Anger and ‘plenty of opposition’ to proposed
plans to create scotland’s first industrial puppy farm have sparked outrage.
The remote Ayrshire facility would house 40 dogs in a disused stable block, churning out puppies for cash.
But the plan has already been met with fierce objections – with the Scottish SPCA, Police Scotland and locals all prepar- ing to slate the pro- posal being considered by East Ayrshire Council.
Last night, John Robins, of Animal Concern Advice Line, said: “There will be plenty of opposition to this.
“Go to any rescue centre and you will see there are more than enough puppies already in Scotland. We don’t need any more.
“Dogs are not animals that should be bred in factory-like settings.”
The proposed pup factory will be sited on a farm near Galston.
The application has been made by Hazel Hamilton who is married to a businessman linked to a massive puppy farm.
Husband Stephen Hamilton, 46, is the brother of David and Jonathan Hamilton who run the UK Dog Breeding Academy, in Fivemiletown, County Tyrone.
It doesn’t sell to the public and is claimed to be the largest licensed dog breeding establishment in the UK.
The Fivemiletown facility previously featured in a hard-hitting BBC documentary about puppy farming.
In the programme, footage from inside the rural kennels showed dozens of young dogs huddled together in disused trailers without their mothers.
The reporter claimed she found hundreds of breeding bitches in battery-farmed and “freezing” conditions at the Irish premises.
The footage was blasted by Sheila Voas, chief veterinary surgeon with the Scottish Government, who said at the time the programme was aired: “It was barbaric. It was a production line. It was using animals as a commodity.”
The facility’s former vet also made a number of allegations about practices at the HQ.
Mr David Bailey, a former Northern Irish government veterinarian who worked for the Hamiltons for three years, claimed David Hamilton had been reluctant to keep a log of every dog kept at the kennel. The expert said: “It was like a production facility that you would expect to find in a bad pig-raising plant. Every animal on the premises
was given an antibiotic injection every week, then we’d change the antibiotic every month because we could not control the infections.”
But the Hamiltons were furious at the documentary and complained to TV regulators Ofcom.
A solicitor for the family said that they had not broken any laws running their business.
The Hamiltons also complained they had received death threats after the programme aired.
But their complaint of “unwarranted infringement of privacy in connection with the obtaining of material included in the programme” was thrown out by the watchdog earlier this year.