Blues Forteana ∴ Iggy Makarevich, AAS, LMNO

This is one of the most awful things I have read in a long time.

The Amish (/ˈɑːmɪʃ/; Pennsylvania Dutch: Amisch, German: Amische) are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships, closely related to but distinct from Mennonite churches, with whom they share Swiss Anabaptist origins. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann.^[2] Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish.^[3]

When we consider the Amish, we often have the image of a quaint and simple people, living a quiet devoutly religious life without the intrusion of modern influences. Often romanticized in movies and TV shows, we’re presented with the visage of gentle people dedicated to an uncomplicated “country” lifestyle. However, as is all propaganda, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Notorious for working horses until they die in the field or can no longer walk from pulling buggies for hours on hard paved roads, the Amish are known for something that directly clashes with their supposed religious beliefs, brutal animal cruelty.

This hidden aspect of Amish immorality has been brought to light recently in Minnesota, where illegally operated puppy mills have been granted new licenses for expanding their operations. That’s right, despite dozens of reports of extremely brutal cruelty toward the dogs, and extensive citations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Amish puppy mills are expanding in Minnesota. A state where 80,000 to 90,000 unwanted dogs are euthanized each year.

One of the Minnesota puppy mill operators, an Amish man with an extensive record of USDA violations related to illegal dog breeding, has been granted a permit to operate a puppy farm with 85 adult dogs. Dogs that will be kept in cages, with untreated wounds and illnesses, covered in feces and unable to walk will be churning out those puppies you see in pet stores. Speculation on social media is that these “devoutly religious” Amish are bribing corrupt officials in order to get their permits — permits that would normally be denied to operators with their history of violations.

Minnesota is just the tip of an iceberg of brutality. Often illegally operatedAmish puppy mills have been a problem across the Midwest and Northeast for decades. Back in 1993, the New York Times ran a series of stories exposing the illegal and mind boggling brutal Amish operations in Pennsylvania. Puppy mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Indiana, most of which are operated by the Amish, refuse to follow state kennel laws and regularly accumulate multiple violations with little or no penalty. In the rare cases where an Amish puppy mill operation is shut down, it’s simply restarted on an Amish neighbor’s property.

Current estimates calculate that these mostly illegal Amish puppy mills are responsible for as much as 70% of the puppies that make it to retail pet stores. Masking the brutal points of origin through puppy auctions, it’s often difficult, if not impossible to trace the point of origin of these troubled dogs back to their brutal beginnings. And indeed they often come with behavioral problems, after being raised in sadistic conditions with little or no human contact outside of the ruthless operators. And all too often, these puppies with behavioral problems are too much for a family to handle, and are given up to shelters and humane societies where euthanasia is likely.

While in the broad scheme of all the world’s problems, these barbaric puppy mills might seem like a small annoyance amongst an overwhelming cacophony of societal problems. But is it really? Is this actually an example of how callous we’ve become; that we would allow these domesticated creatures that can give us so much, to be breed by the hundreds of thousands in such deplorable conditions? The only way to fix society is by one problem at a time, and this seems like an easy problem to fix. And fixing the smaller problems is the path to fixing the bigger ones.

edit on 11-1-2016 by SkepticOverlord because: (no reason given)

It brought up the memory of the notoriously awful group of Nazi settlers at the Chilean government-approved Colonia Dignidad. I recommend the article entitled The Torture Colony at The American Scholar, as the author is a survivor of their hand-delivered main product line.

Something needs to be done about it.