Judging by the many writers and people commenting on Medium sharing stories about their horrible childhood experiences being raised by narcissistic, abusive parents, maybe having a standardized test to determine if you're qualified for parenting isn't such a bad idea. Just throwing that out there! Food for thought!
Have you ever signed up with an adoption agency? The process of adopting a child - especially if it involves the highly coveted white newborn of the species is a little more complicated than hitting the Buy button on adoptachild.com. Does it happen? Yes! It’s called child trafficking - a crime that is aggressively pursued and prosecuted by multiple state and federal agencies.
The USDA considers animals, including dogs and cats livestock. Their regulations have loosened, they are short on inspectors, there’s little to no follow up, and even in cases where they intervene and shut down an operation, it’ll spring up somewhere else. The quaint Amish do not think of the puppies their mills crank out as pets; they’re stock – product. No, you cannot regulate your way around every horrible practice, but you don’t have to make it easier for bad actors to exploit animals who can’t advocate for themselves, and you can do your best to educate people. If this is your area of expertise and you care about the animals your purport to love so much, I can’t understand why you spend so much time and energy grousing about people like me and the stance you assume I take, instead of educating your readers. If there wasn’t a market, there wouldn’t be a problem. If people had a better understanding of how that cute little labradoodle or whatever designer dog du jour was produced, maybe they wouldn't buy a puppy from the pet store that gets its inventory from puppy mills.
How you arrived at my being anti-zoo based on what I have written is a complete mystery to me. Walk me through it: where and when did I say I was anti-zoo? Insisting that people should be required to have a solid understanding about the species they’re about to purchase is bad, because? How is that an infringement? If someone isn’t willing to do a little bit of research about proper avian care – if they’re so inconvenienced by that requirement, isn’t that a pretty good predictor of all the things that are likely to go wrong? The only argument against having such requirements: it’s bad for business. It makes it harder for low ballers to compete.
You’re making a giant leap in assumptions that my favoring some oversight and regulation about the pet trade means I’m in favor of shutting down every zoo and insisting we all go vegan is kinda batshit.