Colorado town moves to ban sales of cats and dogs
Commerce City residents and animal advocates are standing up in support of banning retail stores from selling dogs and cats in the Colorado town in an effort to curb the practice of commercial breeding, or puppy mills and cat mills.
"Your ordinance recognizes the inhumane conditions the puppy parents live in, and many issues such as disease and the results of indiscriminate breeding by commercial breeders," said one Commerce City resident before city council members during Monday night's council meeting.
City council leaders voted 7-2 on the second reading to approve an ordinance that would prevent people or retail stores in the city from selling cats or dogs unless a lawfully operated commercial kennel, hobby breeder, animal care facility, animal rescue organization, or animal shelter.
"This really supports the community," said Lauren Rombach.
Rombach is a state volunteer for Bailing out Benji, an organization that's been working across the country to stop the pipeline of puppy mill breeders, by preventing retail stores from selling dogs in the first place.
"Because our shelters and rescues are overwhelmed right now with adoptable dogs. We don't need to be mass-producing dogs and having people think that they're buying them from reputable breeders when they're actually buying from puppy mills," she said.
According to advocates against puppy mills, stores that sell pets are prime locations for puppy mill breeders to work with in order to sell their animals.
While Commerce City does not have any existing stores that take part in this kind of sales, Rombach says this ordinance serves as a preventative measure as more and more states continue to ban these sales outright.
"We're seeing stores be shut down across the nation, which makes the people that run puppy mills and some of the chains that run the stores more desperate to find new outlets," said Pam Dickerson, President of the Colorado Citizens for Canine Welfare.
"There are bad owners of any business, of any operation," said Dustin Hayworth.
Hayworth owns Pet City in Colorado Springs, a business that sells animals. However, he says they only get their pets from USDA-licensed commercial breeders and not puppy mills.
"We worked strongly with Colorado Springs city council, with a couple of council people to really dig into how we're doing our business and where our puppies are coming from to give them confidence that we are not the bad guys. We are part of the solution to make sure that the quality of animals at the breeding facilities, as well as the puppies coming into this town, are the best they can be," said Hayworth.
With Commerce City now marking the 20th city in the state to ban dog and cat sales, and Westminster also considering a similar ordinance, Hayworth worries this could set a bad precedent for more cities to put stores like his out of business.
"It's not going to help any of Colorado consumers. They're going to continue to look for their pets," said Hayworth. "They're going to continue and have to go to more unregulated sources to get their animals through the internet, more scams, more unhealthy dogs coming into the state because there's not a regulated chain of custody of those animals coming in."
Retail pet sales are currently banned in eight states, including most recently in New York. Colorado does not have a state ban.
