Your Opinion: Prop. B harmful, unnecessary

Dear Editor:

My name is Don and I have been an animal health professional my whole life. I have been on the premises of commercial kennels and worked with vet clinics who service those accounts.

A hard fact for those kennel operators is that if they don't furnish a quality puppy to the pet stores to sell, they will go out of business. A pet store demands a quality puppy for resale to a household that is healthy. That pet becomes a loved member of that household.

Animal rights groups try to project unimaginable horrors being committed to these poor puppies, when in fact licensed kennels have air conditioned buildings, proper ventilation, clean water and a local veterinarian is on premises monthly. They have an initial vaccination, are visually inspected and shipped in air conditioned vehicles to the pet stores. The kennels actually care about the product they furnish to John Q Public.

The baseline is that the state of Missouri vet department has a complaint about animal abuse or premises that are not providing proper shelter and care for animals. They are bound by their ethics to investigate the complaint. They have been doing this for years before Prop. B was introduced by the national animal rights groups.

So let's carry Prop. B out a bit further and see the potential results. We will see kennels close down production and that is clearly the goal of national animal rights groups. What else does Prop. B accomplish - loss of hundreds if not thousands of jobs. Kennels close doors and lay off people working for them. Pet stores no longer have access to quality pets to sell. They close doors and lay off employees.

The pet-loving American public will no longer have the opportunity to include a loving pet into their household. That carries to dog food manufacturers, reduced sales of pet foods and it that happens they will reduce production and lay off workers. So in the end run state sales taxes will be reduced a thousand times over.

It is far easier to find and inspect large kennels than hundreds of small kennel operators. It is a guaranteed fact for the large kennel that if he is not doing an excellent job with his puppies he will remove himself from the production cycle without Prop. B.