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Kijiji: Stop selling live animals
  1. Signatures
    1,025 out of 2,000
    Petitioning
    1. Founder and CEO, Kijiji International (+ 2 others)
      Petitioning
      close
      • Founder and CEO, Kijiji International (Alex Kazim)
      • General Manager, eBay Classifieds (Jacob Aqraou)
      • MP for Ajax-Pickering, Ontario (Mark Holland)
  2. Created By
    Cynthia Foo
    Brooklyn, NY
About this Petition Petition Letter Petition Updates

Kijiji is a subsidiary of eBay and is a hugely popular free classified ads site in Canada. Like eBay classifieds, Kijiji offers live animals for sale, without safeguards on the conditions of the animals being bred for sale. They try to mediate the danger to these animals and to people by putting in place arbitrary breed-specific restrictions which further complicate the problem, and do nothing to ensure that dogs and cats that are sold are safe from the often cruel and inhumane conditions in which they were bred. They say that they don't support irresponsible breeding, or animal cruelty, but how can that be true if they can't make any guarantees about how these animals were kept, or how they are cared for in their homes?

Selling animals online is a great way for puppy and kitten mills to get their mistreated, poorly bred, puppies and kittens sold.

There is a groundswell of support to ban the sale of animals on eBay classfieds. We need to ensure that Kijiji, a subsidiary of eBay, also stops selling live animals. In 2005, eBay backed off from selling live animals on its site after thousands of people strongly protested the move. Yet Kijiji, founded in the same year, has set up shop differently, continuing to sell pets online. Please sign this petition, and the one to press eBay classifieds to stop selling live animals: http://www.change.org/petitions/ebay-classifieds-stop-selling-live-animals.

Why People Are Signing
Recent Signatures

Please stop selling pets online

Dear Kijiji,

I am writing to urge you to reconsider selling live animals online. This is a practice that encourages poorly bred animals that could suffer from a variety of genetic disorders, and which encourages for-profit, unscrupulous animal mills to continue to breed dogs and cats in inhumane and abusive conditions. Meanwhile, thousands of unwanted dogs and cats are killed each year in shelters too full to accept them. According to statistics from the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, in 2008 alone, a staggering 41.5% of all pets admitted into shelters were euthanized. 61% of those euthanized were deemed "Physically or Behaviourally Unhealthy" by their intake shelter -- a description that fits many pets bred by puppy and kitten mills, and many so-called "backyard breeders" who may not have the skills to properly socialize their puppies. Kijiji does a disservice to pets and animal lovers everywhere by offering for sale pets that may originate from these sources.

When it comes to tracking commercial breeders, Canadian laws are even more lax than US ones, offering fewer ways to crack down on abusive, unsafe practices carried out in these mass breeding facilities. As Canada's most popular free classifieds site, your company carries the burden of facilitating access to these irresponsible breeders when it hosts advertising that cannot screen the puppy mills out of its listings, or ensure that these dogs are going to safe homes.

Because Kijiji cannot guarantee that a dog or cat that is sold through its classifieds is not mistreated, you should ban all for-profit pet sales immediately. If your company is committed to supporting the well-being of animals, it should ensure that all ads that are carried online are those by reputable shelters and adoption agencies only, who carry out adequate screening procedures.

Until Canadian laws are revised to adequately track the sales of commercial breeders and prevent animal abuse, Kijiji needs to take a stand not to support unsafe and unsound practices that continue to result in needless cruelty and death to mass numbers of animals, and to an ongoing problem of overpopulation in shelters.

[Your name]

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