The Puppy Mill Industrial Complex

Nobody in their right mind would seriously defend the puppy mill operations that exist in the United States. Yet, like so many other seemingly well-intentioned causes captured by the nonprofit industrial complex (which, let’s not forget, often profits from a problem rather than solving it), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) deserves our attention. Indeed, it appears the group is running the same playbook as Big Pharma and others, despite professing its goal is to protect animals from puppy mills. We’ve seen the ads. A Sarah McLachlan song plays softly in the background while images of sad, shivering animals flood the screen and break our hearts, causing donations to pour in. Since 2008, the ASPCA has raised over $2 billion on the strength of those heart-wrenching ads. But most donors have no idea where that money actually goes—and what it is being used to build.

The ASPCA has spent years lobbying state and local governments to ban the retail sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits in pet stores. And so far, eight states have done exactly that, with hundreds of localities following suit. Earlier this year, Colorado passed its Pistol the Pomeranian Act, and Massachusetts is moving similar legislation through its legislature. The stated goal is to shut down puppy mills. That part is great. Innocent animals are kept in filthy, overcrowded conditions in those commercial breeding operations. They are bred continuously and denied basic veterinary care. Everyone involved should be prosecuted. Without question, the cause is real, and the abuses are documented. But unfortunately, the ASPCA’s efforts fall well short of its stated goal.

Instead, the results of the ASPCA-initiated bans are horrific. After California prohibited the sale of animals in pet stores in 2019, puppy scams surged by 350 percent. The state now leads the nation in reported puppy mill scams. An investigation by the LA Times found that, immediately following the bans, a vast underground market rapidly materialized, with Midwestern mills shipping truckloads of puppies to California under the cover of fake rescue operations. Eager individuals who wanted to add a four-legged member to their family paid thousands of dollars for animals they believed were locally bred, only to end up with sick dogs and no recourse.

And the mills themselves? Shockingly, a decade of bans has not reduced their number by a single facility. Instead, advocates cite 10,000 puppy mills operating in the United States. The same number that was cited before ASPCA began its campaign to ban them.

The former ASPCA CEO, the one who created the Sarah McLachlan fundraising model, has publicly criticized what is happening, saying that the grants program has been reduced to roughly $5 million a year, against revenue of nearly $400 million. “What’s upsetting as time has gone on,” he said, “is that the original purpose of those funds seems to be forgotten.” Casting a further dark cloud over the current state of affairs is the fact that the organization’s CEO, Matt Bershadker, earned more than $840,000 in 2019. For comparison, that is more than the chief executives of both Feeding America and the American Red Cross, which have budgets ten times as large as the ASPCA’s.

A 2025 USDA Inspector General report found that 80 percent of previously noncompliant dog breeders continued to violate federal standards. The report also found that inspections were untimely and inconsistent, and that the agency failed to close 69 percent of complaints within required timeframes. The federal oversight meant to hold puppy mills accountable isn’t working. Instead, it’s more of the same profit-driven, cruel madness. Again, the bans intended to starve them of customers aren’t working. The national organization collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to fight this problem is spending most of it on advertising to collect more donations.

What would actually work is enforcing the laws that already exist. Animal cruelty and neglect are illegal. It is that simple. Breeders operating in violation of federal standards can be shut down. Local shelters doing the actual work of housing and rehoming animals could use the hundreds of millions of dollars the ASPCA has sitting in reserve. None of that requires banning the small, neighborhood pet store (the big chains, well, they might deserve a more thorough investigation) or driving consumers into the arms of online scammers.

Banning things people want rarely solves the underlying problem. As history can tell us, it shifts it somewhere darker, somewhere less visible, somewhere with fewer protections, as in this case for the innocent animals and the people who love them. The mills keep running. The donations keep flowing. And the small business owners who actually knew their customers are gone, while the non-profit profits. It’s time for a change.