I am really sorry Micke, but I don't have time to address all of this right now...wrapping up a final paper (huge project) for one of my classes. I will be able to get into this after the 14th.

Two things I will address now:

You mention:"I have heard of people actually having unregistered females but are selling the puppies registered, how are they doing this and is that any way legal?"

This is nothing...there are cases of puppies being taken out of shelters and "added" to a litter...these puppies were registered as part of an existing litter (either real or fictitious).

The other thing: "on the visit to the kennels, do they always give advance notice that they are coming? and why would they do that? should be just like any other inspection."

Kennels are not "open for business" like grocery stores or restaurants. They do not have normal hours of operation. Since so many are in "out of the way" places, I suppose the inspectors find it necessary to announce their visits to insure the owners will be available for touring.

More later...

I'll put in my 2 cents. :-)
A puppy mill and commercial breeder are one and the same. They may be clean, they may be filthy. They are in for profit only and usually have several breeds, breed every heat, and the females are just profit making breeding machines. They usually spend their entire productive lives caged.When they start to become less productive they will be auctioned off of just gotten rid of somehow. They do not sell to the general public and usually sell to a broker who then sells to the pet stores.
Brokers can not be called puppy millers because they don't do any breeding, but are just as evil. They don't care about the parents of the puppies either. The Hunte corp. is a broker. They buy from the mills and sell to pet stores. In 2002 they sold 85,000 puppies to Petland and other pet stores.
On the USDA thing. Here's a tidbit for you.
Between the years 2000 and 2002 the USDA underwrote loans totally 3.5 million dollars to Hunte. Talk about hiring the fox to watch the chicken coop. Way to spend our tax dollars huh?

sorry webkat, did not mean to bother you when you were busy:(

wonder if I copied part of some of the things hunte and petland are doing and sent it to the newspaper if that would help any? bet they would do nothing with it our town is all about whos hand is in whos pocket.
on the broker thing, one of the main reasons I am so interested in all this is because someone I know and do not really respect has raised dogs for years, many dogs, then they went to brokering, now they are breeding dogs again (don't know if they even stopped while they were brokering)
the hunte corporation is not very far from where these people live, bet they sell puppies to them too, now I have seen the operation and it is clean and the dogs "seem" happy, and they aren't stacked all on top of each other the only thing I did see was a male dog in a cage that was too small for him, but according to them that wasn't all the time, and he wasn't sitting in his own waste or anything, so maybe they were telling the truth. just want to get as much info on this as possible.

It's my understanding that the Hunte Corp. has state of the art facilities. Spotless, vets, plenty of workers etc. The pups are kenneled on wire and drink from water bottles. They are operating within the law. not much can be done about it. They'll be in business as long as people buy from pet stores. The places they get their pups from are probably a whole nother story.
If your friends are selling to them, they probably do have the proper license. As big as Hunte is they probably keep their paper work in order even if they don't care about anything else. I'm just guessing here.
Not to sound like a downer here Micke, but dog lovers have been working on the PetLand/Hunte situation for years to no avail. It's all about money. I doubt your paper would publish anything about them by name.

Well I got the info I was after. those lists are not just puppy breeders, they are anybody that is licensed to sell animals, from dogs (of course) to exotics, the reason I was so hot and heavy on it is because I know 2 people from those lists and one of them has nothing whatsoever to do with dogs, he has a petstore that sells fish, birds, and small animals (gerbils and the like) my mother sells her hand fed birds to him. the other one does sell dogs so I was mostly concerned about her.
when I first seen the amount from Missouri I was flabbergasted because I thought that all of those on the list were considered puppy mills, now I can relax.

Sorry, I forgot about you Micke....you didn't really ask that question in your OP, though...

Yes there will be a minimum number of "other" types of breeders on that list...I thought I covered that on the other thread...oh well...

And, of course, if a breeder is not on that list, that IS a problem.

A puppy mill = any operation that operates and profits from the sale of puppies. Definitely not responsible breeding...opposite end of the spectrum, in fact.

A truly responsible breeder will never make money on the sale of their puppies (1 breed and maybe 2 litters per year).

No,I didn't ask that question, just something else I was wanting to know (lots of questions running through my head at that time!) yes I knew the amount of dogs sold was a issue, and the breeder I know has quite a few dogs, it IS a clean looking operation and she has a few teenagers that come and play with the dogs. I know for absolute fact that she is making money on her operation and I think when she was brokering to New York city it was so she could take a whole van full at a time, so she is being paid to take the dogs and recieving money from her dogs.
About 10 years ago I sold a female dog to this women, wish I hadn't now that I know what I know.
as for the petstore owner why I was so concerned was I did not want my mother selling anything to him if he had a puppy mill operation going on at home.

The PetLand testimonials were awful!