PetsMart/PetCo Worries (not Pit Bull specific)

[RealPitBull]

I'm posting this here because I know many of us buy products from PetCo and PetsMart. I understand that this info came from PETA, HOWEVER, I still think it warrants, at the very least, some consideration. It rings of truth, to me, despite who the messenger is. Do what you wish with this info:

----- Original Message -----
From: New York Bird Club bestbirdclub@ .com
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 1:21 PM
Subject: Undercover Investigation Uncovers Horrors at PetSmart & Petco Supplier's Breeding Mill

[If any of the below links are too long to click on, copy and paste the entire link into your browser window]

To view the thread go to:
www.websitet oolbox.com/ tool/post/ luciedove/ vpost?id= 3001293
[there is an online video]

Subject: Undercover Investigation Uncovers Horrors at PetSmart & PETCO Supplier's Breeding Mill

Click here: Take Action:
. peta.org/ campaign/ petsmart_ investigation? c=petsmggl& qp_source= petsmggl0208& gclid=CJCMlNO7% 5fpUCFQIWFQod8lG GEg

Undercover Investigation Uncovers Horrors at PetSmart and PETCO Supplier's Breeding MillVideo footage obtained in a new PETA undercover investigation reveals horrific nightmare conditions for small animals and birds bred and brokered by a major supplier to PetSmart.

Investigation Reveals Horrors at Major Supplier to PetSmart and PETCOOther viewing options
What PetSmart's Own Employees Are Saying

In addition to the ever-present misery caused by extremely crowded cages, filthy conditions, a lack of basic enrichment, an often inadequate food and water supply, and excessive noise, PETA's investigation of a massive breeding mill and one of PetSmart's main animal suppliers, Rainbow World Exotics in Hamilton, Texas, also revealed that live animals were thrown into the trash, were deprived of desperately needed veterinary care, were suffering and dying alone in their cages, and were cannibalizing each other; that rabbits underwent crude neuter surgeries at the hands of a layperson in a filthy, dark room; and more. Click here to read the details:
. peta.org/ campaign/ petsmart_ investigation/ explanation

See where PetSmart's animal victims are bred. View the video footage [http://www.websitet oolbox.com/ tool/post/ luciedove/ vpost?id= 3001293] and photos [http://www.petsmart cruelty.com/ photo_gallery. asp] taken by PETA's undercover investigator.

Unsuspecting PetSmart customers have reported buying unsocialized, sick, and injured animals, including guinea pigs with eye and upper respiratory infections, hamsters with deadly diseases, sick and dying betta fish, and suffering birds. As PETA's investigator documented at this breeding mill, overcrowding, lack of veterinary care, and lack of socialization are the norm, not the exception, for the tens of thousands of animals at Rainbow. Click here to read more about what the investigator found:
. peta.org/ archives/ Log_Notes. pdf

PetSmart's trade in live animals supports this mass-breeding industry that is just as cruel as-and even less regulated than-the puppy mill industry. It results in abysmal treatment of tiny, vulnerable beings, and it ultimately leads to their overpopulation, homelessness, neglect, and suffering.

Take action: Complete the form below to urge PetSmart to cut ties with Rainbow World Exotics and to stop selling all live animals:
. peta.org/ campaign/ petsmart_ investigation? c=petsmggl& qp_source= petsmggl0208& gclid=CJCMlNO7% 5fpUCFQIWFQod8lG GEg

What PetSmart's Own Employees Are Saying:
www.petsmart cruelty.com/ investigation_ what_petsmart_ knows.asp

New York Bird Club, P.O. Box 286231, New York, NY 10128.
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[valliesong]

I fully believe it, despite my mistrust of PETA. I only wish the source was someone else so that it would be seen as legitimate. This is based on my personal experience with puppy mills and knowledge of cruelty laws as they apply even more loosely to small animals than they do to dogs. Here is another article:

www.guineapighome.com/Pet_Trade/p2_articleid/3

Social Cause Marketing
By Nikki, Orange County Cavy Haven
Updated: August 22, 2006


Public opinion on PetsMart and PetCo’s “charities” seems to swing towards regarding these programs as a “step in the right direction.” However, in the context of ending the abuse of animals and solving the homeless pet population, the involvement of PetCo and PetsMart with animal rescues represents a destructive force – because these practices help to entrench an industry whose foundation rests on the suffering of animals. To put it simply, PetCo and PetsMart purchase their animals from pet mills where animals suffer from overcrowding, filthy conditions, disease, injury, inadequate or inappropriate food and water, complete absence of medical care, overbreeding to the point of death, and inhumane methods of euthanasia (such as putting live sick animals in freezers or in garbage bags filled with CO2, which are then tossed into the trash). PETA investigated and documented the terrible conditions at many of PetCo’s mills.

