Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning.

Today is August 27th.

I'm honored to serve as the chair of the Health and Safety Committee.

We have an action packed agenda stored for us, but before we jump into our first action item, and then we have seven consent items.

I'll turn it over to city council members to introduce themselves.

I believe we have two council members that are online.

We'll start first with councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh Kevin Flynn representing Southwest members district two.

And producer Council President Pro Tem Romero Campbell join us yet.

I don't think so.

So why don't we start to my right?

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Sorry, I thought it was Councilman Verdi because she liked hooked up.

Hi everybody, Serena Gonzalez.

Okay, the goals are here.

Hi everybody, Sedana Gonzalez Gutierrez.

I'm one of your council members at large.

Good morning, Amanda Sawyer, District Five.

Good morning.

Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect Ten.

Morning, Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Hammer District Run.

And Sarah Verdi, your other council member at large.

All right.

One last check for Council President Pro Tem, seeing that she's not there, we will jump into the first action item.

Our colleague, Councilmember Hines, has an ordinance that he wants to share with us.

Councilmember Hollings have turned it over to you.

Thank you, Committee Chair.

Council members, thank you for uh for giving us the opportunity to present in budget and policy a few weeks ago and uh and for the opportunity for you to consider uh the case for prohibiting the sale of puppies, kittens, and bunnies um bred from mills uh from Denver pet stores.

So um if we could get the slides up on thank you.

Great.

So um uh let's just start with a problem statement.

Why do we need to ban um uh millbred puppy skippet kittens and rabbits?

Um uh first the the methods that are used for breeding are inherently cruel.

You see some of the uh some of the animals in cages here.

Um there are uh animals that are just in um horrible conditions that uh that's all they are meant to do is uh produce offspring that look cute um uh that can go for uh sometimes thousands of dollars.

So um uh sometimes those uh those uh the offspring, the puppies uh rabbits and kittens are bred so often that they have just um uh future medical expenses, sometimes months, sometimes years in advance.

And uh there's also a predatory scheme to finance these animals.

Uh some of these uh breeds go for thousands of dollars, which we'll see here in a minute.

Um, and uh when there are uh environments that are just meant to produce offspring uh for sale.

A lot of times those are um in environments that are not meant um uh to to protect the public health, and so there might be diseases that uh transmit from animals to humans.

Um we also have um, so I mentioned uh health and genetic issues that might not be apparent for months or years.

Um there uh part of the the challenge here, the uh the problem statement is that uh people will finance uh these adorable, you know, um uh best friends, and uh and sometimes those uh could be for thousands of dollars, and then someone's on the hook, and then unfortunately there's medical expenses that this uh you know the family's also on the hook for, and then the uh uh that cute um uh uh best friend passes away very early in their life, and um and the owners are still on the hook for those thousands of dollars that are required to purchase um the uh the animal.

So um sometimes these medical conditions are very expensive, and um, and so then the family chooses to uh to surrender uh that animal, the pet to um to a shelter, including uh Denver animal shelter, uh, which could be an extra burden on shelter resources, um, which uh equates to taxpayer um responsibility as well.

Um, so uh why should we uh step in?

I mean, after all, there's the you know uh USDA that um provides regulation.

Well, um they do and they don't.

Uh 40 percent of or excuse me, um uh 45% of the US day USDA licensed dog dealers in 2024 never had a compliance investigation.

Um, 20% of them uh that did get an investigation uh uncovered failures, and uh and most of the time there was no corrective action.

They said you didn't pass the test, and that's it.

So um, and then uh some of these uh violations are for veterinary issues, uh, sick, injured, or dead animals haven't never been uh given medical care or seen by our veterinarian.

Uh so it is happening here in Colorado.

This is a recent article in the uh in the Denver media, um, where they um a puppy mill rescue group, a group that that works just on uh puppy mills, pulled 165 schnauzers from a property in southwest Colorado, and um uh we saw several dogs with missing limbs or parts of limbs, likely due to the mat strangling and cutting off circulation and then limbs falling off.

