“As long as we have people contributing to the feral and the domestic population in Richmond, it’s going to be a chronic problem in Richmond" said the Richmond SPCA's Kim Marosevich .

Two of the biggest sellers of sexually intact rabbits in BC are the BC SPCA and its business partner, Petcetera. Abandoned sterilized rabbits cannot become a problem. It is selling sexually intact rabbits that has caused this problem, not abandonment. Abandonment is another problem, and it stretches credulity to believe the SPCA is not aware of the distinction.

The SPCA's partnership with the animal-selling Petcetera can't be animal welfare as the SPCA would have the public believe, because it cannot be animal welfare to keep any animal in a cage and Petceteras have hundreds of caged animals for sale every day. Animals in cages is part of the pet trade which also sells the cages. In fact, the animals are often no more than loss-leaders with the real money made in the accessories.

An animal in a cage is not a pet - it's a prisoner. It is cruel to the animal to keep it caged, no matter how nice the cage is (and the SPCA's and Petcetera's little sales cages are not large enough to be called "nice" even if there were such a thing as a "nice" cage).

Petcetera gives free retail space in its stores to the SPCA and in exchange the SPCA allows Petcetera to link the two names. Marketing doesn't get more powerful than that. The marketing message is it can't it be wrong to keep animals in cages because the premier animal welfare organization in BC clearly approves.

In a series of articles in 1997 and 1998, the Vancouver Sun's Nicholas Read told how the SPCA cut a million-dollar deal with Petcetera.

Read wrote, "Is it right that an organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to animals will benefit from an association with a company whose business practices perpetuate inhumane attitudes and practices? ....Yet here is the SPCA giving its tacit approval to disseminating even more of these animals through its association with Petcetera." http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/noframes/read/8451
After this the partnership got closer, with Petcetera's and the SPCA's names on the SPCA's Petcetera-financed transport vans.