Since the 1980s, corporations have been heavily investing in what is called “Social Cause Marketing,” or “Venture Philanthropy.” This is a marketing technique that links a corporation to a public charity so that the corporation can improve its public image and extend its product recognition, thus generating more profit. Here is a basic primer in Social Cause Marketing :

What is Social Cause Marketing?

Note that the article says “Traditionally, the principal business goal of a cause-related marketing program has been to impact a company’s bottom line through increased sales.” Then the article goes on to enumerate other benefits that help a corporation enhance its reputation, increase its advertising, and keep customers.

The idea of Social Cause Marketing is not inherently more harmful than any other marketing ploy, in that they all seek to shape their product’s image in manipulative ways so that people will buy it. That is the nature of advertising. “Manipulative” in this sense means that advertisers seeks out peoples’ fears and desires (usually with the aid of R & D specialists who study the culture) in order to package their product as an answer to what the target audience wants and needs. For example, many advertisements capitalize on modern society’s fixation on romantic coupling; if you use a certain deodorant, whiten your teeth, or enroll in a certain weight loss program, you are more likely to find a romantic partner. This is why the advertisements often show affectionate couples at the end of the ad; the idea is that use of the product is now linked to romantic happiness.

Social Cause Marketing, instead of using the ideal of romantic happiness, utilizes the desire to contribute to society in a meaningful way to market its product and improve its image. This is why Social Cause Marketing is such a breakthrough for corporate business; it improves the status of the company in the process of attaching the product to a social desire. In many instances, charities will receive great benefit from partnering with corporations. Although the corporation may be using its “charitable” side to cover up unethical, dangerous, deceptive practices (for example, cigarette companies funding “stop smoking” campaigns), many could argue that the benefits received by the charity outweigh the harmful things that corporations in a capitalist economy might do.

This is not so, however, when Social Cause Marketing is used to distract the public from human rights violations or animal cruelty. When employed by a corporation whose practices violate human rights or injure animals, Social Cause Marketing 1) makes the partnering charity an accomplice to the corporation’s harmful behavior; 2) make the public complicit as well; and 3) by contributing to the corporation’s profits, it enables the company to do even more harm as it expands it’s business; and 4) it places the company further from culpability for its practices, because it is far more difficult to make accusations against a corporation that is perceived by the public as a friend to charities.

Marketing Suffering

Studies have shown that Social Cause Marketing creates windfall profits and vastly improved esteem for corporations that employ this tactic. PetsMart has enjoyed a period of intense expansion, in some part due to the benefits it has received by enjoining animal rescues to participate in its “charities.” Not only does PetsMart offer grants to animal rescues, it offers space for animal rescues to carry out adoptions and meet the public. These “adoption days” enable rescues to gain more recognition, raise more funds, and adopt out more animals. They help improve PetsMart promote its public image as a charitable foundation, rather than a for-profit business. Here is PetsMart boasting about how much they contribute to animal welfare:

www.petsmartcharities.org/

PetCo has suddenly realized that PetsMart’s sales skyrocketed when it began engaging in Social Cause Marketing by ‘partnering’ with animal rescues. The increased foot traffic to the store on adoption days is in itself enough to give a sizeable boost to PetsMart’s sales. And although PetCo had allowed “adoption days” for years and also given many grants to animal rescues, its programs had nowhere near the sophistication of PetsMart’s “charities.” In an effort to catch up, PetCo partnered with PetFinder, a national adoption database, and last year released a statement that PetCo would encourage the public to “think adoption first” when seeking a pet. PetFinder in return promoted PetCo’s new slogan to rescuers, encouraging them to participate in PetCo’s “adoption days.”

