The Doggie in the Window

by Rory Kress

  But herein lies the hypocrisy: the regulations in the Animal Welfare Act that the USDA is enforcing have admittedly little to no science behind them.

  “There isn’t science that was used for the basis for the previous requirements. So to me, to some extent, there has to be some arbitrariness to what is developed in the way of standards, and to me, it ought to be erring on ensuring the welfare of the animals. I mean, having an enclosure that’s just six inches higher than the head of the dog is absurd,” Cathy Liss of the Animal Welfare Institute says.4

  “Where does that number even come from?” I ask her, trying to probe into the USDA’s precise calculations for kennel sizing.

  “That’s why I say it was arbitrary,” she says. “Again, that’s what was proposed through regulation, not based on science, and that’s what [the USDA] went with. So heaven forbid a dog should try to jump, which we would consider a normal behavior.”

  When I ask Gibbens the same question, he concedes that the Animal Welfare Act’s regulations are not based on science.

  At the eye of the storm of the science versus common sense debate is Dr. Candace Croney, the head of the Center for Animal Welfare Science at Purdue University. Since she was appointed to her position in 2014, she has taken on a challenge that few would ever want to touch: researching the welfare of dogs in commercial breeding operations to determine, scientifically, what new standards can and should be put in place. While her work has certainly attracted the interest of the industry and advocacy groups alike, she has, more importantly, won the support of the USDA, PIJAC, and even the nation’s largest chain of pet stores—Petland—in her efforts.

  “We support raising the standards of care, providing they are standards that are backed with sound science. That’s why we’re supportive of the efforts that are underway at Purdue University,” Bober of PIJAC tells me. “Because the reality is, a lot of what’s out there, unfortunately, is not based on science. It’s either based on gut instinct or, in some cases, raw emotion.”5

  Brian Winslow, vice president of animal welfare and franchisee services at Petland, is also quick to tell me he supports Dr. Croney’s efforts to create new breeder standards.

  “We have been advocates of the Purdue program because it isn’t based on any state standard… It goes across all state lines,” he says.6

  From Winslow’s business-savvy perspective, higher levels of care for breeding dogs could mean commanding higher prices from customers who are happy to pay for the peace of mind that their puppy came from a responsible breeder.

  But support from the likes of Petland, PIJAC, and the USDA has led to concern from animal welfare watchdogs like the Humane Society.

  “They’re using the Purdue research to not endorse reforms that are common sense,” Goodwin says. “That’s not an indictment of Purdue or Candace Croney—she may be doing excellent work. It is an indictment of people who are using her work as an excuse to not take action.”

  But Dr. Croney, firmly wedged in the middle of this debate and attracting both praise and rage from both sides, could not be more delighted to address the question of whether common sense should or should not outweigh science.

  “I wish more people would ask the question, because it’s a little bit of an elephant in the room,” she says. “I will tell you, I kind of agree that there are some areas where you really do know what you’re looking at when you see it. What is difficult is that there are other areas where people don’t know what they don’t know… And I will tell you, it frustrates me to no end when I hear scientists and others—including those who sometimes use it as a defense to not really do anything different—say ‘Well, we can’t do anything, because we don’t have science.’ Then, promptly, the answer becomes ‘Well, there’s no science, and there’s no signs of science, so we’ll just stay in a holding pattern here, and we’ll never have to do anything different, right?’”7

  Croney then gamely provides me with a concrete example of a science versus common sense debate she’s had to navigate: the troublesome question of what is the best type of flooring for commercial dog-breeding kennels.

  For most of us who are dog owners, the fact that this issue is at the forefront of the debate over the welfare of breeding canines may come as a surprise—after all, even as dog owners fret over what food is healthiest or how much exercise is needed, none of us ever consider what type of flooring is safest for our dogs’ paws. And for good reason: the average companion animal will experience a variety of surfaces in the course of a day, from carpets to hardwood floors to concrete sidewalks to mud or grass. But when confined to a crate for years, without any mandates that a dog be given time to pace or roam on any other surface, the question of the safety of flooring becomes an essential one.

  Having personally seen some of the sores and foot problems that can arise in breeding dogs who live their entire life on wire mesh or pea gravel, I can attest to the fact that flooring matters. But what kind of flooring is best?

  “I can’t believe we have more science on what’s safe, comfortable flooring for farm animals than we do for dogs,” Croney tells me. “That’s shocking.”

  But perhaps what is most telling of Croney’s position in the science versus common sense debate is her decision to exclude one type of flooring from her study right from the get-go.

  “We did not study dogs on chicken wire,” she says. Some breeders do attempt to keep their dogs on this thin, painful surface, although some state regulations explicitly ban it. “I can tell you that with the anatomy of the dog’s foot and what chicken wire looks like…common sense says that that doesn’t work.”

