The Legal Side of the Internet Puppy Issue

• Federally, many dog breeders are regulated by the USDA pursuant to the Animal Welfare Act.  Breeders must be licensed by the USDA if they own more than three breeding females and sell dogs to brokers, research labs, or pet stores.  However, the law exempts out any breeder who sells dogs directly to the public. 
•  When Congress enacted the Animal Welfare Act, they created an exemption for anyone deemed to be a “retail pet store” or making “direct retail sales.”  The rationale behind the exemption was that consumers would be able to witness the conditions at breeding facilities if they buy a dog directly from the breeder.  Congress believed that consumers would act as quasi-regulators to this sector of the market, because they would not purchase dogs from breeding facilities that appeared to be substandard. 
• However, Congress did not contemplate sales of dogs via the Internet at the time of enactment of the Animal Welfare Act.  As a result of the direct retail sales exemption, breeders selling dogs over the Internet are not regulated by the USDA and consumers are not seeing the breeding facilities because the dogs are typically shipped to the buyer.  This loophole in the Animal Welfare Act leaves a large sector of the commercial dog breeding industry completely unregulated.