Puppy mills are large scale breeding facilities where profit is the most important concern and not the care of the dogs or puppies. In a puppy mill, dogs are forced to breed their entire lives until they can't physically maintain any longer. A female dog is bred every time she goes into heat. Female dogs are pregnant or nursing all the time even if they have health issues or degenerative diseases that show up in litters. After the dogs physically can no longer be bred, the dogs are sold, left on the side of the road, neglected, starved and even killed. Rarely humanly euthanized.

In a puppy mill, the conditions are horrendous. Dogs spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in cages, with often little to no contact with people, never touch the grass or exercise, and are never socialized. Many times puppy mills have hundreds of dogs exposed to extreme heat and cold and never experience human touch.

Large scale breeding facilities or puppy mills can have a USDA license BUT also are in egregious, unsanitary and cruel conditions. Many of the dogs never see vets even if they are sick and hurt and are just left to die without proper veterinary care. Having a USDA license ensures that the facility can sell to pet stores but it does NOT ensure that you are buying from a small responsible breeder.

A USDA license does mandate a series of requirements, outlined by the Animal Welfare Act, but this act is over forty years old and only has standards for survival listed as requirements. Also, the USDA only has 120 employees to inspect over 8000 registered puppy mills, 11,000 registered animal laboratories, and 233 accredited zoos and aquariums so there is an extreme lack of support personnel to enforce the minimal requirements. This is one of the reasons puppy mills continue to violate the federal laws, with little to no consequences, and consumers are kept in the dark about the truth behind the cruelty of puppy mills.