Lawmakers and animal welfare advocates say California must address “disturbing” findings from a Los Angeles Times investigation into the state’s lucrative underground puppy resale market, and they called on state officials to end the practice of destroying critical pet import records.
Those veterinary records show where the dogs entering California were imported from, their destination and confirm they are healthy enough to travel.
By obtaining those out-of-state records, The Times was able to detail how some unscrupulous California resellers buy puppies in bulk from mass breeders in the Midwest and rebrand them as locally bred. As a result, some consumers are tricked into buying puppies from a dog trade they may not support, and the new pets end up sick and with costly veterinary bills, The Times investigation found.
State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) said he was “horrified” by what the investigation exposed about the puppy trade in California.
“It is clear that we need to enact legislation to close this huge loophole,” Umberg said.
Umberg, who owns a rescue dog himself, said the California Department of Food and Agriculture should stop purging import records that could help trace dogs back to puppy mills. The former prosecutor added that that's the first thing the state should do to ensure consumer and animal protection.
A spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom said California will take a closer look at the puppy resale market.
“The Los Angeles Times investigation raises serious alarms about the inhumane treatment of pets,” said Newsom spokeswoman Izzy Gardon. “Governor Newsom has long been a champion of animal welfare and the administration is committed to exploring further efforts to close loopholes and address this issue in collaboration with lawmakers, advocates and local authorities.”
Gardon declined to say whether the governor’s office would order agriculture officials to stop destroying veterinary records. The documents, called certificates of veterinary inspection, are required by most states when dogs are brought in for travel or sale. The Times requested those documents from all 50 states and received responses that tallied nearly 88,000 dogs imported into California since 2018.
California began requiring records in 2014 to protect consumers from buying sick puppies and to track disease outbreaks. Importers are supposed to send the certificates to county health departments, but they rarely do.
County officials appear unaware that they are required to collect them, and most counties fail to do so, The Times investigation found.
Meanwhile, California's agriculture agency acknowledged routinely receiving records from other states and immediately destroying them without review because “the sale and movement of domestic pets is outside of CDFA's jurisdiction.”
California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross and California State Veterinarian Annette Jones declined to be interviewed.
In a statement, the agency said it is “reviewing its procedures when veterinary health certificates are mistakenly submitted to the agency and is committed to exercising all of its legal authority to hold accountable the repugnant and morally reprehensible perpetrators of puppy mill operations.”
The agency acknowledged that the current system “is confusing” since the state oversees health certificates for livestock and poultry imports, but counties are supposed to receive the same documentation for dogs.
The agency said it notifies other states that records need to be sent to counties, but it does not have dedicated staff to send out the up to 50 health certificates it receives each day.
“We are closely reviewing any additional actions within our personnel resources and legal authority,” the statement said.
The agency did not say whether records continue to be deleted in the meantime.
Veterinarian Jennifer Scarlett, who heads the San Francisco SPCA, said efforts to crack down on the underground puppy market exposed by The Times are hampered by the state's failure to maintain records.
“We can't prove illegal activity if we can't even look at the documents,” he said.
San Diego Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, who authored the law requiring health certificates, told The Times that the state and counties must work together to ensure that each record goes to the right agency.
“Let's face it, the state [agriculture] “The department should not just delete records,” he said, adding that doing so ensures that importers who violate the law go undetected. “It gives protection to sellers.”
This year, Maienschein authored a bill that would have required any dog sold to a person in California to offer refundable deposits and, in cases where a middleman was involved, would require the name of the dog’s breeder to be disclosed to the buyer. Despite being unanimously approved by the state Legislature, it failed to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee last month. The bill was sponsored by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Maienschein said he was not told why the bill was rejected. Umberg said he is considering whether to take it up now that Maienschein has finished his term and is leaving the Legislature.
Brittany Benesi, senior director of state legislation at the ASPCA, said in a statement that a similar bill is needed next year to “better protect consumers from these deceptive tactics that disguise the origin of their animals.”
California became the first state in the country to ban pet stores from selling commercially bred dogs starting in 2019, a move meant to thwart puppy mill shipments into the state. Lawmakers later strengthened the law to ban all retail dog sales after discovering that shady shelters began selling purebred and designer puppies to pet stores. But in the years since, state and local agencies responsible for monitoring animals entering California have failed to do so, allowing middlemen to import hundreds of puppies with little oversight.
Gary Weitzman, director of the San Diego Humane Society, said it makes no sense for California law to require importers, some of whom have engaged in deceptive practices, to submit records showing how many dogs they bring into the state.
“The state needs to step in and require that counties track these cases, that these records are actually audited, that they are actually used for prosecution and that the importers are not the ones driving the bus, which they literally are,” said Weitzman, who called the findings of the Times investigation “disturbing.”
The state requires importers to submit records to county health departments, whether they import one dog or hundreds.
That requirement surprised Assemblyman Heath Flora (R-Ripon), who purchased a cavapoo through a website in 2020. The Times found Flora’s name on a Missouri veterinary record for the pup, prompting the lawmaker to say he had no idea he was required to share the document he had been given with San Joaquin County.
“I don’t think the law is bad,” Flora said. “We want imported animals to be disease-free. That said, when laws are passed and voters don’t know about it, how can we hold them accountable?”
Reality star Evelyn Lozada said more needs to be done to ensure consumers are protected when they buy a puppy. Lozada publicly accused a Southern California family of selling her a sick puppy in 2018 that she said had been dyed chocolate brown so the dog could fetch a higher price.
Lozada was upset to learn that one of the people she said sold her the puppy, Trina Kenney, was listed in veterinary records reviewed by The Times as having imported 29 puppies from Michigan last year. The records were signed by a veterinarian in the weeks before and after a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge found that the Kenney family had engaged in an “egregious” scheme to sell sick puppies and barred them from selling dogs.
An attorney for the Kenneys told The Times that the family has been complying with the order not to sell dogs and questioned the authenticity of the travel certificates. The attorney could not be reached for comment on Lozada's allegations.
Lozada's puppy, which she named Biscuit, was not found among the thousands of dogs listed in the Times' records. Lozada said that after Biscuit was treated for parasites, he was healthy until recently.
She said she had to put him down a few weeks ago because of his deteriorating health. He was 6 years old.
“People are very trusting when they buy a dog,” he said. “I wish there were stricter laws and something would be done about it.”
