Zoo Med Earns PETA ‘Pants on Fire’ Award

For Immediate Release:
January 28, 2021

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” awards are on their way from PETA to 10 companies that are guilty of humane washing—that is, trying to deceive customers about their use and abuse of animals—and Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc., is among them.

The California-based reptile supply company, which markets so-called all-inclusive reptile care kits, earned the dishonor for falsely telling customers that snakes can be held in small, almost barren tanks that are only half the length of their bodies, even though experts agree that snakes need enclosures longer than their bodies in which they can engage in natural behavior, including stretching out, burrowing, and exploring.

“PETA won’t stand by and let Zoo Med claim that a 20-inch fish tank is suitable for a 3-foot snake,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Seventy-five percent of reptiles purchased as ‘pets’ die within one year in the home, and it’s because shoppers have no idea that these animals have highly specialized needs that can’t be met in a tank half their size.”

Other recipients of the “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” awards include Eli Lilly, which boasts of its “commitment to responsible animal research” while refusing to ban a near-drowning test on mice and rats, and Canada Goose, which claims to care about animals while selling fur from coyotes, who can endure excruciating pain in steel traps, and down feathers from birds who are violently killed.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.