Class B Dealers Sell 'Lost Pets' to Medical Research Labs

You know how hard it is when a family pet goes missing, and then actually stays lost. There is the moment when you have to explain what's going on to the children, the part where you have to paste signs across the neighborhood, and the worst element - the waiting for your beloved bed to hopefully find its way back home. But now something even worse is happening as these 'lost pets' are being picked up and sold to universities for dissection and medical research in its science labs.

It's bad enough to tell your children that Sparky is lost, but it'd be much worse to tell them that Sparky is being dissected by the college students downtown. The Humane Society estimated that about 18,000 dogs and cats are picked up each year and then sold to university laboratories. Some of these animals are found through classified 'looking for a good home' adoption listings, and some are lost pets.

Those who scoop up the stray animals and sell them to labs are called Class B Dealers, and it is estimated that there are fewer of them around today than in the past, but they are still around. These Class B Dealers scour the streets of neighborhoods looking for dogs and cats that may have become lost from their homes. They also search the classified ads for animals that have been listed for adoption. The Humane Society estimates that 20% of all animals that are used in medical research labs come from these Class B Dealers

Animal advocacy groups are now hoping that it will be made illegal to sell strays for scientific purposes. However on the other side of the coin, medical research labs are arguing that animals that come from unknown origins are not used in their testings. Animal advocacy leaders are hoping that a change will be imminent. They believe that only animals that are donated by their owners, are not strays, or are living in a shelter should be given over to medical research labs.