They were just um the owners didn't care about these living creatures, they cared about profit above anything else.

Um the good news is that we don't have any pet stores that um uh that would be affected by this changing ordinance in Denver today.

Um so uh we've we've had some other conversations about banning things uh in the recent past where it would affect stores.

It really makes sense for us to do it uh to pass an ordinance now before we um uh have to consider the impact on um uh Denver residents who are employees or small business owners.

Um just for what it's worth uh Denver was ranked number two uh in um in the ranking of U.S.

dog friendly cities, um, and obviously we see that and we think, oh, it makes a whole lot of sense.

I've got this yard sign that says drive like your dog lives here.

Um, you know, we are a very uh pet-friendly city.

Um, and uh and obviously pet uh retailers see that as well.

So um there's a company called Petland.

I'll um I I apologize, I didn't ask you to and um introduce yourself.

So uh please uh introduce yourselves and uh uh talk a little bit about petland.

Uh Roland Hopper with Colorado Voters for Animals, and uh Amy is actually the authority because we don't have fortunately a pet land operation yet in Colorado.

Hopefully we won't have one.

But since Amy deals on a national basis, she has confronted uh pet land stories in the past.

So I'll turn it over to you.

Hi, I'm Amy Jesse with Humane World for Animals.

Um, just to a lot of what the council member talks about is is relevant for this too, but just to zone in on some specifics.

So Patland is a multinational chain.

There's about 80 stores selling puppies in the US.

Um they have a terrible history, they get sued all the time, they settle all the time, they just all the things that we've been hearing about is relevant for Patland.

Um, to zone in a little bit on this, and a lot of this comes back to the resources that states and cities have to spend when a store like this comes in.

And Petland's not unique to be clear, it doesn't have to be a pet land to have these issues.

It really a lot of puppy selling customers would have the same issue.

But so in 2022, the Florida attorney general um had a press release saying we're securing relief for Floridans who purchase sick and dying puppies when they thought they were bringing home a healthy pet.

Pat land was ordered to pay 200,000 dollars and was banned from misrepresenting a puppy's health breed price or other deceptive contact going forward.

Um, because this was such an issue in Orlando, Orlando has since passed an ordinance, or actually it was Orange County, but covers Orlando area in Florida.

Um, so again, waited till there was a problem, and then they had this whole ordeal on their hands on the predatory lending.

Petland and neighborhood Illinois admitted that 80% of their puppies are financed, and they bragged about that, and that upset city council so much that then neighborhood in Illinois passed an ordinance, but it was a huge drawn-out fight because Petland made it as hard as possible on them, you know, claiming you're attacking a small business, and even though Pentland's a multinational corporation, but it was much harder to address it once there was a Patland store.

Um, another example, this is maybe one of the most egregious ones, a woman in Houston who's legally blind.

Pat lands signed her up for financing on an iPad, and it ended up having 133% interest rate.

Then her puppy died, and she was still on the hook for the financing payments.

She called us, and we were able to help her find legal representation down in Houston.

And the quote she said to us was, I'm paying $7,000 for ashes.

So just horrifying.

It's one of the more egregious ones.

Houston, Texas has since passed an ordinance, like you all are considering today.

Again, waiting until these horrifying stories came out of the woodwork.

And then just um a couple weeks ago, we received a complaint from a consumer in Henderson, Nevada, for their Petland store.

She said, I bought a puppy, the puppy was really sick, I took the puppy to the vet, the puppy has parvo, which is extremely contagious.

She called Pat Land immediately and said, You saw me at Puppy with Parvo, like you have other puppies that probably have this.

And Pat Land was so indifferent about it.

She was so worried.

She called us, we were able to get her in touch with animal control there.

They investigated, they cited the store a bunch of times.

But in Henderson is considering an ordinance on a broken record.

But right, the point is like why wait till these issues come up.

And then I'll just say one more thing, which is kind of recent news.

Just last week, there was an article in Science Magazine that focused more on animal testing, but it's the same number of USC inspectors.

