‘Puppy Mill Bill’ Got Ganged Up On

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

It was like an unholy alliance indeed that managed to head off the so-called Puppy Mill Bill in Raleigh.
We join letter writer Sharon Shaw (The Pilot, July 10) in wondering what the pork industry and the National Rifle Association have to do with puppies. We, too, deplore the success that lobbyists for those two ­powerful entities had in preventing a legislative committee from even having an opportunity to consider a very reasonable bill that would have outlawed some of the more horrendous and inhumane things said to go on at some of the state’s puppy factories.
According to a lobbyist for the N.C. Pork Council, who spoke rather too candidly to a reporter from The News & Observer of Raleigh, the pig industry opposed the Puppy Mill Bill for one reason and one reason only: because the legislation had the support of the Humane Society of the United States. In other words, to paraphrase an old Arabic saying, “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”
After all, you can’t go around allowing a do-gooder organization to succeed today in its attempt to do something to relieve the suffering of cooped-up mama dogs and their babies. Who knows? — that same group may turn around tomorrow and try to get the state to take a closer look at the conditions that sows and their piglets are subjected to on their miserable journey from birth to the meat counter at your local supermarket.
But why in the world did the National Rifle Association ever come to have (you should pardon the expression) a dog in that fight? That’s not altogether clear, just as it never is where the NRA is concerned. Again, there must have been concern about the possibility of an undesirable precedent being set. Start outlawing the mistreatment of pups today and pigs tomorrow, and next thing you know, questions may start to be raised about the shooting of rabbits, squirrels and deer.
That’s unlikely, given America’s proud hunting tradition, but you can’t be too careful — or too paranoid — about such things. The NRA stepped in even though the framers of the legislation made a point of excluding hunting dogs from its purview.
Meanwhile, the operators of puppy mills are free for now to go on producing their “product” under conditions that are sometimes so inhumane as to make pet lovers weep in anguish. Here’s hoping the pork and firearms lobbies are proud of themselves for deep-sixing the attempt to do a little something about it.