  For what it’s worth, most chicken wire is too thin to meet the standards of the Animal Welfare Act.

  But with common sense as her starting point, Croney used science to investigate the several types of flooring that are used most often in kennels, including coated metal, slatted plastic, and concrete—all of which are permissible under the Animal Welfare Act.

  “What we found is absolutely no significant foot health movement or other problems in these types of floors,” she concludes.

  But other veterinarians do not agree with Croney’s conclusion. Overall, for one, asserts that wire–mesh flooring of any kind can damage the anatomy of the dog’s foot and also runs contrary to the dog’s natural preference for other surfaces. When Overall assessed Izzie, she noted that my dog does not engage her own feet in exploration frequently and does not like having them touched—a trait that she pointed out is often seen in dogs who spent their earliest development period on wire mesh.

  Croney, however, says that cage flooring materials are only part of the equation. Instead, she says that all dogs should have access to the outside and not be confined to a cage for life—even though there is nothing in the Animal Welfare Act to prohibit breeders from doing so. She acknowledges that in her research finding no significant problems in the feet of dogs kept on a variety of surfaces, the subjects were not solely confined to a single surface despite the fact that many breeders do keep dogs in this fashion.

  “All these dogs [in the study] had access to outdoor runs that had solid flooring on there, and most if not all of them had access to exercise areas, runs, and so on. So it’s entirely possible that in addition to that really good management of their feet, you know, access to these other surfaces may have provided them some protection,” Croney says.

  However, access to outdoor runs is not mandated by the USDA, and in large, commercial breeding operations, dogs often lack that critical access.

  It is also worth noting that Croney did not bring her canine test subjects into her lab for years on end to explore her hypotheses. Instead, she went out to real, USDA-licensed kennels to conduct her experiments and collect her data. I asked her if she has encountered criticism of selection bias—after all, the worst breeders out there, even with a USDA license, would be very unlikely to allow a group of scientists onto their property to investigate their animals.

  “We though
t it was important to get a sense of where people were with the physical health of these dogs out in the real world,” Croney says of why her team did not bring dogs into their own controlled lab for these tests. “But like you said, people who are not doing so great of a job are probably not going to be the first ones to volunteer [for our studies], right? So here’s what’s interesting. There are times when people volunteer because they really do think they are doing a great job… I was taken aback, because they really think they are doing a brilliant job,” she says. “So how do we tactfully convey that [they’re not]?”

  Croney then dives down to one of the points she sees at the heart of the science versus common sense debate: forget the semantics, forget the data—just look at the dogs.

  “Dogs are beautiful. They can’t lie to us,” she says. “They can’t change their body condition. They can’t change their behavior just because, you know, someone says the pesky scientists are showing up today.”

  Overall, Croney found that physical health problems were not nearly as dire as the behavioral problems she observed in breeding dogs. Even in the large-scale commercial breeding operations that are frequently blamed with being the worst for the dogs, she says that behavioral development was the biggest area of opportunity.

  “I need you to know that when I did this research, I did not know anything about this industry,” Croney admits. Her long career in animal welfare has included extensive research into animal behavior and bioethics surrounding the use of animals in agriculture and other endeavors. She has worked as a scientific advisor on issues of animal welfare to numerous and diverse groups including the American Humane Association, the National Pork Board, Merck, Target, and Bob Evans Farms. But when it came to commercial dog breeding, she confesses that she had a lot to learn. “I had exactly the same concerns and perceptions that the average person did: that commercial breeding is the same thing as being a puppy mill, and they are all bad, and the dogs are in bad conditions, and the people don’t care about their dogs… Honestly, that’s where I started. And for me, I sort of had to put aside my own bias, because one of the things I teach [at Purdue] in addition to animal behavior and welfare is ethics.”

  She describes her personal process in approaching the project as requiring her to set aside her own opinions to avoid trying to be the “moral police.” Instead, she sought out the opportunities where she could best make a difference in the lives of the animals involved in the industry.

  “I have to tell you, it’s been hard,” she says frankly.

  She also admits that it has been hard to convey to breeders that they need to change their ways. Often, breeders regard Croney and her team as egg-headed outsiders who could not possibly understand the ins and outs of their livelihood.

  “The beauty of it, again, is we go back to the dogs. The dogs are the answer to everything. So when we show them what the dogs are showing in their behavior, when we show them what the dogs are showing in terms of their overall physical health, the beauty of it is that even if the breeders resist that information, now they can see it too. So now, the onus is on them to do something about that.”

  By the same token, the animals themselves cannot speak to the political wrangling behind the scenes that has dogged Croney’s project with Purdue.

