I enjoy the Unwind section of the TU every Sunday. I was excited this morning when I saw an article about a Mediterranean restaurant I have never been to (one of my favorite kinds of food). Then I saw a picture of a big pretzel attached to the featured travel article describing a trip to Pennsylvania’s Amish country. The article let people know they could look forward to chocolate, hand-twisted pretzels, crab cakes, history, and puppy mills. OK, I added that last one.

The article promoting tourism in Lancaster County, PA gives directions to small towns promoting the Amish myth that you can peak into life in the 19th century. Unfortunately the Amish view of animals is rooted in the 18th century. As you drive down those winding country roads on your way to these small towns, take a look at the big barns set back on farms throughout Lancaster County. Are there cows slowly chewing their morning meal in those barns? Probably not. It’s much more likely that in those barns you will find wire cages with hundreds of dogs and puppies. Those dogs are a cash crop for Amish farmers, they produce as many puppies as they can, as cheaply as possible and then toss out the adults like trash when they are done. Those puppies in the pet store – this is where they come from.

Pennsylvania has long been known among my peers as ‘the puppy mill capital of the northeast’. The Amish are running many of those puppy-mills. Pennsylvania has recently passed stricter laws regulating dog breeding and while this seems to be good, the state has already enacted regulations that have weakened the law and hundreds of dogs are still spending their entire lives in those barns in small cages on wire floors without families to love them.

The new PA regulations have sped up something else that’s been happening in Amish country, Amish moving out. Since they are getting a harder time from PA’s state government Amish puppy-mill owners have been looking for somewhere else with cheap farmland and weak puppy-mill regulation. You guessed it – Central New York. You might not know about all the Amish moving into Central New York, and they don’t want you to because they don’t want people to know that there are hundreds of dogs and puppies in those barns.

How do you start a puppy-mill and keep a steady supply of breeding stock coming in: The Amish know exactly where to find them, dog auctions. You’ll notice the Amish in this video because they’re wearing those outfits we all think are so quaint when we go to visit. WARNING: This video is disturbing.

The Amish have worked hard to build their brand. We all know about Amish furniture, foods, farms and those cute little horse drawn carriages they ride in. Why don’t we hear about one of their biggest profit centers – puppies? Because they don’t want you to know.