So USD is the only national oversight of this industry.

They're down to 77 inspectors.

They're not hiring new inspectors.

They're in charge of 17,000 facilities because the same inspectors are charged with the commercial breeders, the animal testing zoos, anything under the Animal Welfare Act.

And so federal oversight is basically non-existent now.

And you know, that's where these puppies are coming from.

Pet stores are buying puppies from these huge, mainly Midwest puppy mills that are supposed to be following Animal Welfare Act regulations, which are way too low, anyways, but now they're virtually unregulated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So what can we do?

We could take some uh proactive measures.

As I said, there aren't any pet stores right now, so it isn't as if we're gonna have to have that hard conversation of jobs lost or small businesses impacted.

Um that also means that because there are no businesses, that means no lost revenue or sales tax revenue.

Um, and we've already heard a bit about pet land.

Um prohibitions increase as Amy had shared, um, as more cities and states learn about the the problems that these pet stores create.

Um eight states uh and more than 500 cities and townships uh have uh passed an ordinance um similar to the one we're considering, uh including um here in Colorado.

Um here are the uh the cities in Colorado that have passed ordinances for what it's worth.

Um I think Denver is okay with being a leader.

We did it with um with cannabis, we did it again with psilocybin.

Um, we're not a trailblazer with this.

Um, and uh and that's okay too.

We can um we can be um uh we can follow model legislation that has been passed time and time again near us, um, and all over the all over the country.

So um we obviously would be the biggest city in Colorado to pass this if we were uh to do so, because we are the biggest city in Colorado, and um, and who knows, maybe this um if we were to consider and pass it, um perhaps it would be um under consideration at the state soon.

Uh it's important to say that it will not do a few things.

First, it will not impact um or prohibit responsible local breeders who sell directly to the public.

Um, it will not prevent pet stores from having adoption events.

So if you have uh that that puppy mobile rescue um organization, like they um they could theoretically have an adoption event or um Humane Colorado or Humane World, which are two separate organizations unrelated, um uh so uh Humane Colorado formally, the Dumb Friends League, uh Humane World formerly the Humane Society of the US.

That's not it.

Good job.

And then it won't, again, what it will not do is close the Denver market to the majority of pet stores that focus on pet products and services.

So those names that uh we all go by here in Denver, they'll still be here in Denver.

And that's it.

We do have uh the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment here to answer questions.

I know that when it went through budget and policy, there were some uh procedural uh questions, um and uh and I I'm happy to take a oh well that's cool.

Um inception.

Um I could add to two I don't know who wants to go first here.

Oh, I think he's just if uh if um members have questions.

Additional comments, please share, and then we're gonna go to our queue.

Yeah, I just wanted to point out that the Denver Animal Shelter is really behind this.

Um Colorado Buddhist for Animals is uh a member of Mendawa, which is the Metro Denver Animal Welfare Alliance, and the uh unanimously support this.

And some of these members are not in the city and county of Denver, but they still are affected because if an animal's purchased in Denver, it might be taken out.

There's transfers um between shelters when there's capacity issues.

Um there are providers that come into Denver, like um Spay Today actually comes into the Denver Animal Shelter to provide spay and neuter services.

So it's not just you're not just helping Denver, you're helping surrounding areas as well by by doing that as well.

So just thought I would mention that.

Thank you so much, uh, Councilmember Heinz and experts um on this.

Um lots of information, lots of really sickening stuff as we uh think of impacts, but really um thankful uh for the elevation.

Um we do have several folks in the queue and council member Flynn, I want to start with you.

I just I don't want to miss you with your being virtual, so please let me know if you have any comments, and if not, then we're gonna go to Councilmember Torres.

Is that uh if you if it's okay to go first, thank you.

I guess we haven't gotten in the queue, but I was just about to get in the queue.

Is there a definition of a puppy mill?

And I'm wondering, I read the ordinance and ordinance, and it's very brief and succinct, uh, but I'm wondering how does it uh how does it deal with someone who would have uh animals to sell and sells them individually from a puppy mill.

