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This bill will be reintroduced at the start of the 2025 session.
In Minnesota, our goal is to change the law to require inspection records of commercial breeding facilities to be publicly available. Currently, consumers looking to buy a puppy have no way of knowing if a breeder is reputable because the Board of Animal Health keeps commercial breeding inspection records private. This proposed legislation will enable consumers to determine if they are buying from a breeder following the laws or supporting a business with numerous violations for treating dogs inhumanely.
The bill would make data on state-licensed breeders publicly available, identify breeders with revoked licenses, and provide consumers with information on the number of animals breeders have and the nature and frequency of any violations they’ve had.
Minnesota has more than 100 commercial dog and cat breeders, yet consumers have virtually no access to information about these breeders due to the current Minnesota law. A special exemption for dog and cat breeders added to the State’s Data Practices Act makes almost all information about these businesses private. This lack of transparency deprives consumers of critical information about the conditions in which their puppy or kitten was raised.
Summary data from the Minnesota Board of Animal Health indicates that state inspectors issued 47 violations to commercial dog and cat breeders in the last five years. But Minnesota consumers have no access to data about which breeders were found to have violations, the nature of the violations, or how they were addressed.
Many large breeders advertise their business as small or home-based, yet the public’s ability to verify these claims is severely limited. Without access to verifiable information, consumers risk investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in an animal bred in unknown conditions.
In contrast, nonprofit animal shelters are held to higher data transparency standards than for-profit breeders. The state licenses and inspects both commercial dog and cat breeders and nonprofit shelters. Yet information on nonprofit shelters is public, while the same information regarding breeders is secret. This double standard needs to end.