So today I checked the Pets4Home site for Christmas adverts and couldn’t find any to report… until I realised that the word Christmas had been replaced by 24 December! So any advert which used to say ‘puppy ready for Christmas’ now says ‘puppy ready 24 December’. How clever! The unscrupulous breeders are still there and Pets4Homes still doesn’t care. They just found a way round it, hoping the complaints go away!
Mark Singleton left the company last year and the new CEO is and I have re-addressed the petition to the new CEO Axel Lagercrantz.
In a press article earlier this year regarding criminals using his platform to scam people, he appears to have stated: 'We do not allow any criminals to use our website. We ask for licensing details of the breeders on our site and cross-check these with local councils’
Interesting statement which contradicts what it says on P4H’s website: ‘If you believe that a person may require a license, we are asking that enquiries are made directly to the local authority...’. Indeed when I pointed out to them that none of their advertising ‘breeders’ have a licence, they simply suggested that I speak to the council if I have any concerns!
Unfortunately the main issue remains. People are buying animals online instead of adopting and this year the demand went through the roof. The future is not looking good for pets and rescue centres alike.
On top of this, BBC3 had that ludicrous idea to produce a programme called ‘Will my puppies make me rich’! As if this type of irresponsible promotion was needed right now! It is causing outrage and rightly so. Please do sign this petition if you haven’t already:
www.change.org/p/bbc-stop-the-bbc-producing-new-program-will-my-puppies-make-me-rich
Thank you as well for supporting a ban on the sale of all animals in pet shops in England. Often bought on a whim, they are often treated as commodities, quickly becoming unwanted and discarded, dumped at rescues, sold online, passed from pillar to post. Please keep signing and sharing as the deadline is approaching.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/317648
If you have any suggestions of related campaigns to share, please do let me know.
Thank you!
Isabelle
@babbacampaign
https://www.facebook.com/BabbaCampaign
www.babba.org