Basically, I'm all for putting an end to rat mills! But when we can't do anything meaningful to stop rats from being fed to reptiles and being bred for that purpose we shouldn't then turn on each other instead. In the example of freeing a child slave, still one is better than none... but putting an end to child slavery is by far the better option. Imagine if we criticized a child slave holder for setting his child slaves free because more would be recruited... Might that not be a poor way to execute on good intentions?
I've been around for a while, and I remember the bad old days when rat owners were openly and rabidly chastised for adopting rats from the wrong place and when pet shop and feeder rats were considered contraband or junk rats. And thankfully things are better now, at least on Rat Forum. But I know how easy it is to backslide.
It's a great idea to promote ethical breeders and rescues. It's even better to support them with your money. It would be a great idea to speak to your local pet shop managers and owners to promote better treatment for rats as I have done. I've even taken our shoulder rats to the big box pet shop and done meet and greets with the staff and customers there... I recently did a meet and greet with a small animals manager of a big box pet shop to make sure she knew just how amazing and special rats were... and she promised her rats would get the best of care. So, I'm absolutely for changing hearts and minds... and I go out there to do it. When people finally get how amazing our true shoulder rats are, I make sure they know that they came from bad situations and that they were born to be snake food... and that really drives home my point... when people say "OH NO... that's terrible I can't imagine your rats as snake food.." it shows they get it. Fuzzy Rat was charismatic and people fell in love with her and when I told people she was rescued from a snake food bin, many people got angry at how she had been mistreated and one lady actually teared up... People are revolted by how cruel the system is to rats when I explain it... people who never cared before, until they met an actual feeder bin rat, who just happened to be amazing... Fuzzy Rat even posed on the shoulder of a pharmaceutical lab employee that had hundreds if not thousands of research rats.... He promised to take the photos to work and show everybody what amazing pets rats could make... Fuzzy Rat befriended an exterminator who had made a career out of killing rats and he walked away saying he had to rethink the way he dealt with rats.... and she befriended a fellow who works for a snake importer who went to his boss and got him to implement some minor better conditions for their feeder rats. And yes, this is only a tiny drop in a giant bucket, but we make every effort to change hearts and minds and we take it to the people that matter. Fuzzy Rat was sold as a three week old pup at wholesale for under a dollar and retailed for $2.49 and yes all of that money went to support the evil industry... and another rat replaced her... or maybe a reptile went hungry that week, either way it hardly matters... She changed hearts and minds and she did more for our community through helping teach us immersion than most high born rats do in their lifetime... And being a feeder bin refugee drove the point home even more poignantly to the uninitiated.
I'm not only against the mistreatment of rats, I have actually done something about it. Dogs and cats are in fact different, because they are primarily being raised as pets, there's no vast number of anacondas that need to be fed dogs and cats to support the dog and cat mills if pet owners don't. Simply put if every pet rat owner stopped buying feeder bin or pet shop rats, two things would happen... first lots of potential rat owners wouldn't have best furry friends and second the stores and mills would have a sale or culling, until the market stabilized and then it would go on without a hiccup. In fact if rat sales slow down, chances are good that rat mills might cut costs and make their rat's lives even more unbearable... or they might raise their prices to make even more profits. In any case they wouldn't have to worry about appeasing pet rat owners anymore and we lose the little leverage we have to change things.
"Good" is a funny word... It's good to survive a car crash.. but the car crash wasn't necessarily good in itself, likewise it's good to rescue a rat from being snake food or from a pet shop, where the snake food industry and pet shop industry is anything but good... So we need to define good, perhaps for the better... Every rat owner is one more person on our team, one more person to speak out against pet shops and rat mills, every rat that becomes a family member is another rat that changes hearts and minds and every rat that gets a happy forever home becomes special to someone... And that's good no matter where the rat comes from. Every rat that a rat mill breeds and a pet shop sells, that becomes a pet, raises public consciousness and solidifies public opinion against them. Once rats become as common as dogs and cats rat mills and pet stores will have to change in light of informed public opinion. The fact is that most of the people who are against feeder breeders and pet shops actually bought their first rats there.
So... yes... based on my experience... I think its good for someone to adopt a rat from anywhere. I wouldn't argue against someone who says it's better to adopt from a rescue or an ethical breeder, that might also be true... But I think its actually a bad thing to discourage any rat owners from adopting whatever rats they want and can responsibly support.
For me, it's really so simple... I've adopted several truly wonderful rats that would have otherwise died horrific deaths, four even became true shoulder rats. Each has rewarded our family with love and companionship and most have each done some good for our community. In total, I've given the evil industry less money than I likely lose in pocket change every month and I would have gladly paid the same amount to the devil himself for our rats... I'm not sorry that I adopted them, in fact I'm proud of all our rats, those that made the grade to become shoulder rats and even those that didn't. Every one of our tail draggers had a right to live and blessed us with their friendship and love. So, maybe I define good differently than someone else might.. but yes adopting from bad situations was both good for us and for our rats and I believe in the end it's actually done something good for the movement to stop rat mills and pet shops from mistreating rats... in a very small way.
This really isn't a hard subject to agree on.... we all agree rat mills are bad and that pet shops that don't care for their rats properly are bad... generally we agree that rats don't deserve to be snake food... and we can all find ways to do something about it... If your personal way is not to buy from rat mills or stores that sell rats that's fine and perhaps good too... Perhaps you can talk to your pet shops about not selling feeder rats or snakes... that would make a difference.
But we also need to agree that there are no second class rats that don't deserve a good forever home... otherwise why should we even care about the rats in the mills? And we should also agree to support other rat owners unconditionally, regardless of where they got their rats from.
I'm not pretending that our rats are better than anyone else's here, nor that I'm better than anyone else here for rescuing our rats from bad situations, but I'm stating as a fact, one I can defend, that our rats are just as good as any other rat represented here and that our decision to rescue them was a good one.
In short...
The good:
Rats from anywhere...
People who adopt and love and care for their rats...
Ethical breeders who try and improve their strains and pre-socialize rats for other people...
Rescues that rehabilitate and rehome rats..
The bad:
Rat mills...
Pet shops that don't properly care for their rats...
Labs and universities that mistreat their animals...
People who mistreat rats...
And the ugly:
Rat owners who put other rat owners down for any reason other than for mistreating or neglecting their rats.
Rat owners that think that some rats are second class and don't deserve to have a good life...
It's just so simple to get along... support the good, oppose the bad and don't be ugly. And together we just might change the world.... just a little.