Dog Wars: Bans on Dog Breeding Lead to Spike in Illegal Imports

by Dr. Chris

March 15, 2010 As more and more states ban the breeding of dogs at puppy mills, many people are turning to illegally importing dogs to help satisfy demand stateside. According to DVM News Magazine, the CDC estimates 287,000 dogs crossed the United States border in 2006 and the problem appears to only be getting worse.

The main concern is that these puppies coming in are of an unknown health status and can carry rabies, zoonotic diseases, and other common dog diseases.

It?s gotten to be that it?s not just a veterinary issue, but it?s a public health issue as well.

Sadly most federal regulators have no way of tracking or even knowing how many dogs are brought into this country or where they come from or where they go.

The USDA keeps track only of commercial breeders in the United States who sell animals to research facilities, brokers, and pet stores.

According to one report unvaccinated dogs imported to California rose 500% from 2001-2006!

The article also goes on to state that approximately 588,000 animals are imported into United States each year, but those are just animals that go through the borders that we know of.

Another disturbing trend they reported was that in 2000 most of the imported dogs were singly imported. But showing up in 2003 there were a large number of multiple imports of puppies.

The number of puppies in California imported through airports increased from 110 multiple dog imports in 2003, to 365 in 2004, and some shipments contain as many as 40 puppies.

Most of these problems can be attributed to market demand because it?s getting tougher to raise dogs in the United States. Therefore many puppy mill owners appear to be turning to imports to increase profits. One of the main puppy mill states was Pennsylvania, but 256 kennels closed in 2009 due to changes in state laws.

Bottom line: If you get a new puppy ask where it came from, if it was vaccinated, and make the sale conditional on a clean bill of health from your veterinarian.

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