Hollywood pet store shut over cruelty

The fashionable Los Angeles pet store where Paris Hilton (left), Britney Spears and Robin Williams go to buy their lapdogs has been shut down by the Department of Animal Regulations amid accusations that the shop takes puppies from so-called puppy mills - the canine breeding equivalent of mass production.

Staff at Pets of Bel Air, where stars pay big bucks for red-carpet accessory-dogs, insist they have done nothing wrong and never use puppy mills. But an investigation by the Humane Society of the United States has produced a video showing scenes at various puppy mills in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and followed the paper trail back to Bel Air.

Accordingly, stars buying pets from the shop are unaware that some of the animals they are paying for - as much as £2,400 for a Maltese - have been bred in huge numbers and started their days in miserable conditions. Undercover footage shot by the HSUS at one puppy mill shows cage after cage of little dogs locked up and going 'cage crazy'. ·