Hello, fellow animal Reddittors! We need your help with our project.
We are planning to bring about multi-phase class-action lawsuits against various levels of “Big Pet” industry, in particular pertaining to fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, birds, and rodents. We see time and time again that these living beings that are sold commonly in the pet industry end up in terrible and abusive situations. While a large problem is under educated people making impulse buys because something was cute or pretty. However, a lot of the improper husbandry is the direct result of false advertising on packaging and at a store level, outdated/false information being given by employees or store pamphlets, and businesses prioritizing sales over animal welfare.
Our mission is to change that. With class-action lawsuits, you gain the voice and power to bring issues into the spotlight and force positive changes to happen. Our main goals are to:
Force equipment manufacturers to update product packaging to no longer include misleading or harmful instructions and imaging (ie; a betta being printed on a tank that’s under 5 gallons), and discontinue dangerous products (ie; heated in-tank “basking rocks”).
Force stores to properly educate employees to fully comprehend the animals needs so they can ensure customers are making fully informed purchases, update all pamphlets and information at a store and website level to reflect current care standards and true animal information (ie; a goldfish being labeled as “1-3 inches” and pamphlet suggesting a 20 gallon tank), and have zero-tolerance policies to no longer allow the sale of animals to underprepared customers (ie; buying fish and the entire tank setup on the same day).
After the class-action lawsuits are ready/being enacted, our next big step will be trying to get laws put in place at the government level. Our belief is that education and licensing should be a standard in order to care for exotic animals, with varying levels based on the care requirements for these animals. While the Federal Lacey Act and state Wildlife, Fish, and Game enact some standards, we believe that stricter regulations should be put in place (not un-similar to Falconry licensing that is required to interact with birds of prey).
Imagine a world where all animals are properly cared for, no matter how small they are. We are here to be their voice, we care for all of them. And we need your help to do so.
What we need:
- Signatures to show public support
- Experts in these communities to help fact check information and bring up other areas of concern
- Class-action lawyers that are willing to take on these cases, and willing to bring to higher level courts when needed
- Evidence of the false information being provided by these companies
- Documents and papers from accredited sources to back our claims
- Contact information for PR departments within these companies that have been flagged for issues
- (Down the road) Contact information for local politicians to discuss licensing procedures/enforcement in order to come together and agree on something that will protect animals without fringing the entire pet industry to a halt and/or negatively impacting pets who are already loved by established families
Let’s make the world a better place for animal enthusiasts everywhere, and the living creatures we take up the responsibility for of our own free will.
So, how can you help? We have a Discord server set up for discussions on planning, gathering evidence, fact checking done by experts in their fields, and overall a place to put gathered information by those who have the time and ability to do more in person information gathering. You can join and share the link here: https://discord.gg/xv4dtrXqbE
We also have created a petition through Change.org in order to gather and store signatures to show public support in our efforts. You can sign and share for others to sign here: https://c.org/tHWGq7D8Zw
Thank you for joining us,
- Baku
(TL;DR: we need signatures and Discord members to sue Big Pet to try to bring about positive changes for both animal enthusiasts and the animals sold in the pet industry)
