Coo and Riku, Japan’s largest pet store chain, accused of severe animal cruelty

13 comments

1. trigger warning for those sensitive to animal cruelty, the details in this article are really gross, so please proceed with caution, but: TL;DR Coo and Riku are being accused by customers + former employees to be running breeding mills with extra bad conditions, to then sell unhealthy baby animals to customers.

   for those of you who are able to stomach these kinds of details, I’ll talk about some of the points mentioned in the article:

   Coo and Riku, the biggest pet store chain in Japan, with over 200 locations throughout the country, are being accused of running at least 11 breeding mills where they hold down female animals, willing or not, and just have male dogs have at them. These breeding mills are also truly filthy, as former employees note: there’s rats and cockroaches in each of the mills, and these mills are so understaffed that not all poop is cleaned up at the end of each night, and so the animals eat the poop, get infectious diseases, which then spread to the other animals in the mill.

   Due to the horrible conditions these animals live in, and are forced to conceive their babies in, the babies who are sold in the stores often have horrible diseases like parovirus and hip dysplasia, and according to customers whose pets were purchased from Coo and Riku reported: “when we tried to report these sudden appearance of symptoms to store managers, we were told ‘we can’t pay for treatment, but we can replace the dog’ why would the manager think I would want to exchange my baby just because they’re sick?” there was another customer who told journalists, when they tried to report their respective pet’s parovirus to the store, the store manager replied saying “that’s impossible for the pet to have gotten parovirus here, because we don’t have parovirus at our store.” the pet passed away unfortunately, and when this second customer asked the animal hospital doctor about the Coo and Riku’s manager’s claims, the doctor replied saying, “due to the incubation period, there was no doubt the parovirus was contracted while the animal was in the store’s care.”

   Truly bad stuff, many more details within the article if you want to learn more, and for those of you who are not yet/unable to read Japanese, DeepL or Google Translate were both able to help me piece together what was going on.

   if you want a quicker version to share with family and friends, Takizawe, a popular Japanese Twitter/X account who posts about hot button news topics about Japan, made a post about this story [here](https://twitter.com/takigare3/status/1700416750935036301)

2. Pet stores basically ARE animal cruelty. Destroying (ie; killing) stock that has aged out. Producing excess stock through excessive breeding. Poor living enviroments for pets.

   I wish more people were aware of pet breeding issues, and were more open to adopting pets from shelters.

   I understand the wish to have YOUR perfect pet, but most people’s view is too narrow. I hope people can fall in love with an animal, rather than falling in love with an ideal and trying to find something to fill it. People are too quick to dismiss shelter animals for all sorts of reason.

3. fuck Japan for being so lax on animal welfare

   few years ago I saw a fucking owl chained up in a pet store

4. I hope that this article would lead to a public outcry that would wreck a company like this, but then I remembered this is Japan. For all I like about being here, the general attitude to animals is dreadful.

5. I also noticed they sell them FAR cheaper than other shops. The one by my house has most for sale under $1k but other shops have them for sale at $5k+ sometimes.

   I was always skeptical why every single animal they have is under 6 months old and they always have new ones.

6. Coo and Riku pet stores are notorious online for treating the animals like they are things that can be thrown away or exchanged, if only people here did some research. There’s a reason their prices are so low. Fingers crossed this shuts them down for good but I’m not hopeful.

7. Here in Okinawa a rescue group I used to foster for is doing great work shutting down puppy mills and they got another big chain (pet box) to stop selling dogs and cats completely. I really hope this spreads. You’re not even allowed to sell dogs and cats in pet shops in my home country so coo and riku was appalling before I even knew about this.

8. So many reddit criticisms of Japan are utter bullshit, but having an absolutely medieval fucking shit attitude on the treat animals is totally accurate

   zoos, aquariums, petshops, farms, anything to do with animals here is a fucking nightmare

   I went to a little milk farm near my house which is basically a day trip for kids and families to see cows and then eat freshly made ice cream and kind of enjoy the atmosphere and there were some horses there who hadnt been reshoed or had their nails cut or anything, in what looked like fucking years….the cows hair was disgusting

   Like even the absolute most basic care was being neglected

9. Posting for information only.

   I purchased a cat at coo and riku. If there’s a report of animal abuse, I absolutely believe it. The back room was full of carry kennels with animals in them. One fell over while I was in the store, and the employees seemed upset about the conditions. They would take the animals out as much as possible, but there’s no helping a company that doesn’t prioritize animal welfare.

   The kitten I bought is still with me and I wanted to share. He has severe birth defects (cross-eyed siamese, hook tail, bowed legs) and was slamming his head into the window. He was on sale because of that and at risk of being sent “away”. I love him to death, but he definitely has ptsd. Avoid this place at all costs.

   My other cat I bought from pets plus. He has a normal personality and no birth defects. His pedigree is searchable and they at least advertise ethical breeding and conditions. I don’t see any reason to avoid purchasing with them, but try to find an ethical breeder directly first if possible, and of course, adopt if you can.

10. This is my shocked face.😐

    We tell people and yet it continues on. And these are dogs and cats. The exotics get treated even shittier if you can believe it.

    Adopt, don’t shop.

11. I have one of these in my city. What is the best way to inform people? I have been thinking of making posters.

12. A lot of pet stores are just merchandise stores that sell their main products, pets, like coo and rikku. I see a lot of them have insurance plans for your purchase where if the animal you buy dies within x amount of months they will replace it with another.

    Adopt your pets stop giving these money grubbing “buisnesses” money to keep in buisness. Dont even buy the toys or food from them.

13. Duh