Every weekend, rescues set up tables and playpens in PetCos and PetsMarts across the nation. They advertise the “adoption days” on their website and in local newspapers, and many rescues draw quite a crowd. The public, of course, is thrilled to be able to visit puppies and kittens (animals that PetCo and PetsMart do not sell) and shop for their own pets at the same time. Many people who go to visit the rescuers meander into the store and wind up purchasing novelty items from the numerous shelves packed with colorful toys, dishes, pet beds, pet clothes, and just about everything one might want to pamper a pet.

Public opinion on PetsMart and PetCo’s “charities” seems to swing towards regarding these programs as a “step in the right direction.” However, in the context of ending the abuse of animals and solving the homeless pet population, the involvement of PetCo and PetsMart with animal rescues represents a destructive force – because these practices help to entrench an industry whose foundation rests on the suffering of animals.

To put it simply, PetCo and PetsMart purchase their animals from pet mills where animals suffer from overcrowding, filthy conditions, disease, injury, inadequate or inappropriate food and water, complete absence of medical care, overbreeding to the point of death, and inhumane methods of euthanasia (such as putting live sick animals in freezers or in garbage bags filled with CO2, which are then tossed into the trash). PETA has investigated and documented the terrible conditions at many of PetCo’s mills. Here is a link to the latest story: www.peta.org/feat/napd/

Two workers in a southern California pet mill reported the following horrors at a rescuer’s conference:

• Overcrowding to the point of animals living on top of each other

• Babies coated in feces only minutes after being born

• Sick, injured and dying animals left to suffer in the general population

• Dead animals decomposing in cages with live animals

• Drip water systems that flood cages and kill dozens of animals

• Animals running loose on the floors

• Rampant skin conditions among the animals

• Crude gas chambers used for euthanasia in which animals suffer for hours

• Animals without any food eating other animals

This facility was investigated by the USDA (a pet mill has to be VERY bad to get an APHIS investigation) and allowed to continue to operate after “cleaning up” the premises. USDA standards for the wholesale pet industry are notoriously low and the laws are not usually enforced. Hundreds of “inspected” pet mills are still operating in the U.S.

This was not just an isolated incident. The pet mill system, where animals are treated as stock and warehoused, transported, distributed and put on sale floors like merchandise, is fundamentally based on the suffering of animals. There are, and can not be, any “good” pet mills, any more than there can be good sweatshops or good concentration camps. And that’s what these mills are. Death camps for animals.

How the Cycle of Suffering Works

The fact is, PetCo and PetSmart contribute to animal suffering by purchasing animals from pet mills. Every time they sell an animal, the following process happens:

1. The absence of the animal is marked as a lack of inventory;

2. The retail store places an order to the distributor for another animal to fill its place;

3. The distributor fills the order, thus leaving a vacancy at the warehouse;

4. The absence of the animal at the warehouse is marked as a lack of inventory;

5. The distributor places an order to the manufacturer for another animal to fill its place

6. Another animal is bred to meet the demands of the distributor and retail store;

7. Another animal enters the pet mill, and must fight for its life by navigating the filth, overcrowding, disease, malnutrition, and stress before it is finally shipped to the retail pet dealer – IF THE ANIMAL SURVIVES.

A good deal of the PetCo and PetsMart animals arrive sick, and employees are not skilled in caring for them. The veterinarians used by PetCo and PetsMart are not often skilled in exotics medicine, and therefore the majority of the sick animals in these stores will die, often alone in back rooms where they have been forgotten. Some of the sick animals will be sold, either knowingly or unknowingly, to an unsuspecting public that is uneducated on their care. Often these sick animals die soon after purchase. So the abuse and neglect of the pet mill stretches the suffering far beyond the warehouse facility itself.

The more money PetCo and PetsMart makes from its Social Cause Marketing, the more stores they can open, the more animals they will purchase, and the more pet mills will spring up. They undeniably, irrevocably contribute to the suffering of animals by keeping the pet mills running.