I know that's very inefficient way to do it, that's not the way they would want to do it.

Um, but how does it address that?

Because it basically just says pet stores cannot sell any dogs, cats, or rabbits.

And then in the third section, it says they may sponsor uh adoptions uh from other humane organizations or or shelters of uh and advertise who their sponsorships are.

But how does it address those one-offs that might occur, if at all?

Yeah, so um so I'll start and then hand it over to the experts.

Um, the uh and because you're in the sky, I don't know who where to look.

Um, uh, uh, sorry.

We uh recently feedback.

Uh oh great.

A first uh there we go.

Uh a first stab or first draft, one of the early drafts of this ordinance uh included um the ban of sale outside of pet stores, so like on the um in parking lots on the side of the road or whatever.

Um turns out that the state has already in 2025, earlier this legislative session passed a law banning that statewide.

Um that particular ordinance or um bill uh did not address uh puppy store sales.

So the one-offs and parking lots, um that uh that is not in the scope of this version uh because it's already been uh passed to the state.

As far as the one-offs, um I I'll just I'll give it to you to just talk about the ordinance.

Sure.

I also don't know where to look, but hopefully I can be heard.

Um so really these I think the first question was a definition of a puppy mill.

There's not really a legal definition of a puppy mill.

There was a court case a long time ago that attempted to define it, and it was basically a large-scale commercial breeder that puts profits over the well-being of the animals, um, and is focused on maintaining a low overhead, and so it's cutting corners basically to maintain the lowest overhead.

Um that's the closest thing we have to a legal definition.

Um, people always say, why don't you just ban puppy mills?

Well, of course, that's a complicated thing, but one of the complications is while there's a lot of disagreement about what is a puppy mill, um, my organization considers that we don't size doesn't really come into factor for us if what some people would call a back air breeder, we don't really use that term.

If the animals are being bred and the puppies are being sold for profit and they're being mistreated, we consider that a puppy mill.

Um, of course, this ordinance doesn't use that terminology, it's not saying pet stores can't buy from puppy mills, it's just the reason that it's a blanket ban is because that's the only place that pet stores can get puppies from.

Responsible breeders sell directly to the public.

Most of them have in their codes of ethics and their breed clubs, they can't sell to third parties.

Selling directly to consumers is a huge part of being a responsible breeder, so it's not an option for pet stores.

Um, in terms of the one-offs, I mean, puppy mills basically sell three ways, right?

A crucial part of it is they're hiding their conditions from the public, they know they have to hide their conditions from the public.

The reason pet stores exist is because after World War II, a lot of farmers were struggling, they didn't know what to do.

Someone came up with the USDA said, Why don't you try breeding dogs?

That could be really popular.

So as suburbs were exploding, pet stores started to exist because they thought, oh, these, you know, in Missouri, you can have these dogs in these conditions that no one would be okay with, but then we sell them in a faraway pet shop in the suburbs, and that became lucrative way back then.

So, not to dive too much into the history of this, but so the big thing is they remain hidden, that's a core part.

They have to remain hidden from the public.

And so they sell through puppy stores, they sell in these outdoor venues or parking lots, which is what the state has taken care of.

And now, you know, in the past decade or so they've started selling online more, where you literally have a puppy shipped to you.

Now, that's tough to deal with on the local level.

That's something we're grappling with at the state level and at the federal level.

We actually heavily lobbied the Congress to at least have online sellers be licensed, and so that is in place now.

It's not totally unregulated, at least.

That's kind of its own beast.

But the puppy mills do prefer pet stores because most people want to see the puppy first.

They don't want to just order the puppy online, they want to interact with the puppy.

And so it is a really crucial part of this, and that's who will have storefronts in Denver, right?

So that's like something that clearly at the local level can be addressed.

Um, why give them storefronts make it at least harder for them to sell?

So hopefully that answered the question.

You don't know this, but you're giving history to our council historian.

