EBay Drops Plan to Allow Sales of Pets

Internet auctioneer EBay Inc. has canceled plans to allow pets to be sold on its website after receiving thousands of angry letters.

The San Jose-based company has long banned the sale of live animals except fish and snails, and executives said this week that they were scrapping plans to create a separate classified-ad category that would feature free ads from animal shelters and paid ads from breeders.

Over the weekend, an EBay manager revealed in a posting to an online message board that the company was considering lifting the ban, prompting letters from more than 2,000 people, most of whom urged that the ban remain, company spokesman Hani Durzy said.

The letter writers were worried, Durzy said, that the listings would encourage puppy mills, where animals are sometimes bred in unsanitary conditions, and that it would be difficult to differentiate between legitimate animal shelters and unsavory sources.

“The feedback was pretty overwhelming,” Durzy said. “Farms and for-profit commercial breeders wasn’t something that they wanted to see.”

Booming sales of pet supplies had prompted the company to reconsider its ban, Durzy said.