The more esteem PetCo and PetsMart receive from their Social Cause Marketing, the more difficult it becomes for animal welfare advocates to make accusations about the horrible practices in the pet mills and the neglect that often happens in the stores themselves.

The more rescues participate in PetCo and PetsMart “charities,” the more entrenched these corporations become in the cycle of pet mill suffering.

The participation of rescues in the Social Cause Marketing programs of PetCo and PetSmart results in nothing less than weakening of the cause of animal welfare. Pragmatically speaking, you cannot make progress by contributing to the problem you are trying to solve. No matter how hard you try, you will never put out the fire if you are throwing more matches in.

Many rescuers may feel that participating in PetCo and PetSmart “charities” is justified because PetCo and PetsMart do not normally sell dogs and cats. They view the sacrifice of thousands of guinea pigs, chinchillas, rabbits, rats, mice, hamsters, birds, and reptiles as a small price to pay for increasing dog and cat adoptions. However, make no mistake about it, when you sacrifice one animal, you compromise all others because you contribute to a hierarchy of animals that often is at the root of institutionalized forms of abuse.

As long as rescuers participate in PetCo and PetsMart’s Social Cause Marketing program while quietly accepting the practice of purchasing animals from pet mills, they are accomplices in the suffering caused by the pet mills. Many rescuers will take offense to this, but none have yet attempted to refute the facts.

These mills will continue to operate until enough opposition is raised to the process of pet milling for retail sale. This has become a race against the clock as PetCo and PetsMart shore up their corporations with the benefits received from their Social Marketing Programs. Soon, this process will become irreversible and these corporations will become entwined with a charitable purpose in the public mind for good. Those who question the charitable purpose will be cast aside, and the pet mills will roll on quietly, cranking out their millions of suffering, miserable creatures to face an uncertain fate.

Please don’t accept the false image that PetCo and PetsMart are promoting of themselves as charitable institutions that help animals.

Please don’t avert your eyes from the suffering because participating in these programs serves an immediate end.

Please don’t help PetCo and PetsMart institutionalize the suffering of animals

Stand up today and say, “I refuse to enable the suffering of animals with my silent agreement.” Speak up while you can still be heard.

Discuss this article in the Forum!

[RealPitBull]

Good article, thanks for posting.

[tank]

I used to work at petco a few years ago. And while it is true that the places that they get the animals from are less than humane, what a lot of people don't realize is that the main problem is the public's demand for animals like this.

When a sick animal came into the store I worked at, I was in charge of getting them the help they needed. We called the vet, brought them there and medicated them for as long as they needed it to be sold or adopted out. All of this was done on the corporate office's dime. The employees in that store were all dedicated to animals and put in extra hours just checking up on the animals just to make sure they were all cared for properly. Most of these animals got more care in the few weeks they were in that store than they will in their whole lifetime.

A lot of the animals that came in were too young to be separated from their mother, yes. But I can tell you from experience that 98% of people coming in for a hamster or guinea pig or other small animal only wanted the smallest, "cutest" animal for the cheapest price. People who buy pets form pet stores are usually not animal lovers. Most of these "companion animals" get returned because the person who bought it had no idea about the care that goes into "owning a pet."

So, yes, I agree with what this is saying about the places where these stores get their animals from. But to blame it on JUST the company that buys them is wrong. The main problem here is the uneducated consumer that would rather buy from a pet store than adopt out an animal that truly needs them. If people smartened up and stopped buying from pet stores, the stores wouldn't carry companion animals at all, problem solved.

If I seem a bit defensive it is because I have a very good reason. I have been physically attacked by "PETA" people in that store I worked in a few times. I had one girl cause a whole scene in the store about a guinea pig that had yellow water, when she didn't realize that the reason the water was yellow because it had vitamins in it because vitamin C is very important for a GP to have. Then after that she followed me outside and tried to start a fist fight with me. So, yeah, I am defensive about this whole PETA thing reporting about pet stores.

[Courtney]

You're totally right about that tank. The company will supply what the consumers demand. Most corporations are not bound by ethics, and I don't see this changing anytime soon. They care about the bottom line, and that's it. If consumers alter their demands, the corporations will have no choice but to change. But until then, all we can do is not support these corporations, try to change the laws that govern them, and spread the word.