[Don_1 (OP)]

Dentstudent brought this to my attention:

Hi Don

I know that this is a topic close to your heart, so I thought that I would send the link. Today the telegraph has a section "pets for sale" (http://www.telegraph.vivastreet.co.uk/) and the leading picture is of a tortoise. I thought that it was actually illegal to buy and sell them as pets these days?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

regards

Thank you for this.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

It is not illegal to sell Tortoises provided they are certificated as captive bred. Sadly, due to the ineffective government department (DEFRA) responsible for ensuring our laws and practices in respect of our signature to CITES, is issuing certificates for animals imported into the UK from ex eastern bloc countries, such as Slovenia. These are claimed to be 'captive bred' or 'farmed', when it is patently obvious that these unfortunate animals have been taken from the wild.

It is for this reason that the Tortoise Protection Group is seeking to petition the UK government to ban the import of all Tortoises for commercial purposes.

Some of those ads seen on the internet are from UK pet shops which import from Slovenia. While there can be little doubt that many of the animals offered for sale are illegal wild caught animals, DEFRA legalise them at the point of entry into the UK.

I should also point out that when ordered over the internet, these animals are packed in cardboard boxes and sent to the buyer by way of parcel delivery services. This practice, while already known to the TPG, Tortoise Trust and others, was exposed to the public by the BBC South Western local news programme some months ago. A dealer by the name of Carlisle Tortoises sent a Tortoise from Carlisle to South West England to the investigating reporter via TNT parcel service. The box had insufficient air holes and no markings such as ‘LIVE ANIMAL’ or ‘FRAGILE’, not even ‘HANDLE WITH CARE’. These animals could be in-transit for up to 3 days and treated like any other parcel! An excellent display of the lack of concern for the animals they sell.

In fairness to TNT, they claim (and I have no reason to doubt them) to have been unaware of the contents of these parcels and promised the BBC they would investigate. I do not know the outcome of their investigation.

Tortoises offered for sale by private individuals and those used for captive breeding must, by law, be micro-chipped.

[paul.fr]

Don't "they" use tortoises for soup?

[Chemistry4me]

Imagine trying to fit a 200 year old Galapagos Tortoise into one of those boxes [B)]