How You Can Help
Animals aren’t products and don’t belong on store shelves. Urge PetSmart and Petco to stop selling animals.
The Deadly Wildlife Trade and the Pet Industry
The wildlife trade causes severe animal suffering, threatens biodiversity, and leaves us vulnerable to the next pandemic. Many Americans think that the commercial exploitation of wild animals is someone else’s problem—in reality, the US is one of the biggest importers of wild animals in the world, and the sale of wild animals as pets is a major reason.
Blocking Animal Protection Legislation
Not only are pet stores complicit in the wildlife trade, pet industry lobbyists are actively blocking legislation that would protect both animals and public health.
As COVID-19, which most likely emerged as a zoonotic event (meaning an infectious disease transferred from an animal to human), spread across the globe and killed millions the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC), one of the most powerful lobbying arms of the pet industry, worked to prevent legislation that would shut down the live wildlife trade. PIJAC is now known as the Pet Advocacy Network, another attempt to confuse people about its true purpose.
PIJAC didn’t want regulations because the importers didn’t want them, and the importers didn’t want them because it would raise the cost of shipping the animals.
Profits Before Animals
Lobbying against regulations that would limit or regulate businesses’ ability to sell animals—whether dogs bred in puppy mills or wild animal importations—is business as usual for PIJAC.
In the 90s, the pet industry blocked Fish and Wildlife Service regulations regarding the well-being of reptiles and amphibians during transport. The regulations would have addressed, in part:
- Air temperature
- Enclosures
- Adequate air exchange
- Dampened bedding for species who need moisture
PIJAC routinely opposes local and state retail pet sale bans, often called “puppy mill bills,” that would ban pet stores from selling puppies and kittens sourced from mills.
Keeping Secrets
Stopping the imminent extinction of the most vulnerable species requires data, and the pet industry is infamously difficult to monitor. PIJAC works to prevent critical information about the wildlife trade in the US from reaching the public.
Recently, PIJAC has twice issued alerts asking supporters to contact Fish and Wildlife Service and oppose releasing information about the wildlife trade—including species under extreme threat in the wild.
The pet industry wants this information secret because it knows the lack of data undercuts advocates’ and governments’ ability to enact animal protection and wildlife trade laws that may impact pet companies.
