Interesting MrsSmith, so why is it against the law to take photos in some Mid western States of the so called Puppy Mills?
Want to buy a puppy from a breeder, head out and take photos of the business with no permission from the breeder, off to jail you go.
Why not start investigating the breeding mills and why most animals are shipped way out of State. you buy a dog said to be a poodle and and the vet finds it is a mongrel, you cannot sue the seller, you have to travel to the state the breeder lives in and prepare to sue them there. Few do that as the breeder will offer to take the dog back and replace it with another.
So you have bonded with a dog that has been misrepresented and you are going to give the dog back????
This pisses me off, Circus animals are the bread and butter to their owners, well trained and ready to preform. True some Circus animals are mistreated as are some children that preform to make money for the family.
While the government concentrates on less then 1% of animal care there are thousands of thousands of puppy's living in horrid conditions in States that protect the breeders.
What happens to the puppy's that don't sell from the puppy shops??? Once they get too old they are disposed of in some way, no reason to feed the pups that no one wants to buy. 
I have a dog in this race, my puppy came with a lot of official papers as to breed and genology.
No way is she a throughbread as the papers say, she is nothing like her breed standard or even comes close to what her AKCA papers say she is. The dog is a mutt I paid $900.00 bucks for, to sue I would have to give her back to the breeder--------over my dead body.
The USDA and all states have many laws about dog breeders. There are probably a few "puppy mills" left in business, but there aren't many. Most breeders are labeled "puppy mills" by those that have no clue what they're talking about.
When I was a kid, my mother helped shut down several true puppy mills. In one place, the dogs were so starved that several could not be saved. We ended up with the rest, Mom spent a lot of time and money getting them back into condition. Some ended up healthy enough to keep for breeding, and we did. The others were not, and we spent time socializing them and found them homes.
Another place kept all their dogs in 2' x 2' rabbit cages without the catch trays underneath...and stacked the cages on top of each other so they could get more of them in their garage. This meant that the waste would fall down, from one cage to another, and right on those other dogs. That one was reported and shut down.
My mother also ran into many people that did the wrong things out of ignorance, and she endlessly and patiently taught a large number of people the correct way to house and care for breeding dogs, how and when to give vaccinations, how the pens must be constructed and cleaned, how the mother dogs must be housed separately when they were due to whelp, how to care for pups when the mother had no milk, when to take dogs in for c-sections, etc. etc.
As for shipping out of state, the pups go where the customers are. There are still a few places that manage to get pups into pet shops that should not be registered and a few pet shops that don't care if a pup meets breed standards, but they are certainly the exception to the rule. The broker we worked with was very careful to buy only pups that were within breed standards, clean inside and out, and basically without flaw. Things like a crooked tooth, a hernia, or a testicle that had not descended were enough to cause pups to be rejected and returned to the breeder. Of those breeders, I do not know of a single one that just got rid of that pup...and not a single one that would sell that pup for breeding, either. The usual method was to advertise the pup as "pet quality only," and mark the papers that way so that it could not be used to breed registered pups.
Another thing, about the pictures. Breeders don't like people running around on private property taking photos just as you wouldn't want a complete stranger running around the inside of your house taking photos! However, I know that at one time, most took pictures of their own places and sent them to the broker, who then copied them into booklets and sent those to the pet shops. That way, buyers could look at the kennel from which their pup came and see that the pens were neat, the dogs were happy, and the regulations were all met.
In contrast, having worked in animal shelters in various places, I have seen how puppies are bred and cared for by those that are ignorant and have no intention of making a profit and therefore no intention of investing in their dogs or their care. I have seen pups taking away from a mother dog a few days after birth because the owners didn't know or care how hard that was on the mother dog, and didn't care if the pups lived at all. I've come to work on a freezing winter day and found newborn pups in a box by the door, usually left the night before and left to freeze. This happened a few times even after we built a heated area for placing unwanted pups. I've seen tiny pups dying in freezing dog houses, on top of old stinking straw, and had owners tell me that they didn't think they'd be too cold since the mother was OK with it. The typical back-yard pet having pups is in far worse condition than most of those in breeding kennels. Many are never cleaned up, few are taken to vets if there are problems whelping, most of the pups will die and those that live will seldom be given vaccinations, have dew claws removed, or even be treated for worms, fleas and ticks before being sold or given away. At least the vast majority of breeders actually expect to make some money at it, so invest in their dogs, their care, their housing, and their pups.
Finally, if your pup truly does not meet breed standards, I assume you have contacted the AKC with a complaint? You have made sure your dog is a mutt? (I hate to break it to you, but vets are trained to heal animals, some have no more clue about breed standards than the average guy.) And who told you you'd have to return it to sue the breeder?? That makes no sense at all.
