Mall Giant Ends Sales of Fragile Animals After PETA Appeal

Irresponsible ‘Pocket Pet’ Peddlers No Longer Welcome at CBL & Associates Shopping Centers

For Immediate Release:
January 8, 2015

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Following discussions with PETA, CBL & Associates Properties has enacted a policy that prohibits companies such as Pocket Pets—which sells sugar gliders to customers who are typically unprepared to provide the care that these fragile animals need to survive—from ever again setting up pop-up kiosks in CBL’s shopping malls throughout the Southeast and Midwest.

“By banning Pocket Pets, CBL & Associates is making a huge difference for tiny sugar gliders, who suffer immensely when they’re purchased on a whim,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA’s message to shoppers is never to buy exotic animals as ‘pets’—and to stay away from the businesses that sell them.”

As PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—pointed out in letters to CBL and at the company’s 2014 annual meeting, CBL was the last remaining major shopping mall management group in the U.S. to still host Pocket Pets. These kiosks sell sugar gliders—tiny nocturnal tree-dwellers—to customers who purchase them on impulse. Very few of these customers have the knowledge required to meet these animals’ specialized needs or the dedication to commit to a lifetime of care, and the sugar gliders frequently end up confined to small cages, overly or roughly handled, fed improper diets, and forgotten when the novelty wears off.

This is not CBL’s first move in an animal-friendly direction: In 2005, CBL pledged not to host wild-animal exhibitors on its properties.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.