So I bet he particularly appreciated.

Well, I'm happy to talk more later if anyone wants to.

Well, and I'll add to the history, um, talking about the USDA.

The reason these cages and things are often so small is when they started encouraging people to raise puppies, they got rid of the the chicken, they put them in the chicken coops, got rid of the chickens, and put them in the chicken coops, which were very small, and that really hasn't changed over the you know the decades.

Councilmember Flynn, thank you so much.

Uh, Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, so just looking at the location that this is going into in the code, um, and the relationship between which I feel like is maybe largely governed by Department of Public Health and Environment, the Animal Section, um, but the business license itself is governed by excise and license.

So they're not here, just wondering how they're preparing to monitor or implement or kind of who oversees whether or not because we have existing pet stores that have a pet store license.

They don't sell dogs and cats, um, but maybe they sell reptiles.

Yeah, I'm gonna uh leave that to DDPH.

We did have a uh XIS and licenses, DDPHE and I did have a meeting uh yesterday, the day before, just to make sure that we were on the same page.

So Mr.

Chair, Councilor Torres.

Um, so I don't want to speak for Alex.

Oh, Alex would all uh listen to these on the department of public health and environment.

I don't want to speak for excise, but if I explain our part, I think that might get to your question.

Um so when a pet store applies for an initial license, pet shop is the technical definition, um there's a uh Denver Animal Protection DAP uh does an inspection before they get their license.

When they renew their license, there's no inspection for for a renewal, and so um we expect that um there won't be a ton of new stores that are gonna come in and start selling puppies, but that an existing store might start selling puppies, uh kittens or um rabbits, um, and that it would be complaint-based.

So if we received a complaint from the public that an existing store were selling uh prohibited animal DAP would go out, do an investigation and then begin their enforcement process.

So notice of violation, citations escalating from there, with the ultimate backstop being recommending to excision licenses that they um show cause their license.

And so then X would conduct a show cause hearing?

Yeah, that is our understanding based on the meeting that we had um yesterday.

Okay, um, and then that would be if pardon, sure.

That would be if it reached that level, obviously.

With a notice of violation, if they stop doing it, then it would end there.

Okay, and it's an annual renewal on existing pet stores.

The uh pet job license I believe is required to be renewed annually, but it does not require an inspection, and so it's a paper transaction, I believe.

Okay, got it.

Um, and the investigation arm is DDPHE not excises investigators.

Mr.

Chair, uh Counselor Torres, the chapter eight is enforced by uh Denver Animal Protection.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you so much, um, Alex, for providing that clarification.

Um, we have uh uh council member Sawyer and then Councilmember Perry.

Don't go anywhere, Alex.

Um, so councilwoman Torres got my questions about enforcement and how that's gonna look, so really appreciate that.

Follow-up question for you is just in terms of staffing, right?

Given layoffs, given budget challenges, etc.

Um, does and I know you can't speak for excise, um, but does DAP have what you all need in order to successfully enforce this ordinance?

Sure, Mr.

Chair, Counselor Sawyer.

Um, the so I just want to do want to clarify something that was mentioned earlier.

The department um doesn't regularly weigh in on whether we support or oppose something, but um I can say that we don't have any concerns with the with the ordinance as written.

Um we don't anticipate that this would um uh create a uh an increase a need for an increase in staffing.

Yeah, so regulatory burden is not an issue that brings concern to DDPHE.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Uh Councilmember Paradise?

Yeah, I'm just gonna ask a silly blanket question, kind of because I listened to this in um budget and policy list right here.

Sounds really logical to me.

Um, I hate those, you know, business models.

Um so my only curiosity, and it's really for everybody, including Alex, is um where would you anticipate any kind of like pushback or resistance or you know, consequences that I wouldn't foresee, not having been done on the weeds of this, or like is there anything um out there that we might anticipate, you know, someone showing up to comment and being so angry about this for reasons other than that they own a business that you know wants to do this kind of practice, right?

Like, yeah.

