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Your urgent help is needed to ensure that wild animal traders don’t get away with breaking the law at a reptile and amphibian market on Sunday 1st September 2024.

This Sunday will see the largest reptile and amphibian market in the UK and the third to take place at the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham. Evidence of shocking animal welfare conditions and law-breaking was gathered by Freedom for Animals and the Animal Protection Agency at the previous two events held on 16 June 2024 and 17 September 2023.

Alongside our friends at Animal Protection Agency, we are calling on Rotherham Council to prosecute illegal animal traders. We need your URGENT help to put pressure on the Council by forwarding an email to them before 5pm tomorrow (30 August 2024).

At these exotic pet markets, animals such as lizards, snakes and frogs are housed in small, sterile takeaway boxes without food and water, and the necessary controlled temperature, humidity and lighting levels. 

In over forty years there has only been one prosecution for the offence of trading in 'pet' animals over market stalls, which highlights the significant failure of local councils to effectively enforce the law. Meanwhile the suffering of animals at these events continues. 

The Magna Science Adventure Centre has agreed to host no more of these markets following Sunday’s event. The event organisers will no doubt be seeking out a new venue to stage more cruel markets next year. Illegal animal traders cannot be allowed to keep getting away with it.

Please take action before 5pm tomorrow (Friday 30 August 2024). You can use our template form below to send a letter to the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, calling on them take enforcement action against commercial animal sellers found to be breaking the law at Sunday’s event.