With the multiplexes awash in action franchises for the summer, here is some savvy counterprogramming, especially for parents interested in turning their kids’ love of animals into an opportunity to raise awareness about justice and politics. Marc Abraham, a vet based in Brighton and familiar TV face, campaigns for animal welfare and was involved in the passing of Lucy’s law, which banned puppy farming in England in 2020. Since then, he has been lobbying for the kept animals bill that would legislate further against cruel practices against animals, but that stalled in parliament under the last government.
After a potted history of all that, the film follows Abraham as he travels to the US where animal welfare is governed mostly by state and local regulations. But in states such as Pennsylvania, interest groups representing pet stores and others pour money into thwarting legislation similar to Lucy’s law that would ban puppy mills. In order to illustrate the scale of the problem, Abraham gets in a van with animal welfare charity worker Grace, who goes around the Amish-run puppy mills in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, collecting animals that have been worn out by years of breeding, most of them locked in small cages while they pump out puppies. Her courteous offer to take unwanted and no longer profitable animals off the hands of the puppy mill owners enables the film-makers to shoot footage inside a few of the facilities and expose the conditions. Turns out even the best quality ones look pretty brutal, with no enrichment for the animals inside antiseptic pens where the yelping and whimpering dogs spend their entire lives.
Along for the ride with Grace and Marc is Republican state senator and avid dog lover Tracy Pennycuick who does sterling work here rehabilitating the image of her party by projecting empathy and dedication to animal welfare. But even Pennycuick’s efforts to pass a bipartisan bill in Pennsylvania like Lucy’s law, in this case called Victoria’s law, flounder in the face of Big Pet Store’s conspiracy to maintain the cruel status quo. You could critique the film for not going a little broader in its analysis, for example, the way it shies away from really underscoring how cruelty to dogs barely differs from the cruelty experienced by other animals farmed for food, but maybe that would have diluted the documentary’s appeal and impact. Strictly as a film, Dogspiracy grates a bit with its syrupy musical bed, like one of those heart-tugging animal welfare adverts that lasts 98 minutes. But Abraham is a personable anchoring figure and the sincerity of the activists is palpable throughout.
• Dogspiracy is in UK cinemas from 1 August.
