Can You Buy Amish Products?

[BarbinRI]

As I see it, the issue is not buying Amish-made products or visiting the area, the issue is that by doing these things we are supporting the political environment that allows puppy mills to exist. Lancaster County is referred to as the puppy mill capitol of the east. Obviously these mills exist because they are allowed to, regardless of laws already on the books. Most of us are not residents of Lancaster County, or of Pennsylvania, so we can not vote to change things there.
We CAN vote with our pocketbooks though. We can refuse to go on that bus trip to Pennsylvania Dutch country, we can refuse to go to the giant quilt shows in the region, we can book our organization's convention elsewhere.
We can also educate ourselves and others. We can post links on our blogs and social networking sites. We can urge our friends not to shop at pet stores that sell animals. We can change things.

[pomtzu]

As I see it, the issue is not buying Amish-made products or visiting the area, the issue is that by doing these things we are supporting the political environment that allows puppy mills to exist. Lancaster County is referred to as the puppy mill capitol of the east. Obviously these mills exist because they are allowed to, regardless of laws already on the books. Most of us are not residents of Lancaster County, or of Pennsylvania, so we can not vote to change things there.
We CAN vote with our pocketbooks though. We can refuse to go on that bus trip to Pennsylvania Dutch country, we can refuse to go to the giant quilt shows in the region, we can book our organization's convention elsewhere.
We can also educate ourselves and others. We can post links on our blogs and social networking sites. We can urge our friends not to shop at pet stores that sell animals. We can change things.

None of us here support puppy mills, but to paint the whole Lancaster County area, and the Amish in particular, with the same brush, is quite unfair. As was said in previous posts, there are many hard working Amish folks who do not support these mills either, and there will be bad apples in every barrel, but you don't throw the whole barrel full out. If we boycotted every area in our country and the rest of the world where there were less than upstanding citizens and practices, we would never leave our homes!