The early January exposure, which barely received any media attention, caused confusion among the truly animal-loving minority. Rightfully so. However, if we look behind the scenes, it is sad but everything was logical and expected.
1. Colossal quantity
According to the article, calculating with 400 puppies per week, the now exposed transporter took more than 20,000 puppies annually. But there are at least 5-6 of them (I might be seriously underestimating), this is 100-120 thousand puppies. If we consider that this is the import for one country, and only from one (not more) other country, it is evident that within a few years, Hungarian dogs would have flooded Italy like mosquitoes in the reed beds in summer. The Italian market cannot handle this many imported dogs originating from Hungary.
Price driven into the mud
Exporting is the dream of Hungarian producers. Here, however, the Italians buy the puppies well below domestic breeder prices (about 20,000 HUF). Although there, even hobby puppies without pedigree cost as much (generally reaching 100,000 HUF) as our pedigree dogs cost. The low price is generally caused by oversupply, but here this is not the case; everything is purchased by the Italians.
The “expendables”
Why are so many puppies sold at no price, what does this mean? It obviously means that because of their cheapness and large numbers, they are the “expendables”: due to the high rate of death en route, there will be no oversupply in Italy, and the loss suffered is negligible because they have no value.
2. Brazenly openly
On classified ad websites, 5-6 buyers openly seek to purchase entire litters, and there are many breeder puppies for sale. Advertisers are not afraid of tax authority (or any other authority) inspections, as such have rarely occurred so far… The state, analogous to Chinese markets, tolerates breeders producing often lower quality (both in appearance and health-genetics), but puppies accessible to an increasingly broad low-income, low-demand group that cannot or will not pay for quality. The political will thus is: to allow “survival” breeding, thereby preventing social discontent from increasing even due to this.
Flaws:
Most breeders supplying the low-income segment with cheap dogs (just like the dealers purchasing for the Italian market) have meanwhile become wealthy (nice large house, new expensive car) from the money of the low-income buyers, unlike their target audience and the legitimate breeders.
The free trade of breeder puppies, however, causes serious harm to honest breeders because—primarily in Italy, but thanks to the internet, throughout much of Western Europe as well—Hungarian dogs and breeders have gained a terrible reputation. This drastically narrows legal dog export. Domestically, few can afford and are willing to pay the higher price, which just covers the costs of legitimately born and conscientiously cared-for puppies.
3. Who is put in the crosshairs?
However, authorities are expected to conduct inspections within dog breeding circles. Well, they started, but there are problems—both on the inspector and the inspected sides.
Mountains have labored over the past two years and a mouse was born. Under the guise of improving the quality of Hungarian dog breeding, a chaotic new regulation came into effect, according to which canine civil associations received more autonomy, but this is only apparent because the state intervenes considerably, and all this costs legal breeders two, three, or even multiple times more than before.
At the same time, the breeding of puppies without pedigree is not prohibited, and breeders have no administrative or tax liability, so they are practically invisible to the authorities and do not appear in inspection plans. Inspections happen almost only upon notification. Registered breeders are not like this; they can be easily included in inspection plans. Of course, they have often been penalized rightfully or wrongfully, since it is a fact that in many cases not only breeders made mistakes out of ignorance and negligence, but representatives of the tax authority also did not know the solutions to the particular tax questions.
The windmill fight
The successful actions against breeders or dealers, which briefly gain attention in the media, are only questionable partial successes of a lost cause, because there is neither money, nor horse, nor weapon for it. The most fundamental deficiency is that the legal conditions for controllability and punishability are lacking. There is no proper supervisory authority: neither the municipalities nor the NÉBIH’s male and female staff, accustomed to paperwork, are capable on their own of taking authoritative action at the sites of illegal activities. Furthermore, neither they nor the NAV personnel possess the legal and cynological knowledge, as well as other data (e.g., registry information), that would help to uncover and prove various violations. And in an action conducted by several authorities, there is usually not enough cooperation (because they do not know each other’s tasks, and do not know what help to request or offer), so fewer data and evidence are collected than would be possible.
Laughing in the authorities’ face
After a few months of advertisement review and data collection within breeder circles, a not-too-long series of NÉBIH-NAV-police actions could deal a heavy blow to the dealer network and their breeder suppliers. Let’s assume they succeed. During a successful action, 200-400 puppies would have to be seized per truckload. On an annual basis, consider only 5,000 puppies – there is nowhere to place the seized and later confiscated puppies. The state has no room, and existing shelters are full to bursting. After this, the head of the authority is not enthusiastic about participating in such an inspection, because if they do their job well, they are FORCED to seize a few hundred dogs, but there is nowhere to put them... If the offender is allowed to keep them by a ruling warning that they are seized and that there will be consequences if they disappear, etc., and yet they still disappear, that is a humiliating situation...
There is a legal institution according to which seized items may be taken into seizure by leaving possession with the person affected by the seizure, if the authority cannot manage their handling and there is no fear that they will be lost or pilfered or damaged. Do you think this is feasible in the case of a truckload of puppies?
After this, why do we wonder if the truck stopped near Cegléd and turned back to Pécs broke its seal and reloaded the shipment two days later and delivered the previously seized load to Italy as if nothing happened, without the authorities’ knowledge...?
The press has already hinted at it, and corruption reflexively occurs in people’s minds. I do not say it certainly does not exist, but due to the above outlined legal shortcomings, it is practically unnecessary. A clever lawyer costs less and can achieve practically the same result.
4. The icing on the cake
On top of all this, every government, regardless of party affiliation, does not wish to spend a single penny on financing action against breeders and illegal dog trading. Neither on people, nor on tools, nor on background institutions (e.g., shelters).
Therefore, the breeders live happily until they die, while the puppies hardly live until they die – and this will continue right up to the era of the welfare society. But I won’t jump so far ahead, because I’m not a sci-fi writer...
