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Rabbit Advocacy Animal Matters
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Illegal sales of Santee Alley rabbits despite law; vendors sell sickly bunnies Investigation: Laws meant to curtail illegal sales of bunnies not widely known, enforced Tuesday, June 25, 2012 nbclosangeles.com Part 1: Bunny Traffickers Accused of Misleading Shoppers With Sickly Animals Laws meant to prevent the illegal sale of animals, often kept in deplorable conditions, on the streets of Santee Alley are not working, according to families who say they were duped into buying sick animals. Beverly Gilbert and her daughter, Lori, say they were lied to when they bought a bunny they named Alfred in Santee Alley. Gilbert says the seller told them the bunny was a dwarf and would get no bigger than the palm of her hand. Gilbert says Lori carried Alfred everywhere she went until suddenly, and with no explanation, Alfred died. “Here we think we think we did something wrong,” Gilbert said. “We sat for an hour crying.” After Alfred died, Gilbert started researching dwarf bunnies and learned full grown dwarves are much larger than Alfred. It turns out, the Gilberts had been sold an underage bunny too young to eat the solid food they’d been told to feed him. Most of the bunnies in Santee Alley are too young to be taken from their mothers and most of the people selling them have been arrested for illegal trafficking and animal cruelty. That’s the case for Juan Mena and Reyna Paredes. Mena has a stay away order forbidding him from being in the area. Still, our hidden cameras repeatedly caught Mena and Paredes illegally selling bunnies in the Alley. We tried to ask Mena why he was still breaking the law by selling infant bunnies in the alley, but he picked up his cages of bunnies from the sidewalk and ran. “It is a misdemeanor section,” said LAPD Lead Officer Tracy Fischer. “So they have repeated arrests, but it doesn’t stop them from going out and committing the same crime again because what they got is punishment that isn’t severe enough.” A year-old law makes it illegal to purchase animals on LA city streets and anyone who buys an illegal animal can be fined up to $1,000. The law aims to curtail the sale of the bunnies by decreasing the market for the animals. However, the Mayor’s office has done little make the public aware of the law. NBC4’s Ana Garcia wanted to talk to someone from the mayor’s office about the new law, but they declined requests for an interview. In an email, they said they had posted a dozen signs in the area surrounding Santee Alley and that the signs are “prominent” and “easily visible.” The Get Garcia team had difficulty finding the signs. That may be because they are posted about eight feet off the ground and the writing is so small that it is nearly impossible to read. When Mena fled, he left behind a tiny bunny. We immediately took it to Bunny World Foundation rescue. It is doing well and will be up for adoption soon. For more information on how to care for a bunny and where you can adopt one, go to www.bunnyworldfoundation.org Strolling down Santee Alley in LA’s Fashion District will reveal more than clothes for sale – there are bunnies. Marti Garcia saw three bunnies when she was shopping in the alley with colleagues last month, but noticed the little rabbits were in the blazing hot sun.“All we kept thinking was, these things must be suffering of heat or dehydrated,” she said. She bought the bunnies in hopes of rescuing them, but $2,000 in vet bills later, only one bunny survived: Master Yuki – “blessing” in Japanese. A month after his rescue, he still needed daily medication and drops for an eye infection. The Get Garcia team took hidden cameras to Santee Alley to find out what was going on. The team found rabbits for sale, primarily on Maple Avenue between 11th and 12th streets. The animals were in small cages, being knocked to and fro, often with no protection from the scorching heat and without water. Part 2: Law Leaves Unhealthy Bunnies Unprotected Experts say the bunny traffickers mislead shoppers. “They sell them as little miniature dwarf rabbits,” said Liejla Hadzimuratovic with rabbit rescue organization Bunny World Foundation. “They tell you they’re never going to grow.” It turns out they are really infant bunnies too young to be weaned from their mothers. The bunnies often die days or even hours after they arrive in their new homes. Without their mothers’ milk for nourishment, they die of starvation. If they manage to ingest some of the carrots or lettuce the traffickers tell people to feed them, they get diarrhea and die of dehydration. Dr. Sari Kanfer is a veterinarian who specializes in rabbits. She says she sees plenty of bunnies bought in Santee Alley. “The way you can tell that they are babies is their very infant-looking faces,” she said. “They are very round and compact.” Kanfer calls the practice of selling underage bunnies cruel. The Get Garcia Team’s hidden cameras repeatedly documented traffickers telling them the bunnies were four, five or six months old. “They don’t grow anymore after 6 months,” one trafficker said. NBC4’s Ana Garcia tried to speak to one of the most prolific traffickers, who fled when asked: “Why are you selling sick bunnies?” Marti says she is still devastated by the two bunnies she tried to rescue, but was unable to save. “It was very hard to watch them just kind of deteriorate and wait to die,” she said. Still, bunnies are good house pets and, like dogs, can be taught to come when called and can learn tricks. For more information on the care they need and where to adopt one, visit the Bunny World Foundation or BunnyLuv. Note: It is illegal in Los Angeles to sell any animal under 2 months of age. Also, it is illegal to sell animals on the street in L.A. And turtles under 4" in diameter. Additionally, animal cruelty laws (597s) are being broken. December 12, 2013 Let's get illegal vendors of bunnies and turtles off L.A.'s streets 2012: Zoonotic diseases kill 2.2 million people per year https://www.livescience.com/21426-global-zoonoses-diseases-hotspots.html Visit our Rabbit Issues & Pet Shops/Rabbits/Legislation pages Read more: Live Markets, Factory Farms & Pandemics: Closer Than You Might Think - An Animal Outlook investigator takes you inside the little-known world of live markets in the U.S., exploring the link between animal agriculture and pandemics. |