Regulating Online Pet Sales
As part of my recent visit to Hope Rescue I attended a meeting organised by the Justice For Reggie campaign. It formed part of the Online Pet Sales Awareness week. Representatives of several of the online selling sites attended, plus other speakers and interested organisations and individuals.
There is a woeful lack of regulation covering the online sale of pets. This means a reliance on self regulation by the platforms which is plainly ineffective. However, I was there to listen and learn and I tried to stay positive. One of the major online selling sites’ representatives showed how they are monitoring and reviewing ads, both manually and using AI to scan for images of illegal practices such as ear cropping. As well as employing other measures to deter unscrupulous breeders.
Seeing the slides, hearing the talk it seemed like the issues are taken seriously and progress is happening. The reps were, after all at a meeting discussing the endemic problems in the industry they are major players in. But they should be taking it seriously.
However, Hope Rescue’s presentation preceded the industry rep’s. Hope’s gave specific examples of ads selling dogs with obvious deformities and in some cases, cropped ears, lifted from the online selling sites. Finding these ads is not at all difficult. In just a few minutes this morning I brought plenty of them up. It is shocking and sad for the dogs, the sheer scale of what is going on. For every ad depicting an obviously badly bred, or mutilated dog, represents a lot of suffering. This is the reality.
While the platform reps shared satistics, made statements and gave examples of what they are doing, it sounded good. There probably is good happening with the technological advances now available. And yet, ample evidence is easily found of a serious failing to prevent obviously poor breeding and welfare practices showing up on their platforms.
These are big commercial businesses and without legal compulsion, self regulation will never make a difference. The unscrupulous breeders will just move along to another platform, one which takes no action, nor makes any claims, to care.
The major online selling sites welcome regulation. There is available a framework to regulate online sales. The Pet Advertising Advisory Group (PAAG) has developed minimum standards which, if made mandatory would be a great step forward.
Minum Standards
I hope that work by the Justice For Reggie team and others will bring regulation of online pet sales into the spotlight. It is only by making legislators aware of the seriousness of the problems, the utter neglect of it in the current laws and what this is allowing to continue, will anything concrete happen. As right now, the situation is not working for the dogs.
