Puppy farm on my doorstep, is there anyone I can report to?

[LoverOfCake]

Can't post the link here because it would identify too closely where I live.

Was looking at an advert someone sent me on pets4homes and thought I'd flick to my area out of curiosity to see how many people locally appear to be selling puppies, kittens and the like. The first seven adverts are for stud dogs and puppies, two poodles and three other adverts of different breed studs followed by three adverts for KC registered breeds of puppies which incidentally are not the same breeds as the studs. And they're all from the same advertiser. they haven't even attempted to dress it up as anything but a puppy farm.

So that's six different breeds of dogs just at the moment, there are surely bound to be more?

Can anything actually be done about this? Horrified doesn't even begin to cover it...

PS: I am not in the market for a puppy so no suggestions of rescues and such like please, I was genuinely on the site for other reasons.

There’s a list of different options for reporting dodgy breeders here. In this case your best bet is probably your local council (as breeders need to be licensed if they’re producing more than a certain number of litters a year) and HMRC.

Report to your local council as they would need a licence to run such a business. Or maybe pose as a potential owner and report findings to rspca?

Chances are it is a licensed breeder, many puppy farmers are :(

If you can find out the registered address then you can check this with your local council and find out how many dogs their licence allows.

You can also google the ‘breeder’ name to see if they have registered as a limited company and who the directors are.

It’s a misconception that puppy farming has to be illegal. It’s not, but there are certain welfare standards they are supposed to adhere to and it’s only by being caught out working outside their licence terms or defrauding HMRC that any of this can be stopped.