Many people have not visited pounds - but you don’t need to to see why we need the Animals (Regulation  of Sales) Bill. All you have to do is visit the pet shop in your local shopping centre… 

How many times have you walked past a pet shop and seen a sick or distressed animal for sale, or an animal who looks too young to be away from its mother, or an animal without access to food and water? What you have witnessed is cruelty.

Animal abuse and pet shops are two sides to the same coin. This is because pet shops are businesses and making money will always take precedence over the well being of the animals in their care. For example:

• Pet shops actively encourage impulsive behaviour in customers. The following excerpt has been taken from the Entrepreneur Business Centre: ‘Pet Shop Business Start Up Guide’.

“The scenario is simple: Someone will walk by, fall in love with an animal and buy it. These sorts of impulse sales can add dramatically to your profits.

First-time browsers in a pet shop will not necessarily jump at the thought of spending $50 to $500 to bring a dog home… However, if your shop is accessible and your sales and service ability is convincing, it will not be long before you convert walk-in traffic into buying customers.”

• To avoid loosing potential customers by ‘burdening’ them with the expected costs and responsibilities of animal ownership, pet shops rarely provide people with care information. In this way pet shops set people up to fail in living up to their responsibilities.

• Animals are sold to anyone with money. ID is rarely sighted, people are not interviewed and there are innumerable accounts of animals being sold to minors.

• Animals are housed 24hrs a day in tiny display cages. During the day they are surrounded by bright lights, noise and excited shoppers; at night they are alone and unsupervised. This seriously compromises their welfare.

• Pet shops sell animals to people (often impulsively and without care information) un-desexed. This combined with a lack of education leads to more unwanted animals being born with no where to go.

• If an animal becomes sick while in the care of the pet shop it is common practice to not seek vet treatment. Animals are either left to die, taken to a pound or sold at a discounted rate. All this to avoid the business incurring additional costs. An ex-pet shop employee recalls:

I worked in a pet shop as I thought it would be a nice job as I have always loved animals. I became totally disallusioned with the pet industry as I realised it was purely a profit driven industry. After the shop closed one Saturday afternoon there were (4 or 5) kittens that had got cat flu. They looked a little sickly and from memory they had sticky eyes.

Rather than taking them to the vet the cheaper and easier method of disposal was decided upon by the store manager. My manager put the kittens in a cardboard box with a rag with chloroform on it and closed the lid tightly. I stood there quite horrified not really knowing at the time what was going on as it all happened rather quickly. All I could hear was a whole lot of jumping  and scratching around in the box-sounds of the kittens desperately trying to get out out there. After a minute or so it was quite. To check they had all died I distinctly rememeber her picking up the box and shaking it to check there was no more movement.

This manager had no regard for the animals in the pet shop… they were treated merely as goods to sell in order make more profits for this major chain pet shop.

• The animals sold in NSW pet shops are sourced cheaply from ‘puppy farms’ or backyard breeders, where the parents are housed and bred in appalling conditions at minimal cost.

• These animals will never be walked, cuddled or played with, and they will never know the comforts of a home. As soon as they stop making money (if they become sick or stop producing litters) they are discarded as they are useless to the breeder.

• The backyard or commercial breeder has no understanding of or concern for breed standards, genetics, socialising, or animal health. The animals sold are usually suffering as a result.

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This week, supporters acted on complaints about Pets Paradise selling underweight and sick kittens. The proprietor of the store did not front to the tribunal hearing regarding the consumer complaint and have not been heard from.

A visit to the store afterward saw tens of rabbits and guinea pigs cramped into the same cage as well as many kittens overcrowded into a front cage. there was ONE staff member, overworked in a store crowded with people.

If anyone from Pets Paradise wish to comment they are welcome to contact us for full details of the case at info@petshopabuse.com

More to come, this week alone we recieved 13 complaints about pet stores.

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In NSW, major pet store chains are sourcing thier pets from Puppy Mills.

ACA Breeders is a large breeding facility in Melbourne that is under investigation. The photo’s on the right show some of the circumstances in which these animals are kept.

We have been advised by Pet Shop staff in Sydney that this is a major supplier to the Sydney Franchise chain and we are now acting on that advice to inform the public.

The following report is taken from the ALV site in Victoria  republished with permission from ALV

ACA Breeders is a puppy factory farm with hundreds of dogs kept in appalling conditions. 44 gallon drums are being used as kennels for many of the dogs (some stamped with the word ‘poison’). Some of the breeding dogs are kept in tiny caged enclosures on concrete floors with nowhere to sleep, except for a plastic drum with a hole cut in the bottom. These dogs are not loved pets they are breeding machines.

ALV’s investigation into ACA Breeders received full page coverage in the Sunday Herald Sun (November 18, 2007) under the headline ‘How could they be so cruel?’ The article detailed the lives of terror, confinement and deprivation suffered by factory farmed dogs. ALV raided the property again in late November and discovered the same horrendous conditions, the same breeding dogs living in misery.

