When sales of Petco stock opened today, PETA was one of the first buyers, snatching up enough of it to be able to attend annual meetings again, submit shareholder resolutions, and speak directly to Petco executives to urge the company to stop selling live animals, including betta fish, whom customers have found dead in plastic cups right on store shelves. PETA previously owned stock in Petco the last time the company was public and pushed it to end live-animal sales.
“PETA members have protested Petco’s live-animal sales online and in the streets, and now we’re heading back to the boardroom,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Petco needs to stop treating vulnerable fish and other living beings as disposable merchandise, as many end up dying early and badly.”
A PETA video exposé revealed that listless, sick, and dead bettas were found floating in cramped, barren plastic containers with low water levels at Petco stores across the country. A PETA Asia investigation into Thailand’s betta fish industry, including two facilities that supply fish to Petco, revealed that bettas were found gasping for air on waterless trays as workers roughly sorted them for shipping. Some, who had likely suffocated, were seen rotting on the floor, and others were found floating motionless in tanks of filthy water. Bettas are typically packed without food and left to starve for days during international transport.
PETA—whose motto is “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
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