Trade in exotic animals for food — including turtles, songbirds, civets, and pangolins — involves severe welfare harm and drives population collapse of vulnerable species.
Exotic food trade welfare harm is acute and often involves species with no more welfare protection than any commercial livestock species would receive, but in far worse conditions. Pangolins transported in bags, turtles stacked in dry conditions, civets in battery cages — these represent welfare crises that also threaten species survival. The food and medicine markets sustaining this trade require both supply-side enforcement and demand-side behavior change.