Petco Makes PETA’s ‘Naughty’ List for Betta Fish Deaths
For Immediate Release:
December 17, 2020
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
With Christmas just around the corner, PETA is releasing its “naughty” list of 11 top animal-harming companies, checking it twice, and urging the Scrooges to change their ways—and Petco, where customers have found dead betta fish floating in plastic cups right on store shelves, easily secured a spot on the list.
“All PETA wants for Christmas is for Petco to stop profiting from the misery of vulnerable animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Ending its live-animal sales would go a long way toward giving fish a little peace on Earth.”
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, found bettas who had likely suffocated rotting on the floor.
Other companies on PETA’s list include Starbucks, which profits from a 60-cent upcharge on dairy-free milk; Kroger, which sells coconut products from suppliers that chain up monkeys and force them to pick coconuts in Thailand; and Urban Outfitters, which sells clothing made of wool and other materials stolen from terrified animals. For the full list, please click here.
PETA’s motto is “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way,” and the group opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
