Online classified site Kijiji doesn’t care what the naysayers have to say – or their two-year campaign against the company, for that matter.
They will continue to let animal breeders sell animals on their site.
A Montreal-area librarian named Barbara Lapointe, who has gathered more than 104,000 signatures in a petition urging Kijiji to stop allowing pet sales on the site, started the defeated-to-date campaign.
Instead, she (and the signees) encourage adoptions only from registered shelters and rescue organizations.
The campaign points to the current policy that allows vendors to turn tidy profits by selling pets that are the product of dog or cat mills and other unfit mass-production facilities.
Lapointe isn’t alone in her sentiment: six major companies – including Toyota and two of Canada’s major banks – have supported her mission by pulling their advertisements from Kijiji’s pet sale pages.
Unlike other classified sites, however (including Craigslist), Kijiji will not budge in its acceptance of ads from pet breeders. In defense, the company says that banning animal sales ads is not an effective way to stop the inhumane treatment of animals, because they would simply find a new platform for their ads.
According to the company, potential vendors are subject to more scrutiny than they might be with another online classified platform. They’ve also tightened their restrictions in reaction to the campaign (aka, a $5 fee to post an ad selling a dog – but none for any other type of pet sales).
Big barking deal. 
Allegedly, the staff also combs the posts for potential red flags when it comes to the integrity of the breeders. This only fuels Lapointe’s fire: the fact that there are such rules in place to begin with shows that the company identifies the problem but is unwilling to take more effective action.
If you’re in the market for a new pet, buying one off of Kijiji may come at a price to you when you find your animal sick and traumatized after a shoddy sale. Then again, you could be exactly what these animals need for their road to recovery.
As for the law, there are pretty much zero regulations to help distinguish between puppy mills and reputable animal breeders.
To sign the petition yourself, click here.
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