The Morality of Animal Sales

When I was a kid, my hyperfixation was on having an exotic pet. I had forgotten about my exotic animal fascination until recently. After seeing a video of someone owning a fennec fox online, I began to research how I could possibly get my own, the legality of it, and the prices on the market. While researching, I stumbled upon the first site listed on Google, titled “Exotic Animals for Sale.” 

My first thought was, “I hit the jackpot!” until I looked closer at the listings: 

“3 years old and intact, she is not tame and not a pet. Perfect for a future breeding project or exhibit,” read a listing for a groundhog. 

A wild groundhog. It would be one thing if this was a rescue, but it was not. The website connected to a listing with little information but an About page saying it’s been supplying zoos and educational facilities for over two decades. No reviews, no pictures of animals or its facilities. It is, however, a “trusted seller” on the exotic seller’s site. It seems to me that this animal shouldn’t be sold on this site for $600; it should be in the wild, living its own life.

Another listing is for a Male Java Monkey; the description said the following:

“2 yr old male Java. Would be better as a breeder. Or a very experienced home. He will bite. WILLING TO TRADE FOR???” 

Oh. So we’re trading animals like Pokemon now and breeding them like cattle. That’s ethical. 

By the time I reached the second page, I was holding back tears because I had run across my absolute favorite animal, the ring-tailed lemur. Native to only Madagascar, they are endangered and not friendly to humans, meaning the animals for sale on these types of sites are probably hunted, caught, and bred for the exotic animal pet trade.

Now, you probably think most people would take care of these animals and give them a good life, but the truth is they’d have a better life out in the wild. Being petted and prodded is not how they were meant to live. At the end of the day, they are not pets, they are wild animals.  

Though not all of the listings were 100% unethical (some were rescues and other actual pets for sale), the majority of these are a part of the problem

The issue of exotic pets goes under the umbrella of animal abuse for profit, which is a large worldwide problem split into smaller, more specific topics like the exotic animal trade, factory farming, animal testing, breeding mills, and dog/animal fighting. All of these are continuously happening because economically, they are being encouraged, like being valuable in profit. The U.S. does have the Lacey Act, which requires all exotic animals and plant species to be “declared,” meaning it has to be claimed to be legally allowed into the U.S. Permits are also required by law. But with every law, there are still loopholes to these regulations, and animals are still brought over borders illegally. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. 

Please visit OMscroll.com to read the full article.

“At the core of illegal wildlife trafficking is a rapidly expanding demand for a variety of products around the world: bushmeat; ingredients for traditional Eastern medicine; exotic pets; jewelry, trinkets, and accessories such as chess sets; furs for uses ranging from coats to traditional costumes; and trophies….According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, unreported and unregulated fisheries trade alone are estimated to be between $4.2 billion and $9.5 billion per year. Illicit wildlife trafficking is estimated to be between $7.8 billion and $10 billion per year, and illegal timber trade is estimated as much as $7 billion per year.” 

(Wildlife Trafficking: Why Battling This Illicit Trade Is Crucial, 2025)

Animal Testing:

The fact is that animal testing is unethical; you wouldn’t feed your pet concealer, would you? Would you wipe untested chemicals all over your skin? Would you live in a cage 24/7 willingly?

These animals, often dogs and cats, are harmed daily, being prodded and rubbed with different non-FDA-approved chemicals and mixtures. Believe it or not, animals have different sensitivities than humans, so these products aren’t even being properly tested on the right subjects. Animal testing still goes on today. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 put in place minimal restrictions and doesn’t require companies to keep the animals in suitable living standards. Most likely, since this is fully legal, you’re using products from companies that use animal testing. If you don’t want to be a part of that, find cruelty-free companies.

Breeding Mills:

Many money-hungry people use breeding two animals as a cash-grab side hustle. Often, they have their female dog give birth, and then immediately when their next heat comes, they will trap the male and female in a space to force them to mate. All to get a quick paycheck. The animals are usually not even properly fed or taken care of. Not only are these creatures overworked and abused, but often with more and more breeding, these animals, most commonly dogs, get overbred. A common side effect of overbreeding in dogs is an increase in health issues and often changes in their DNA that can make breeds have intensified behavioral issues. “Dogs are monoestrous breeders meaning that they have one breeding cycle per year, however, this can vary between breeds. If a particular bloodline is continuously bred, this amplifies both the good and bad attributes of the breed.” (Animal Emergency Service “Overbreeding,” 2023).

When an animal has multiple litters in a year, the bacteria can cause infections, parasites, and several other hygiene risks. At the end of the day, instead of getting a dog that came from an unethical puppy mill, get a rescue dog that needs a home way more urgently than these popular one-stop shops.

Animal Fighting:

Animal fighting is illegal in every state, including the District of Columbia. Kansas and many other states are adding more legislative measures to crack down on illegal animal fighting. Most recently, Kentucky passed bills against dogfighting. Though it is illegal, there are still incidents popping up everywhere in the U.S. 

Earlier this year, on January 25th, a man in Maryland was sentenced for running a dog fighting ring with a Pentagon official. The men operated it under the ruse of a kennel, and allegedly, he used his own home to train and breed fighting dogs. The conditions the dogs were found in were appalling, and the betting sponsorships of the dogs only ended when the dog either died or someone forfeited. At the end of the whole ordeal, more than 13,900 people signed a petition calling for the maximum sentencing of both men. 

The sad truth is that often the people running these types of businesses are either never caught or sentenced to a minimum amount of years. 

Factory Farming: 

Factory farming is “a system of rearing livestock using intensive methods, by which poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled conditions.” Generally just starting to be recognized as a form of animal abuse, factory farming is an ongoing way to slaughter and produce animal meats around the world. Currently, only one place in the U.S. has banned such farming strategies, which is Berkeley, California. This ban is one small step for humans and one giant step for animal kind. According to the U.S. Food & Water Watch’s new map on factory farming, “the U.S. is home to more factory-farmed animals (1.7 billion) producing more waste (941 billion pounds annually, twice our human waste) than ever before.” Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me; the more the demand, the more is produced; the higher the inflation, the more is needed to be sold. 

At the core of factory farming is the overall goal of earning money, which to me is counterproductive because after all of that time and energy wasted slaughtering animals and participating in the miscalculated supply and demand, in the end, they are just losing money by overproducing. 

So it’s obvious that these recurring events are unethical because of the number of animals injured, endangering already decreasing populations of different species, and the negative impact on the ecosystem. But what can we as a society do?

1. Don’t buy exotic animals from random sellers or breeders; adopt from rescues
2. Instead of buying products from companies that use animal testing, find brands that don’t. To find out which companies use animal testing (updated 2024): https://crueltyfree.peta.org/companies-do-test/
3. Don’t participate in gambling rings with animal fighting.
4. Buy food from widely known free-range animal farms instead of run of the mill over production factory farming.