A dog's life in puppy farms here?

Shocking. Squalid.

These were the words used by Australian magazine Cleo to describe the conditions of the puppy farms and pet shops here and in Australia.

The investigative piece in the October issue went viral, shared online by animal activists and picked up by other publications Down Under.

The writer Rosie Squires made the allegations that Australian puppy farmers are making thousands of dollars selling dogs to pet shops in Singapore, where the animals are "forced to live in squalor and confinement".

The trouble is: Ms Squires did not visit these places herself. Nor did she make the trip to Singapore.

Instead, the main source for her story was based on the findings of Australian humane group Oscar's Law. The organisation fights for the end of puppy mills and promotes the adoption of rescue dogs, When approached, Ms Debra Tranter, 47, founder of Oscar's Law, told The New Paper that the group visited "all the puppy farms and pet shops located at Pasir Ris Farmway 2".

"The bigger ones like Ericsson Pet Farm and Pet Movers were very clean.

"However, the puppies were kept in glass cages with wired floors.

"At Ericsson, the puppies had no water at all and the heat was stifling," she said, adding that the Cleo report is "a fair reflection" of what she saw during her group's investigations in August.

Aggrieved

"Of course, the pet shops would feel aggrieved at the Cleo report," she said.

"When we were there, we met one farmer who openly admitted that he has 150 dogs kept in the sheds at the back," she added.

However, she admitted that she did not see the sheds herself.

"We could not approach any of the pet shops or puppy factories as we were posing as potential buyers in order to investigate," she said When approached by TNP, local activists, such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Humane Society (Singapore) (HSS), confirmed that Oscar's Law had touched base with them.

HSS' operations manager Judie Chang said: "We explained the general regulatory framework for breeding farms in Singapore.

They (Oscar's Law) merely indicated that there are similar rules governing breeding farms in Australia."

But she said she did not accompany the group around the pet farms at Pasir Ris Farmway 2 and therefore could "not confirm if they took any photos at these premises".

Ms Tranter said she had made a report to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), which its spokesman confirmed.

The spokesman said that Ms Tranter first wrote to the Singapore Government in August expressing her concern that puppies bred in poor conditions in Australia were being exported to Singapore and sold as premium puppies.

She also claimed that the conditions of the local dog farms were poor, but "there (was) no evidence to support these allegations".

Ms Tranter confirmed that the Cleo reporter had not accompanied the group when the group visited the farms and shelters in Singapore.

Cleo Australia had not given an official reply when The New Paper contacted them.

Some dog breeders located at Pasir Ris Farmway 2 said the article by Cleo did not paint an accurate picture of the pet industry in Singapore.

There are about 10 licensed farms and some of the owners rent out space on their premises to several breeders, charging between $2,600 and $6,000 a month, depending on the space leased out. These breeders do not even have business names and they go by kennel numbers.

Mr Lee Seng Chin, who owns Pet Movers, considered Singapore's biggest dog farm, with close to 350 canines on 60,000 sq ft in Pasir Ris, said: "The story painted a wrong picture of the industry here. Many of the dogs at the farms here are locally bred, not from Australia.

Toys

"The group also posed as potential buyers, looking at the pups. They did not identify themselves. It was not right that they secretly recorded the shopfront and drew conclusions from there."

Mr Lee added that the camera was at an angle where it did not reveal the toys he "specifically left for the puppies so they would not be bored".

He said that while the puppy trade in Australia is not regulated, the one here is, by AVA.

"AVA has set guidelines on how the commercial breeding farms should be. They stipulate the cage sizes and that staff should be properly trained," he said. (See report above.)

"It would be hard for someone flouting the rules to get away when the AVA inspectors do spot checks every month," he added. When the TNP team asked to visit the backroom where the breeding dogs are kept, Mr Lee readily agreed.

His breeding dogs are kept in packs of four to five for company and the kennels are around a pond that helps cool the wind blowing towards them. The dogs are also walked for 20 minutes three times a day.

Mr Lee said he lets his breeding stock rest for a year after two years of producing puppies.

"At the end of the day, we all want the dog to have a better life," Mr Lee said.

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