Intensive puppy breeding is the hidden cruelty behind the pet shop window. The general public are unaware of these puppy breeding farms where thousands of dogs across the State are kept imprisoned for life churning out litter after litter of puppies. Female dogs come into their first season at approximately 4-6 months of age and this is when many unscrupulous breeders mate them for their first litter, when they are still only puppies themselves.

Mother dogs are not given any rest or reprieve between litters and are kept in a continual cycle of pregnancy. Father dogs live their entire lives locked in pens with small runs, if they are lucky, and are only there to ’service’ the female dogs. Both the mother and father dogs spend day after day after day ceaselessly pacing back and forth in small enclosures, their only way of coping with endless despair. These intelligent animals are never walked, socialised or given any love; they are simply breeding machines. Pups are weaned from their mums between 4 and 5 weeks of age and then transported to pet shops for display to the unsuspecting public. Pet shop owners depend on love at first sight when people, especially kids, see the adorable little puppies, as it prompts people to make an impulsive purchase. What the consumer can’t see is the puppy’s mother imprisoned miles away in her small pen awaiting repeated pregnancies.

In Australia we kill approximately 160,000 dogs every year because they are homeless, lost or abandoned. 350 unwanted dogs killed each and every day. The problems that cause animals to end up in shelters are preventable and the solutions are in our hands. Councils can have an impact on this issue by making the right decisions and taking the correct action. Councils are spending thousands of dollars on killing dogs in their pounds and shelters at the same time as they allow the breeding of more dogs by issuing permits for puppy farms to operate. It is time we get them to stop.

ACA breeders have been violating the Code of Practice for 12 years and the local Council have not bothered to enforce the law. E-mail the Wellington Shire Council Mayor and ask her to withdraw the permit for ACA Breeders because they are violating the Code of Practice. The Mayor’s e-mail address is darren.mccubbin@wellington.vic.gov.au. Please also CC your e-mail to the Shire Field Services Co-ordinator: gary.jago@wellington.vic.gov.au

SPREAD THE WORD
Forward a link to this page (http://www.alv.org.au/storyarchive/0712puppy/cruel.php) to everyone you know and ask them not to buy pet store puppies.

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Despite what you may hear on the web, the RSCPA and the AWL are not the only people who can report Animal Cruelty. Anyone in NSW can report and act on Animal Cruelty.

The RSCPA and the AWL inspectors have the legal rights to inspect, directly intervene and prosecute, however private citizens are also allowed to lodge complaints,  question the people in the shop regarding their concerns, they are allowed to call the police and involve the DFT.

The rights of the private citizen are many. You cant take the law into your own hands but it is your responsibility as a member of society to report crimes. In some circumstance, a private citizen can arrest someone in NSW if they are in the process of commiting a crime.

Dont be afraid to speak up and to act.

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There is a lot of “collateral damage” being done to some of the better Pet Stores in NSW. The actions of the many independant and unregulated stores we have had reported to us are clearly hurting the larger and perhaps better organised chain stores.

We were visited a Pets On Broadway store on the weekend. The animals were at the back of the store (not displayed loudly at the front), they had a play area and they were well spaced out. They had good food and the store was clean. They also had desexing options and other well documented processes. They talked with us about a cooling off period and during the holidays and XMAS they do not sell animals so that impulse buys cannot occur.

However, we also visited another chain store (we cannot name due to current reporting) in a major shopping centre who had kittens in a medium cage in a group of 11. A clearly sick kitten with  a sore eye. The shop looked like a jumble sale. The animals were right at the front to attract the most visitors and they were in hot glass boxes.

There was evidence of dioreeah on the cage paper and the smell of coxydia came from behind the glass thru the gaps. Though the kittens looked better than last week, we were not conviced this was going well for them. On asking the staff about condition they gave us good answers, but they also said that the kittens were sniffly and would go back to a “carer” for a few days till they got better.

Then why were they on display in the shop at all. In a major inner city shopping centre in the north shore. We urge people to continue reporting pet shop abuse.

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We have documented proof that a pet store in warringah mall is selling animals on Lay by.

Selling animals to people who cant afford vet bills puts them at risk of abandonment.

Animals on layby sold undesexed to vulnerable people who can’t afford vet bills, that’s illogical. These animals will have babies and all will likely be dumped as the owner cannot afford the costs. 

An animal incurs significant food and veterinary expenses during its lifetime. On average a cat costs around $500 per year in upkeep as well as additional veterinary costs. Vet Bills are in the hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.  

Selling animals on payment plans to financially struggling Australians is taking advantage of their vulnerability and setting the ground for abandonment and overpopulation.

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We have taken action against a major pet store chain in inner sydney. We cannot name the store as this case is going through tribunal.

