Beverly Hills came full circle last night, as the city council passed an ordinance prohibiting pet stores from selling companion animals from inhumane breeding mills.
The ordinance requires pet stores within Beverly Hills to exclusively offer dogs, cats, and rabbits from shelters or rescue groups, joining over 80 communities in North America that have enacted similar ordinances to ban the retail sale of milled pets.
“Those rallies drew a lot of media attention and helped us educate the public about the connection between puppy mills and pet stores. It wasn’t long before the store closed its doors, but there was nothing but the threat of public pressure to prevent new stores from opening,” said Elizabeth Oreck, Best Friends Animal Society’s national manager of puppy mill initiatives.
Best Friends Animal Society’s efforts trace back to 2007 when the organization spearheaded a series a peaceful protests in front of Posh Puppy, a puppy mill supplied store in the heart of Beverly Hills. The goal was to raise awareness about puppy mills, where dogs are kept in deplorable and inhumane conditions to produce puppies for the retail pet trade.
Moving forward stores such as the Pussy and Pooch Pet Lifestyle Center, with a thriving location in Beverly Hills, are leading the way to demonstrate a model that’s an asset to the community, according to Oreck.
