Another U.S. City Joins Growing List Of Places That Ban Selling Pets

This is great news 👏

dallas bans the selling of live animals in pet stores
Yashkin Ilya/Shutterstock
Yashkin Ilya/Shutterstock

There’s good news out of Texas for animal lovers.

Dallas has joined a growing list of cities and states across the country that are banning commercially bred pets. In a major win for animal welfare activists, Dallas City Council recently voted to unanimously ban the selling of dogs and cats in pet stores.

The recent decision is one step closer to cracking down on the existence of puppy mills, where, according to the Humane Society, 500,000 dogs live in inhumane high-volume breeding facilities across the United States, often in cramped and unsafe conditions.

“This ordinance will support dozens of local humane pet stores in Dallas that do not sell puppies but rather adopt puppies who desperately need loving families,” Karen Froehlich, with the SPCA of Texas, told CBS 10 News, a local Dallas news station.

First proposed in 2021 by the Texas Humane Legislation Network, the Humane Pet Store Ordinance will go into effect this November, giving Petland, the last pet store in Dallas still selling live animals, a chance to adjust.

“We’re proud to see that the city of Dallas is once again putting the interests of dogs and cats first,” Ed Jamison, with Operation Kindness, told CBS 10 News.

Organizers with the Texas Humane Legislation Network said Dallas joins nine other cities in Texas and more than 400 across the country that have banned the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores. The movement to ban puppy mills has been gathering steam in recent years, including in California, which became the first state to do so in 2017. New York most recently passed a bill in 2021 to shut down the puppy mill pipeline flowing into the state.

This is just the kind of growing trend we like (and wholeheartedly support).