>We are not a puppy mill cranking out pups by the dozen all year and selling pups to all comers indiscriminately like a retail pet store!<
But, for USDA’s purposes, we in the hobby side of dog breeding have been shielded for generations because of this wording. USDA’s definition of “retail” is NOT a bad thing. You want to be considered to be under this umbrella.
“Retail” means, for these purposes, that you sell to the “end user”, aka the dog’s forever home. You do not sell to pet stores, who are also retail in that they sell to the dog’s final (one would hope) home.
Well, I haven’t examined the USDA’s definition of retail yet, so I have no comment on whether or not the definition is good or not.
However, I would argue that I don’t want to be under anyone’s umbrella, particularly the USDA. I don’t think that being “shielded” from the USDA previously for generations is a bad thing. Nearly anything that the Federal government gets it hands on turns sour sooner or later. This sort of regulation is precisly what should be left to the state and local authorities. There are existing regulations at Federal, state and local levels that can deal with whatever perceived problem these new regulations are purported to solve. Uniform regulations for ALL dog breeding at any scale at the Federal/National level is ridiculous, and is just a solution looking for a problem.
If this goes into effect, hobby/small breeders will disappear (or go underground), and so will most of the breeds that benefit from this sort of breeding style. And it will happen sooner than anyone thinks...