NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – Officials with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are calling on New Braunfels City Council to ban the sale of dogs and cats obtained by commercial breeders at city pet stores.
PETA sent a letter to the council on Wednesday following a meeting on Oct. 10 where the council voted 4-3 to approve the first reading of the ordinance that would ban the sale.
Recommended Videos
According to a press release, PETA is urging the council and Mayor Rusty Brockman to vote in favor of the ban at the meeting on Oct. 24.
“Those puppies in the pet shop window commonly begin life in massive breeding mills, where they’re taken from their mothers prematurely, exposed to diseases, and shipped off to make a quick buck,” PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch said.
New Braunfels’ Animal Services Advisory Board says the issue started in August 2021 when a “new commercial animal establishment” opened within city limits.
A graph from the New Braunfels City Council website shows the total number of dogs received by the Humane Society of the New Braunfels Area (HSNBA) was steadily declining from 2017 to 2021, when the establishment opened.
Following the opening of the establishment, the number of animals received by the HSNBA increased 20% or 175 animals.
The main concerns expressed were from where the animals were being sourced, according to the advisory board. Other issues include the resulting increase in the community’s pet population and a desire to incentivize the adoption of homeless pets.
“Area animal shelters are full to bursting with adoptable dogs who don’t find homes as a result of pet store operations, and the cost of running those shelters takes a toll on the city budget,” PETA officials said in the press release. “Puppy mills continually produce more litters even though approximately 70 million dogs and cats are homeless in the U.S. at any given time.”
A draft of the ordinance to be approved by City Council states that pet shops will be required to maintain a record of every cat and dog sourced from an animal shelter or animal welfare organization for at least one year from the date of sale or transfer from the animal shelter or animal welfare organization to the retail pet shop.