Nov 18, 1997

Nicolas Read

Petcetera stocks wild-caught animals; it said it wouldn't. Shame on the SPCA for its affiliation with this firm.

In theory it's a good idea. Petcetera, a new Vancouver pet supply store, has SPCA dogs and cats for adoption. The procedure and rates are the same as they are at the SPCA with the money going toward the SPCA and spaying or neutering the animal.

Bur there's a problem. Petcetera also sells exotic animals for profit, animals that shouldn't be kept in captivity because they can't be looked after properly.

The Greater Vancouver SPCA, while not endorsing the practice, says it has no problem with it. It has been assured, says executive director Doug Hooper, that the animal breeders are reputable and no animals will come to harm.

Petcetera told Hooper that all its animals are bred humanely in the Lower Mainland, and its staff are knowledgeable enough in exotic-animal care to ensure that none goes to an inappropriate home.

Yet when I visited the store last week, sales assistant Anthony Snell told a customer that the store's fat-tail geckos, red head agamas, a kind of lizard, and bull snakes, were caught in the wild, a process which can result in 100 animals dying for every on that survives.

Snell said the availability of captive-bred animals depends on suppliers. If they don't have what the store wants, they have go to the wild.

Another sales assistant told me she had no idea how to look after a black-tailed prairie dog, a hedgehog or a sugar glider, a type of flying squirrel; the three were bred somewhere in the U.S. She didn't know where or under what circumstances. She also said the animals were unfamiliar to the staff.

None of these animals should be for sale, says Rob Laidlaw, executive director of Zoocheck Canada, an organization that deals exclusively with the welfare of exotic animals in captivity. People don't know how to look after them.

That includes the Greater Vancouver SPCA. When I met Hooper and some of his staff, they didn't even know what some of the animals on the Petcetera's sales list were, let alone how to look after them.

Yet they continued to say there was no problem because the public hadn't complained.

That's because the public doesn't know enough to complain. It's up to the SPCA to tell them

A hundred years ago it was acceptable to beat a dog in public and work a horse to death on the street. Now it isn't.

But public opinion didn't change on its own; it had to be led by organizations like the SPCA. In the case of exotic animals, a trade that kills tens of thousands of animals each year, the Greater Vancouver SPCA has abrogated that responsibility. It isn't shaping public opinion; it's using it to defend something indefensible.

Petcetera promises to establish an animal-welfare fund that could be worth $1 million in a few years. Vice-president Dan Urbani says he hopes the SPCA will benefit from it.

Hooper promises there is no question of the SPCA compromising its integrity for money.

It is compromising its integrity, however. It's turning a blind eye to a brutal animal-trade and by doing so is encouraging the public to do the same.

It makes you wonder what SPCA stands for, the Society for the Perpetuation of Community Apathy?