By Sharon L. Peters, Special for USA TODAY

Puppy mill opponents are taking it to the streets this weekend.

Grassroots puppy mill protests and events are planned Saturday across the country, from Northville, Mich., where about 50 people are expected to parade through town to raise awareness and distribute information about puppy mills, to Fresno County, Calif., where volunteers will gather at Sierra Vista Mall "to publicize the atrocities of puppy mills," says organizer Joyce Brandon.

"It's a topic that needs a lot of public-awareness-building," says Natalie Femino, a mental health counselor who is organizing a food, music and puppy mill information-sharing event at Salem (Mass.) Common, her first-ever venture into activism.

Puppy mills — large, inhumanely run breeding operations that sell puppies to some pet stores and online — have for years been in the crosshairs of animal welfare groups. Breeding stock, they say, are kept in tiny cages, fed subsistence diets and given no medical care, exercise or socialization; then the animals are killed when they no longer produce large litters. The puppies, they say, are often sick when sold, or genetic issues soon emerge.

Now the efforts of the large animal welfare groups, such as the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Best Friends Animal Society and others that have pushed for legislation and rescued thousands of puppy mill animals in the last year, are being joined by individuals initiating local events.

South Bend, Ind.'s annual Mutt March in St. Patrick's County Park to benefit a no-kill shelter will have a significant anti-puppy-mill component this year, says event chairwoman Linda Candler.

In Medfield, Mass., Medfield Animal Shelter volunteers are planning several hours of events, including a visit by "puppy mill survivors who have been adopted" and a dog talent show, says organizer Judy Ambrose.

The biggest event — with 600 to 1,000 participants expected — will be held in tiny Dutch Village in the middle of Lancaster County, Pa., which experts say is ground zero for puppy millers. Organizer Carol Araneo-Mayer says people are flying in from all over the country to bring awareness — for the fifth straight year — to the matter of the number of farms in the pastoral surroundings where "dogs are being treated like a commodity."

Although many in the trenches are distressed with what they see as the slow pace of real results against puppy mills, there are hopeful signs, says Stephanie Shain, director of the HSUS puppy mill campaign. "We saw two states, Virginia and Louisiana, pass landmark legislation this year by putting a cap on the number of dogs who can be kept for breeding, and saw critical federal laws enacted barring the import of puppies from foreign puppy mills."

And the hope, says ASPCA's Cori Menkin, is that through organized and grassroots events, "the desire to push for stronger laws to protect these animals will become contagious."