and experiencing it firsthand so our local store. Or its diabetics pet shop and we went in there and we saw the puppies and asked them and i 1st they were like from a breeder and they were very open about it and so we asked if we could contact them so they gave us their card and we made an appointment and we went and we visited the mill and it was it was awful. And i are in general we have the negative temperatures and the very very High Temperature is that the dogs are forced to live in that 247 and so our protests are every single week and no matter what the weather today we are very thankful to positive temperatures when i left my house this morning with the wind chill it was negative 40 this is cold its not over cold this it is average when say i over there usually air protests are between 2 people and 10 people every lead just depends on the weather and what we all have going on it is a priority and everybody we have several people that travel from out of town to get here 2 years is a long time to think that weve been in front of here this is where we hang our young people hang out in front of 5 stars on saturdays and we only have to be out here for 2 hours and the dogs are have to be out here all the time. Dogs in the shelters these are. The. Grass different types. And i think its going to take an interest people become more aware of what what a Public Domain someone starts in the store actually do or i like to say that its a Ripple Effect and i advocate one person who knows how many other people they will tout and so if we can all educate our Little Corner of the earth that someday we will not have these problems because once the public really knows whats going on they will support and. No matter how upset i am i know the dogs have it. And so id never even consider giving. Its never been an option and i will use my voice behave in a. While keep doing it out there and my money. Until recent changes the only federal regulations governing commercial dog breeding date back to the passing of the Animal Welfare act or a. W. A. In 1966 the a. W. A. Defined a commercial dog breeder as one who maintains 4 or more breeding female dogs and sells the offspring into wholesale channels any breeder or Retail Pet Store in gauged in the direct sale of dogs to the public was exempt from the a. W. A. Let me clarify that a little bit the Animal Welfare act only requires that we do annual inspections on Research Facilities so there is no requirement for the other entities that we regulate. But every facility thats either licensed or registered with us is assigned a minimum inspection frequency we have a response Inspection System so based on the risk of finding noncompliance risk of Animal Welfare concerns the facility may be assigned a frequency of once a year twice a year 3 times a year whatever that system a science to it the a. W. A. Does not require yearly vet check ups access to exercise socialization or protections against extreme heat or cold and allows both wire flooring and stackable cages. For the Animal Welfare act is passed and it requires humane standards of care for dogs raised in commercial breeding establishment and they require as of the department of agriculture go out and inspect these facilities and make sure that theyre complying with these regulations i always refer to the regulations that we have today with the u. S. D. A. Is survival standards if you comply with the centers of care the dogs will probably but is it humane no right now and u. S. D. A. Regulations a dog requires 6 inches of living space bigger than the dog itself and youre talking about a dog is living in that space for its entire lives and that are part of agriculture really is there promote american agriculture its not an impartial sort of entity that is neutral the overseeing the laws and for years u. S. D. A. Was allied with the very interests that it was supposed to regulate including these folks within the Agriculture Sector who you know started raising puppies and started operating puppy mills never in the state of ohio has any breeder been forced out of this. Long. Standing violations of the Animal Welfare act if they choose to no longer pay us to a license its because they chose not to renew their license not because inspectors came out to actually revoke that license i never heard of a regulator coming to pennsylvania no one was getting shut down the feeling of the industry was very we dont have to worry about it so frankly their doors were pretty open the so often if a breeder some violation of the Animal Welfare act they get a slap on the hand and when they get the slap on the hands. Off and it is months following the violation and theyre given an opportunity to correct the violation and sometimes it may be days. Before that inspector returns to ensure that the violations been corrected on its very rare that they will be given a fine that is truly impactful to their bottom line so they factor it in as a cost of doing business in force with the Animal Welfare act has been horrendous in the end for many many years and just 2000 to do their own office of Inspector General issued a very doable report on how terrible their inspections were they documented inspectors walking by dogs and just leaving of there you know that writing up these people and putting them out of business suspended really really bad the Inspector General found several major problems with them foresman of the a. W. A. Including finding a massive loophole that allowed breeders to sell puppies over the internet without a license and delaying confiscation of suffering animals to give violators a final opportunity to take corrective action before confiscation can occur even in extreme cases where animals are dying it is called the Animal Welfare you know its not the the kennel really well for it its the animals and yes even some of the good inspectors were there in this building inspectors in made sure that the building was clean and they had good shelter from the extra. Temperatures but the dogs of. The photo a lot of the focus of that was on inconsistency in some of the things our inspectors were citing and the length of time it took to get to enforcement so we put some an intensified training in place for our inspectors from a different oversight or inspection process and work with our branch to find different ways to expedite the enforcement process since and weve also worked on some nontraditional or non Regulatory Solutions if we can help somebody come into compliance without having to resort to enforcement action and get those animals in a better welfare situation quicker thats what were going to do. Since being elected in 1907 senator dick durbin has introduced legislation in every session that would dramatically improve the lives of dogs in commercial kennels and would close the internet loophole. The way people sold dogs changed and has it changed it was no longer going to the individual breeder oh longer just going to the store now was online sales and they were exempt from the kind of regular inspection that would protect the puppies and their mothers so we had to make sure that our bill really filled the gap and provided the protection for those online sales and the pups that were part of it even in the midst of the hyper partisanship of the u. S. Senate on the issue of puppy mills senator durbin found willing partners on the republican side of the aisle my 1st cosponsor was Rick Santorum one of the most conservative republicans from pennsylvania he was on the spot with me and then after he left the senate i had senator vitter from louisiana another very conservative senator so it turns out that when it comes to humane treatment of animals and dogs in particular this is very bipartisan if a bill like pops went to the floor of the house of the senate it would be an overwhelming yea vote for the measure it would be 9095. 