  In September 2015, the Humane Society, the ASPCA, and the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association joined forces to issue a formal petition to raise the USDA’s federal standards of care for dogs in breeding facilities. The proposed standards called for restrictions on wire flooring in kennels and the frequency of breeding. They pushed the USDA to mandate that breeders provide their dogs with exercise outside of their cages, yearly veterinary visits, constant access to clean drinking water, and larger cage sizes. The proposal also called for a new requirement that breeders make an effort to adopt out their retired breeding dogs to rescue groups rather than simply euthanizing or abandoning them.

  In his statement at the time, Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society, returned to the need for common sense to dictate how these dogs are treated.

  “It’s common sense that dogs should have water, space, exercise, and other basic care, and responsible dog breeders and pet industry groups should welcome these improved standards to restore consumer confidence and deal with the outliers who cut corners and treat puppies like products. The current standards are insufficient and outdated and need to be fortified to crack down on abusive puppy mills.”8

  The petition was, however, rebuffed by the USDA and the pet industry.

  “We would be concerned about any such petition that is based on either hearsay or anecdote, as opposed to say based on well-defined and tested principles,” Bober of pet industry group PIJAC tells me of the reason why his influential organization has failed to support the petition.

  The USDA’s Gibbens tells me that his agency is now seeing many petitions, of which the Humane Society’s effort is just one. Taking action on any one petition, he says, would set a poor precedent.

  “We’re a creature of the federal government and a creature of the law. So we’ve got to be open to changes,” Gibbens says. “Petitions seem to be the new thing. We’ve gotten eight or ten of those in the last year or two, and we don’t have a regulatory requirement to do stuff with them. But we want to get input. We don’t want to sit there with blinders on. You know, if there is good science or something that will clearly improve the welfare of the lives of animals, I say yeah, we’re open to it. But we have to be careful as a federal agency about actively—proactively—pursuing something that might be outside the restraints of the law.”

  The Humane Society’s Goodwin is not impressed. He fears that with industry funding and backing from the USDA, the Purdue standards could create a situation in which the “fox is guarding the hen house.”

  “These groups that are funding the Purdue research, they have refused to this point to endorse the petition we’ve submitted to the USDA that calls for overhaul of the regulations to all these commercial operations. They say they won’t endorse it until they see what Purdue comes up with on the off chance that it’s even higher than what we’ve called for. That’s not an excuse. That’s not a reason to refuse to endorse it,” he says. “The industry is refusing to endorse the one effort that would actually raise the standards for the government inspectors.”

  Dr. Croney is well aware of the Humane Society’s petition. While her group has yet to issue its final recommendations, she tells me that her standards address the same areas of concern and go even further than those in that petition.

  Croney acknowledges that PIJAC provided some of the seed funding for her research and has been “conceptually supportive” of her team’s work. The USDA, while providing no actual funding, she credits with being “very, very supportive” of her work by providing her with a research fellow to assist in the study.

  “But [the USDA has] had nothing to do with developing the actual standards. They’ve had no input in them. They don’t even know what’s in there,” she says.

  Croney insists that in spite of this support, it is not the goal of her research to create new laws or provide instructions to the USDA.

  “They will take a good, hard look at the research itself, and if they think there is something they need to change, then they’ll make the decision to do that,” she says. However, dealing with criticism is part of the job when you’re at the center of a highly emotional debate like dog breeding. Croney is not immune to it and even welcomes it, acknowledging that she’s heard it and thinks it’s fair. In fact, she points out that if she were not the one conducting and overseeing the research herself, she would likely be just as skeptical of the program. But with her long background in the study of the ethics of using animals for industry, she believes that she brings more than just a scientific mind to the table.

  “The science may support it, but there are some valid ethical questions here that we should be thinking about,” she says. “That’s always been how I
’ve run my program and so, to be honest, it doesn’t really matter who supports the program conceptually or not. We set this up so that even people who provided funding for the standards and for the research will get the research when everybody else gets the research. None of them have even seen the [recommended] standards themselves. That’s because there absolutely needs to be a separation of church and state when it comes to industry-funded research—which this was, to be really clear. But the beauty of it is, no one needs to believe us. The dogs cannot tell a story other than truth.”

  CANINE CARE CERTIFIED

  In August 2016, Purdue released its first voluntary program for breeders who want to go the extra mile. Dubbed Canine Care Certified, the program is run by an independent auditing company and is now out of Dr. Croney’s hands but is using her research as its guide. I find it interesting that a scientist whose work is championed by the USDA has given her research to a third-party company that exists to shore up the gaps left by our federal government’s licensing apparatus. However, as that research is now being used by an independent auditing service, the nitty-gritty of what it precisely calls for is considered proprietary information and cannot be shared with the public beyond a few overarching principles. This makes it frustratingly difficult for those of us who would like to see the much-anticipated new standards and evaluate them. But at its core, what the Canine Care Certified program is intended to do is provide breeders with an opportunity to voluntarily submit their facilities to a third-party inspector who can give them a mark of distinction that goes above and beyond the USDA seal of approval.