Pet trade… and no animals?

Keeping animals is time-consuming; they need a lot of space and attention and the profit margins for most species are hardly were they need to be for making the sale of animals anywhere near profitable. In addition, regulators have made it even more difficult, or even impossible, to sell animals in shops.

Welfare, rights, and humanisation

Over the last couple of decades, we have seen an increased interest in animal welfare and animal rights. An animal is more often seen as having an inherent value – a value as an individual regardless of what economic or practical benefits man may derive from it. At the same time, anthropomorphism, which is attributing human characteristics to animals, is also increasing and pets in particular are regarded as family members more than as a different species.

Both of these are basically immensely positive trends. People care more about animals and are willing to put more effort into making sure that animals have better lives. As pet lovers, we like that.

A side effect of the humanisation of animals is that people become more prepared to spend time and money on caring for their pet, and sales of accessories and premium foods can rise to new levels. If they don’t have the necessary time to care, pet owners are more often also prepared to pay others to be caretakers, much in the same way people may do for their children. Modern small animal veterinary medicine had also hardly risen to the present level if people had continued to look at pets as mere animals, in a relationship of ‘them and us’.

Adopt, don’t buy

With the humanisation trend came the realisation that these ‘little humans’, were treated as merchandise and sold for profits. For increasingly more people it is regarded as more politically acceptable to spend an adoption fee for an animal, rather than to buy the same animal, even if the amount of money involved may be very similar. The negative focus on selling animals over the counter has increased dramatically over the past years, and campaigns against animal sales in shops often receive massive support, even among pet industry customers.

While on the other hand, pet shops have started selling homeless pets for adoption fees, animal shelters have started selling dry goods to make necessary profits beside the adoptions.

Adoption is frequently an option for animals that typically end up homeless in large numbers, due to more or less uncontrolled mass reproduction. Mixed-breed dogs and cats, in particular, can be found in large numbers on the homeless market. Purebred dogs and cats and most other pets, such as rodents, birds, reptiles and fish, are also represented in the homelessness statistics, but only in comparatively very small numbers.

Now we see you, now we don’t

The obvious question is what the alternatives to sale and/or adoption of pets through shops are since people still want to own pets. Animal shelters clearly are not an alternative, since they are increasingly becoming full range shops themselves. Besides, apart from dogs and cats, the availability of animals for adoption is far too small to be an entrance point for newcomers to the hobby.

The alternative to over-the-counter sales therefore is, increasingly, online sale, sometimes by commercial enterprises, sometimes by hobbyist breeders and pseudo-traders in the periphery of the regulated and controlled trade. Strangely, in many countries, authorities seem more than willing to give indirect benefits to such sales channels over licensed and regulated shops.

By transferring the sale of live animals from physical shops to cyberspace, both the government and the public lose all practical options for monitoring the handling of these animals, although apparently people do not see the animals as merchandise anymore. It is still unclear how long it will take before they all realize that over-the-counter sales actually was much better, but that day is sure to come.

Where are we headed?

For generations, a visit to the pet shop was always a popular family pastime. Children love animals and they love to see animals, regardless of whether they keep animals Svein A. Fosså sfossa@online.no www.svein.no themselves or not. Little humans have flocked to pet shops to see little animals since time immemorial. For many those pet shop visits have been an entrance point to a passionate and often lifelong hobby.

Today, traditional pet retailers are losing ground to masses of alternative channels for all dry goods as well as for the live animals. Will the interest in pets continue to be high when online shopping and private sales end up as the only sources for live animals? Will there be enough expertise on animal keeping and husbandry available to give advice when pet products are mainly sold through channels which lack a personal experience with animals?

Pet industry cannot afford to give up on live animals

Without a supply of live animals from good quality sources, there will be very few pet owners, and there certainly will be even less who have the knowledge and interest to spend money on quality accessories and food. The pet industry itself must make that extra effort to continue the supply of animals, rather than to give in to short- sighted pressure from interest groups which fail to acknowledge what the alternative to a managed and regulated animal trade really is.

Pet retailers are a very visible sales point open to public scrutiny, and it is good that they are. We must take pride in what we are doing, while making sure that we remain at the top of our game. There will be no such a thing as a pet industry if there are no animals, and pushing the sale of animals under the counter is no sustainable alternative.