Keeping wild animals as captives at all, let alone incarcerated for life in homes the size of TV sets, should, at the very least, offer them defensible benefits if it is to be reasonably justifiable. This would not include the uneducated and fallacious, though popular, claims that “I’m protecting it from starvation and predation in nature” or “I’m contributing to conservation”. One would need to show scientifically not only that each animal prefers captivity over life in nature but also that every stage of the process leading to it adheres to strong ethical practices, ensuring good welfare from start to finish. Good luck finding that!
Breaking the rules of ethics and decency
The objective evidence and opinions demonstrated through thousands of peer-reviewed scientific reports firmly show that animal welfare principles and morality, rules of sustainability and obligations to operational responsibility are pretty much all violated as a matter of form by the exotic pet sector. The exotic pet business has been variously summarised in scientific literature and governmental documents as a global threat to animal welfare, one of the worst examples of animal abuse, a major threat to species conservation and ecological stability, a Trojan horse of zoonotic disease and a disproportionate threat to public health.
The exotic pet business has been variously summarised in scientific literature and governmental documents as a global threat to animal welfare
When asked about the ethical standards and commitments to exotic pet trading and keeping, one can easily suggest that even some would be nice; granted, there isn’t really a lot of room in all that for ethical conduct. The only honest defence for exotic pet keeping is to simply admit that some people enjoy it.
Making a killing
Understandably, animal welfare often takes centre stage because a 70 percent death rate in just six weeks of captivity is the industry standard in the exotic pet wholesale environment (Ashley et al., 2014). This means premature mortalities in trading and keeping practices approach – and, for the pet fish sector in particular, almost match – the mortality rate of the food industry, which, of course, aims to kill every animal in its remit. Put another way, the exotic pet industry even fails abhorrently in one of the most basic of its tasks: keeping an animal alive long enough to sell it! Imagine the outrage if most puppies died before sale, and about a quarter of dogs survived one year in the home!
Unacceptable and we know it
Once in the home, would most people keep a puppy in a vivarium for its entire life? Probably not. And if one did, the perpetrator’s own incarceration may await. So why then should the imprisonment of an iguana – complete with its far stronger inherited traits for a full life in the expanse and complexity of nature – be tolerated as fair dealings for caged life in a reptile fancier’s home? A “lounge lizard” of sorts, but one to be lamented.
Government hypocrisy
This hypocrisy goes all the way to the UK government in that, for example, Defra has stated that they would oppose British wildlife, whatever its conservation status, being traded and shipped abroad for the pet industry, yet they openly allow the importation of other countries’ biodiversity despite the widely documented massive animal welfare, ecological and public health costs inherent to the business. Also, contravening all other conditions for kept animals, Defra allows for snakes to be deprived of the ability to fully stretch their bodies in pet shops and permits 100 percent of ornamental fish in commerce to die in just three weeks without even the need to write down such awful attrition. In other words, mortality from stress and disease in these animals is so poor that Defra accepts fish sellers cannot even keep track of it.
Mortality from stress and disease in these animals is so poor that Defra accepts fish sellers cannot even keep track of it
Vetting the issues
Of course, one might not look to civil servants for moral guidance on animal matters. However, veterinarians can rightly be considered the everyday bastions of at least animal welfare and, perhaps, ethics. So, it is worrying and, perhaps, surprising that a small minority of vets are deeply embedded in the exotic pet industry, not as objective clinicians and custodians of welfare who treat whatever arrives at their surgeries but as traders and propagandists of an industry that is an affront to the veterinary profession and ethical decency in general (Warwick et al., 2013).
A small minority of vets are deeply embedded in the exotic pet industry, not as objective clinicians and custodians of welfare who treat whatever arrives at their surgeries but as traders and propagandists
Conclusions
When industries assume the role of commodifying wild animals for human benefit, they also inherit the responsibility for safeguarding their life and welfare. Trading and keeping exotic animals as pets systematically snubs pretty much all aspects of nature and morality and exposes some ethically osteoporotic backbones among those who support this archaic and destructive business.
When industries assume the role of commodifying wild animals for human benefit, they also inherit the responsibility for safeguarding their life and welfare
There must be no let-up in the shining of penetrating and cleansing light on an industry that will assuredly come to pass as societal morality increases; all those involved will be judged for their role in what is a massive, global biocide based on the trivial pleasures of incarcerating wild animals for nothing more than personal pettiness.
