Germany as a transit country in the illegal puppy trade
A new PETA investigation reveals how dog puppies are bred in Slovakia under conditions that violate animal welfare standards and subsequently sold via Germany to Belgium into so-called puppy shops.
The dogs are treated like commodities, kept in isolation in some cases, and separated from their mothers at an early age.
Many consequently develop lifelong physical and psychological problems.
The Slovak breeding operation «Larus» alone generated over one million euros in revenue between 2021 and 2023, supplying at least three Belgian puppy shops with more than 380 puppies in 2023 alone.
Germany serves both as a sales market and as a transit country, while Belgium plays a key role as a hub in the EU-wide puppy trade.
PETA criticises the profit-driven nature of this industry and urges people never to buy dogs — neither online nor from breeders — but exclusively to adopt from animal shelters.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
