The import of companion animals from overseas, including puppy imports and exotic pets, carries significant welfare risks from transport stress, disease, and fraudulent welfare claims.
Companion animal import welfare involves welfare harms to transported animals and to buyers who receive sick animals whose early welfare compromise was obscured by the supply chain. Puppies transported from overseas puppy farms at minimum legal ages undergo significant stress from transport, handling, and abrupt separation from littermates and familiar environments. The welfare harm begins at the source with mass production farming conditions and continues through transport stress and health vulnerability. Buyers who unknowingly purchase imported puppies from welfare-compromised backgrounds face emotional harm when animals develop imported diseases, and market demand for apparently cheap puppies funds the welfare-poor systems that produce them.