So Amy's worked on this for 10 years across the nation, passing it at the state and local level.

So she where do you get pushback?

Yeah, and where do you get any pushback that we might care about, if any?

Sure, yeah, it's a great question.

Um if you do get any opposition, a lot of the talking points will be largely irrelevant because there aren't current pet stores.

Yeah.

So if there were a current, and sometimes um like the national groups, one's called like Pet Advocacy network.

They're a trade group, basically.

Um, when they weigh in, they don't really change their talking points for preventative and non-preventative.

So it will be a lot of like, you're setting down a business, and that's no we're not, you know, right.

So it's a lot of that.

Um a lot of what they like to say is that these ordinances um don't do what they are intended to do.

They actually just promote a black market.

Now, as this ordinance was gonna do it, was it gonna undress the two most common chains of our supply outlets, which is pet stores and outdoor sales?

Okay, so the state's already taking care of the parking lots and all that, so that also opposition's not going to acknowledge that.

They're gonna hope you guys don't know that, right?

So it would be that's actually really glad I asked this.

Yeah, so it would be like, oh, these unregulated market like parking lots, right?

That's gonna be this came up a lot in Fort Collins um too, because they had a real problem with like some Wyoming breeders would come, and also I don't know.

Okay, so when I met with the mayor, she was like, this is fine, but like this isn't our biggest problem.

And I was like, what is your biggest problem?

And she's like parking lot sales.

I'm like, well, there's no reason we can't do both at the same time.

So that was before the state passed the bill.

But so for that's why Fort Collins did both at the same time.

And Denver was gonna do that, but now don't have to because the state did it, so um, they won't acknowledge that that's kind of been taken care of.

And then um, they'll talk about like online sales as being a black market, which they know better, it's not a black market.

It's right since 2013, it's been regulated the same way as people who sell out stores.

If you sell online, you have to have a B license from the federal government.

I'm not saying that regulation is great, but they ignore that fact.

So that would be probably their two biggest talking points is like impact on business, and then oh, and pet choice, right?

People deserve to buy a pet wherever they want to.

That's another big one, but this is not good for people to have this choice.

Um we hear that all the time.

Right, and like shelters are full, and there's tons of awesome, like even breed specific rescues in Denver, like tons, and then there are responsible breeders.

Um, so you know, and the shortage of a market, yeah.

So those would be the top things, and like other pet stores in the area, I suppose could come in opposition and say this is like a slippery slope, and like there's a guy in like Centennial who might say, Well, if you do this, then Centennial, you know, things like that, but again, it doesn't directly impact them at all.

Okay, thank you.

That was actually super helpful.

Now we know what the um false flags will be that we do.

And I'm keeping an eye on like Pans, like advocacy page to see if they've caught wind of this.

Because like they sell Fort Collins up, so they're a little bit in a row.

Okay, pet advocacy.

Okay.

Um, Alex, do you have anything to add to that that you would be have your flags up for from your point of view?

Uh Counselor Parody.

Um, the department would not be involved in the politics of council's mother building.

But you think you might get complained.

Like if this passes, you're the regulator.

Is there anything you would foresee someone being really under in your inbox about?

I mean, there's no one that's gonna immediately apply to, which is actually great.

So, um, uh I would say we would just follow our normal enforcement process, and people don't like having enforcement placed on them, but it the rules are the laws, so we would follow the law.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, thank you.

That was all I want to know.

Thanks, Mr.

Check.

Uh, Johnson, parody and uh Alex Vidella was like your responses, so you're very considerate in the way you respond.

I wanted to see for uh council members or if there's anyone else that wanted to jump into the queue as I do one more look.

This is an action item, so I would need a motion and a second moved.

By Sawyer, second by parody.

Um, is there a need for a vote?

A thumbs up.

Um looking forward to seeing you all on the floor.

Thank you so much, uh, Councilmember Hollings and team for bringing us forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have seven items on consent.

Thanks, everyone.

Oh my gosh, I have an owl.

Oh, it's a proof.

We gotta talk about it.