Summary, this inner city store had 15 kittens crammed into one cage, some were underweight and some were sick. Whistleblowers called PetStoreAbuse and volunteers visited the store to document the situation.

Two kittens, one with a respiratory infection and severe conjunctivitis, another critically underweight and dehydrated were sold on successive days at this store to our volunteers.

At a time when legislation is being considered to regulate the sale of pets, this unscrupulous behaviour highlights the urgent need to ban the sale of mammals from pet shops.

A complaint call was made by a shopper who had spotted the sick kittens in a small glass cage with thirteen other animals at the store on Saturday. “You could see they had swollen eyes and were underweight”

Animal welfare workers who immediately visited the store were shocked to be easily sold the kittens, despite their serious illnesses and overall poor condition. “We wanted to see if the store would actually sell them, but were astounded at how easy they were to purchase. There were no questions, no care information provided - no one even asked to see ID. There was no acknowledgment that they were selling a living animal”.

“The only advice they offered was that if I was going to let my kitten outside, that I should get a male because then any ensuing babies ‘would not be my responsibility’.”

One of the kittens was sold unmircochipped which is a fineable offence the NSW Companion Animals Act.

“Although the staff seemed nonchalant about the kitten with the red and swollen eyes, the staff did acknowledge that the second kitten was underweight, especially as her ribs were clearly protruding so they gave me a discount to compensate for this, and told me that in such a ‘crowded cage’ it is normal for some animals to not get food”.

The two kittens were rushed to vets in inner Sydney where their appalling condition was documented and treatment provided. “As they were in a small cage with 13 other animals they will all be incubating the respiratory infection. The underweight and dehydrated kitten required subcutaneous fluids and is at this stage being syringe fed as she is still very weak.”

The fate of the other kittens greatly concerns welfare workers. “It’s well known that if a pet shop has to medicate sick kittens they will likely just have them euthanased to save money”.

The Animals (Regulation of Sale) Bill recently proposed by MP Clover Moore aims at preventing the suffering and inappropriate sale of animals sold from pet shops.

Importantly it also seeks to empower the consumer by making it compulsory to provide prospective buyers with information on the animal’s history, basic needs, and any additional or on-going costs involved in the daily care of the animal.

Currently most pet shop employees are taught to prey on impulsive shoppers and families with kids, who have responded emotionally to that ‘cute’ puppy or kitten, duping them into expensive and impractical purchases.

Reports of animals dying within days of purchase from a pet shop is not an uncommon story, nor are the unexpected costs of veterinary treatment for animals bought sick or suffering from the stress of being over handled and housed inappropriately in a busy shopping centre.

In a climate where consumers are demanding the ability to make more ethical purchases, these proposed legislative changes will recognise their rights to make informed decisions.

But the greatest cost is to the animal’s life. Most pet shops source the animals they sell from unscrupulous ‘backyard’ breeders. The animals start out their lives in appalling conditions to minimise the cost of their up-keep. In light of their questionable history, it is surprising that these animals, are making it home alive at all.
 

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It’s not rare . . it’s not even hidden. This happens every day in major shopping centres and markets around NSW.

In NSW, major Pet franchises are buying animals from Puppy Mills in Victoria. and shipping them to NSW.

You only see the animals in the front window. Ask yourself, where do they sleep? What do they eat? What happens when they get sick?

Ask the staff. It’s not uncommon for us to walk into a store and see sick animals. Similarly, what do you think happens when they dont sell?

We hear of major pet stores that give dogs one week to move before they are put to sleep. Do you think they are euthanased ethically? Do you think money is spent on care?

 It is about making profit, and sick or ugly animals dont sell and cost money. So what do you think happens to them?

If you work in a pet store, or are concerned about pet care in your local pet shelter, store or breeder, then we want to hear from you. Join here and help us make this publicly aware.

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You may see the animals looking happy in the front cages, but out the back of many pet shops . . . or in the crowded mass breeding kennels, it’s a different story. In some stores, you can find dead and dying animals in filthy cages.

Demand to know more.

The bottom line is that the pet industry is about making a profit, not about the animals caught in the middle. In addition to the abuse that goes on in pet stores, there are many unscrupulous practices that feed the entire pet trade. Fortunately, as customers, we have the power to effect real change by taking action when we witness abuse and being more mindful in our dealings with the industry.

Pet store abuse and neglect is, unfortunately, common. Animals are often treated as merchandise - overcrowded and ignored. Abuse in pet stores is also just one of many hardships the average pet store animal has to endure before they - hopefully - find a home. This makes unnecessary abuse in pet stores even more abominable.

If you’ve witnessed pet store neglect or abuse, you need to report it, we need your stories. Here, you can find information on pet store laws and how to report abuse to the proper authorities.

If you work in a pet store, shelter or breeder and have seen something you dont like. Tell us, we will do something about it. the public needs to know.

Visit the STOP ABUSE page. Blow the whistle

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