00 yes votes in the senate you know be 400 or so yes votes in the house out of 430 but the problem is on Animal Welfare legislation the congress is that many of the bills you get track to the house and Senate Committees on agriculture and those committees are populated by the most rural lawmakers aligned with the biggest agribusiness interests in the United States. How can you explain love ive been to 82 countries i did in 12 but i came here and on those 3 days i just filled with hope. And he kept pretty isnt it sick show that. I made my decision to come here because i felt i knew i could build a new life here. You know the prison. Was a pretty bad but i think god decided that this money is no good to be free. Did you figure out where my one dream is that all my children d find the same kind of happiness i do. I love my home here i love cold weather i like the culture like the history i like everything about it. Its. Fine ill buy that. Russian fama. A more robust morals wont be one in which we move business as usual but guess what. We prepared for. A lot cheaper at reduced mobility you know the jury is a lot cheaper than having. Throughout the years members of the Senate Agriculture committee have received enormous Campaign Contributions from agriculture giant including Months Center tyson smithfield and cargill the sides these direct contributions each of these corporations spent millions of dollars each year lobbying congress. Seemingly afraid of how a theoretical slippery slope protecting dogs in puppy mills could hurt their operations corporate agriculture sided with commercial breeders they get loads of Campaign Cash from. These agribusiness groups because thats the funnel for the legislation that these agribusiness groups want who doesnt want to protect dogs and yet somehow interest to find a way to twist it around and make you scared into voting against those commonsense positive Public Policy is they typically oppose any Animal Welfare legislation because they think theyre going to be next and they think that if you have a society that is incrementally building Animal Welfare standards its eventually going to lead the society of examine their thought even with strong public support for common sense changes to the Animal Welfare act none of these bills were allowed out of committee recognizing the original intentions of the a. W. A. And the advent of commercial breeders selling exclusively over the internet the u. S. D. A. Moved on their own to update the regulations so the administration seeing the enormous number of senators and u. S. Representatives backing the legislation and getting hundreds of thousands of comments from h. S. Us members and other Animal Welfare advocates they finally passed a rule to bring these internet sellers under the Regulatory Authority of us to before the change in regulations nearly 7500 facilities across the United States were subject to inspection. Besides commercial breeding facilities this includes Research Facilities zoos circuses marine parks transport vehicle television and Film Productions involving animals state fairs camel rides petting zoos elephant right and traveling and or roadside zoos. In 2013115 u. S. D. A. Inspectors conducted between 1011000 inspections on these various facilities approximately 3000 of those inspections were conducted on commercial dog breeding facilities since this change in policy will now also require commercial breeders selling on the internet to obtain a license the u. S. D. A. Estimates that there will be up to 4600. 00 additional new facilities under their inspection umbrella based on their own projections a total of between 10 and 12000 facilities well now fall under the inspection provisions of the Animal Welfare act this change will increase the workload of their 115 inspectors buying nearly a 3rd. The u. S. D. A. Has no plans to add additional inspectors i think since the real big came into effect the number one way that weve gotten contacts are peoples names as people suffer porting we do we have looked at breeder registries to get i did get numbers we watch the internet a look at. Marketing promotional things from folks that sell over the internet so this is a good move for dogs that its now part of the Animal Welfare act but again our questions going to be how are you going to enforce that because youre having a very difficult time in forcing a law that was already in place and now weve just added a new dimension to it and weve got a 115 people. Stationed across the country to do our inspections. Their workload is prioritized by risk based system so we get them to those places where theyre most needed and at this point in time we do feel like we have resources to be successful at doing this you know i worry about that what a time or cutting back on spending appropriations in every direction and they say they have enough to get started and i want to keep an eye on it even documented u. S. T. A. Inspectors who had their old puppy mill themselves documented supervisors of inspectors who were out working as roofers during the day and theyre supposed to be out check you know their inspectors and enforcement was absolutely atrocious and has bad since the inception of the and it was just recently in the last couple years that u. S. D. A. Has really turned around and started to enforce the law its been on the books since 1000. And we just have to continue now with our effort to educate the public that the best place to get holes is a shelter or rescue group or a responsible breeder who is really treating the other dog like a pet and not a breed. Machine. Usually have a number so he actually has a tattoo on his ear as hes optioned and thats my bird its not that my business name once we got him he was shaking a lot because he didnt know what to do he was trapped in this tiny little wired cage. We dont near the crate with him he will just stir freaking out and he wont let us read even anywhere near and. That is a. Lot of email. Let me ask me a little and i dont know now camarines ill be known as i guess thats me and i want to know how theyre coming out and i said well so are these really really cute nice these are all you know your body your skull and these 2 in here came from a hoarding situation in philadelphia we took in 39 a little blue show while dr makes this. Guy. Our our. Dog was probably about 9 months old even months old and the dog was so full of joy and just wanted to get out run around and the dog was down on its elbows playing in and it was in a rabbit hutch standing on wire but it desperately wanted to get out and i can we take this dog no i just got the dog were breeding the dog im just starting to breed or so this was years ago and then every time we went back i would see this dog and the dog was getting older and older and he didnt want her anymore because she wasnt a good breeder and i was looking at her and her eyes were dead and within i would say about a month beast she started to come around and i could see the dog that i remembered from before and its a shame that she had to go through all that you know her entire life just consisted of this misery. And we need people to start realizing that these poppy mills exist these puppies in pet stores come from popular else whether you believe it or not thats where your dog came from a puppy. Thing that hes really trust because theyre not rescuing are saving a puppy by by buying their dog what theyre doing is theyre sensing the mother that dog to a lifetime of misery you know you know the general public doesnt stop buying poppies i stock on a change its just its not going to stop ill be down on us till the day i die and i owe a lot and i hope i hope i dont have to spend my days to save dogs we americans are treating do