Many Shipped To America Are Abused(CBS)NEW YORK Thousands of puppies enter the United States each year, many shipped in filthy, crowded and perilous conditions that leave hundreds of them sick - and scores dead on arrival, WCBS2.com has learned.
A shipment of 25 puppies arrived at Kennedy Airport from Hungary last week. The pups were dirty, shivering and afraid but they were alive. The week before, five puppies weren't so fortunate. They arrived frozen to death.
"Some are hypoglycemic, some were just due to being frozen from the flight,” said Heather Galas, who tends to puppies at Vetport, a private animal hospital at JFK. She sees only a small percentage of puppies, those that appear sick, before they clear Customs.
"We've just seen a couple of cases where they were shrink-wrapped" Galas said. "Sometimes they're completely covered so you won't be able to, the dog can hardly breathe in there."
CBS 2 discovered Vetport treated roughly 500 of the estimated seven thousand dogs that came into JFK last year. Seventy-five died, including 25 that we’re dead on arrival.
The Humane Society's Wayne Pacelle was unaware of the problem until we told him about it. "That rate of mortality and illness is absolutely unconscionable," Pacelle said.
Puppies are also shipped without food or water, in filthy, overcrowded kennels or in crates that are too small, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, the CDC. They're also taken from their mothers too soon - even before they've grown teeth.
The problem has become so severe that last month the CDC put together a PowerPoint presentation to alert other federal agencies.
Puppies bound for JFK are airborne for 10 hours or more. They come in from Ireland, Holland, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia, China, Korea, Colombia and Brazil. No federal agency tracks the number of pups entering the country.
CBS 2 also discovered that no agency has oversight of how the puppies a retreated prior to arriving in the United States. The CDC is empowered only to check for rabies. The US Department of Agriculture deals with only the domestic transport of animals. Customs has a front row seat, but is focused on drugs and terrorists.
"These animals are really in regulatory limbo" Pacelle said. "There are no laws, there's no jurisdiction - no agency that has jurisdiction to really get their arms around this problem."
The Home of the Puppies and Kittens in Flushing, Queens seems to be an example of how the system is supposed to work.
"When the puppies are put into the crate they get food and water right away there's a bottle hanging there with food and water and that's what they eat," said Julia Sav. "There's two puppies per crate."
Two puppies in a crate is in line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s regulations for domestic shipments of dogs. The U.S.D.A. also prohibits shipping pups until they reach 8 weeks of age and doesn't allow them to fly during periods of extreme temperatures. Those regulations, however, do not apply to foreign shippers.
For less scrupulous importers, money keeps this gravy train rolling. An importer can pay as little as $400 for a bulldog pup. The dog can fetch up to $2,500 in the U.S. For breeders and importers, sick and dead puppies are, it turns out, just the cost of doing business -- haggled over like damaged goods.
Complaints about receiving dead puppies were the focus of several emails between a California importer and a Russian exporter in 2004, a year in which the importer made 400-thousand dollars. One email is typical: "Now I'm out two dead Havanese and three dead English for a total of five you will not replace," the importer griped. "So, just send me the free replacements from the seven that dropped dead out of this last shipment."
Pacelle says the popularity of imported dogs is all about lower cost and bigger profits, not about supply.
"We have plenty of dogs here to match the demand for animals. We don't need this additional pipeline, which is causing misery and inhumane treatment."
