Breed Wars: The Rise of Illegal Dog Imports

With more and more puppy mills being shut down due increasing state regulations the number of pets available for purchase has decreased dramatically. Unfortunately this has lead to a large increase in the number of illegal pet imports.

While illegally imported dogs has always been a problem, the problem has increased significantly over the last few years due to the large number of puppy mills being forced to shut down.

Because of these bans on puppy mills many breeders are getting around these increasing regulations by illegally importing dogs and puppies raised in foreign countries.

These pets present a major problem for the United States. Since these dogs are raised in foreign puppy mills, they have an unknown health history, and most are unvaccinated. Also many people worry about them carrying zoonotic diseases like rabies as well.

But the American public has a large appetite for pets, and most people who want one usually don’t care whether it comes from a foreign country or from the United States.

As a result of this, some people argue that it would be much better to regulate the puppy mills more thoroughly then to just shut all of them down.

Because there are no regulations limiting how many pets a person can own, the average citizen will come continue buying pets whether they need to get them to legally or illegally.

No elected official would ever pass regulation telling families that they could own just one pet, but is always look upon very favorably when they try to pass regulation to shutdown puppy mills.

If you want to help out in trying to reduce the number of illegal dog imports coming into this country then you should try and contact your local government representatives.

It is only through regulating all aspects of the pet supply that we can guarantee American citizens a safe, healthy and legal pet.

Visit our veterinary blog if you’d like to read more about this subject. You can also visit us for more tips on responsible dog breeding.