Greedy Private Equity Goons Are Killing Pets

The private equity infiltration of PetSmart is creating hellish conditions for workers and pets. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Watch LIVE weekdays 68 pm ET.

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"When a pet guinea pig or snake or hamster dies in the hands of America’s largest pet store, PetSmart, the retailer has strict protocols for disposing of its remains, at least on paper. Wrap the deceased pet in a paper towel, place it in a plastic fish bag, seal the bag with rubber bands, and store it in a refrigerator or a freezer, according to the company’s “deceased store-owned pet policy,” which was obtained by Motherboard. (PetSmart enacted this policy in July 2020 and it was active as of January 2022, but the company did not respond to a question about whether the policy remains active.)

“A minimum of once per week”, deceased animals must be transferred to a vet that cremates the bodies, the policy states. “Deceased pets must never be left in the freezer for longer than a week or left in the refrigerator for more than 24 hours.”

These guidelines aren’t always followed because of understaffing, according to employees Motherboard spoke to. Between 2019 and 2021, Lea Romo-Serrano, a 24-year-old former PetSmart employee in Tullahoma, Tennessee, estimates that she was asked at least 30 times to dispose of dead animals on her own time by her superiors. Romo-Serrano says she would have to throw away hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, mice, bearded dragons, geckos, and snakes because the coolers in her store were overflowing with dead animals. Some of the animals had been returned to the store by their owners, others had arrived dead on trucks in the winter, and others didn’t get necessary veterinary care, she said, adding, “Sometimes I was doing it weekly because we didn't have staff to take a vet trip to properly dispose of them, so I was instructed to dispose of them myself.”

In a text exchange in 2020 obtained by Motherboard, a supervisor texted Romo-Serrano photos of plastic bags with dead animals wrapped in paper towels, and wrote, “Take care of these [tomorrow] before we get fired. Just get em out of here please.” Motherboard reached out to the supervisor for comment about the employee being asked to dispose of deceased pets, and they denied the claim."

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