Food manufacturers everywhere are experiencing the painful effects of rising raw material costs these days. But those who rely on puppy flour are reeling from the fallout of Proposition B, a narrowly-passed referendum which banned puppy mills in Missouri this last November.
Once considered to be the puppy mill capital of the United States, Missouri’s shutdown of puppy flour production has forced farms in Nebraska, Arkansas and Iowa to take up the slack with limited success.
As a result, puppy flour futures have shot up by 80 percent since June of 2010, hitting a 15-year high. This has surprised some experts, especially considering the rising popularity of imitation puppy flour, which while being gluten free is often derisively known as “faux fido” among bakers and food aficionados.
Global demand has spiked because of a growing appetite for puppy-based snacks in southeast Asia and in the Midwest United States leaving the remaining mills struggling to keep up.
Adding to the crisis is China, which not only mills the most puppies, but is also the leading consumer of puppy flour. Experiencing a significant outbreak of mange and hip dysplasia across its puppy farmlands, China has seen a significant drop in its 2010 crop output, falling by 22.4 percent to 6.4 million bushels of puppy flour with no signs of improving.
The Puppy Millers Association, a trade group which fought Missouri’s Proposition B, estimates about a four percent rise in world puppy flour consumption for the year, leading to emptying silos and a reduction in global inventories.
Thomas Reynes, a former large scale puppy mill owner and now an independent futures broker in Chicago, predicted that “consumption of puppy flour is going to outpace the production that domestic puppy mills can provide for the third straight year.” Prices were bound to skyrocket.
According to Reynes, if price increases continue their current trends, consumers could wind up paying 35 to 40 percent more for a bag of beagle bagels and at least 20 percent more for a poodle pizza by the fall.
“Puppy flour is the number one ingredient for specialty bakers and these cost increases may reach unsustainable levels, pricing them out of the market,” Reynes said. “There will be a point where you won’t be able to get a blueberry mastiff muffin if you wanted one.”
As poodle-mix breeding has dominated puppy farms in recent years, the many products that are made from this popular dog will be hurt the most. This has led Richard Thompson, a distributor of industrial-sized millstones, to speculate that the industry may not survive Missouri’s ban.
“Poodle-derived flour, known as ‘poodle-mix’, is a common ingredient in the industry.” Thompson said. “Poodles are like cranberries in that they seem to be mixed in with nearly everything so I expect the impact to be significant.”
Demand will likely shift to the family-ownedpuppy farms, which are not impacted by the ban and, according to experts, are expected to flourish. But this may be only a temporary shift as these small scale operations don’t have the capacity to effectively profit like the large puppy mills once could.
This leads experts to fear an emergence of a black market of unregulated mutt-flour, which is of much lower quality.
“So we’ll be paying much higher prices for a worse product,” Thompson said. “Until puppy mills are allowed to once again operate without the invasive economic dampening effects of government intrusion, puppy flour-based baked goods will be a specialty item that only the rich can afford.”
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
