Exploring business stakeholder engagement in sustainable business practices: Evidence from the US pet amphibian industry

Abstract

The recent decline in wild populations of amphibians worldwide coincides with the period of rapid growth in the global trade of wildlife. The potential for pathogen transmission within and beyond the pet amphibian trade network makes it important to explore the attitudes and behavior of businesses involved in the industry. We surveyed US businesses involved in the pet amphibian trade industry to characterize their attitudes and behaviors and identify business characteristics that could influence percieved risk of pathogen transmission in trade. We found that amphibian businesses acquire their animals from a variety of sources (e.g., importers, wholesalers, retailers, breeders, hobbyists, wild), are aware of the threat of emerging pathogens, and are concerned about the potential spillover of pathogens from captive to wild populations. Attitudes and behaviors of businesses toward pathogens varied among business types (e.g., size of business, the share of amphibian sales, mode of business operation). Moreover, businesses expressed a strong interest in acquiring amphibians that are free of pathogens and indicated a willingness to pay a price premium to acquire certified disease‐free animals. Our results indicate that the US pet amphibian trade industry is willing to participate in healthy (clean) trade practices and increasing product prices may be one option to compensate for expenses. A government program to support pathogen‐free certification would likely facilitate implementation.

Preparing for a Bsal invasion into North America has improved multi-sector readiness

“…As new information has developed, novel North American Bsal risk models have been created by participants of both the Research and Decision Science WGs (US: Grear et al, 2021;Gray et al, 2023b), as well as by independent scientists and partners (Mexico: Basanta et al, 2019;Ontario, Canada: Crawshaw et al, 2022;US: Moubarak et al, 2022). Also, socioeconomic research has been initiated to address biosecurity practices in US pet amphibians (see Healthy Trade WG; Cavasos et al, 2023a;Cavasos et al, 2023b;Cavasos et al, 2023c) and the role of visitors in preventing pathogen threats in natural areas (Cavasos et al, 2023d). Specific examples follow.…”

“…As such, it is not surprising that most US businesses and consumers support acquiring pathogen-free amphibians (Cavasos et al, 2023a;Cavasos et al, 2023b). In fact, US pet-amphibian consumers are willing to pay up to 75% more for certified pathogen-free amphibians compared to amphibians with unknown health status (Cavasos et al, 2023c). Thus, in 2022, the Healthy Trade Working Group began discussions with 22 stakeholders on possible components of a healthy-trade certification program for US businesses.…”

“…Planned efforts of the Healthy Trade WG include working with Pet Advocacy Network, industry, and academic partners to hopefully launch a market-driven US healthy trade certification program for pet amphibians in the near future. Through socioeconomic surveys (Cavasos et al, 2023a;Cavasos et al, 2023b;Cavasos et al, 2023c) and over two years of discussions with industry stakeholders, the Healthy Trade WG has learned that US pet amphibian businesses are supportive of healthy trade practices, especially in comparison to trade bans, which the federal government has used in the past (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016).…”

One Health Approach to Globalizing, Accelerating, and Focusing Amphibian and Reptile Disease Research—Reflections and Opinions from the First Global Amphibian and Reptile Disease Conference

“…Another suggestion was that, by supporting and expanding healthy captive reptile and amphibian breeding programs, both the international trade of wild herpetofauna and pathogen spread and spillover to new hosts could be reduced. Ultimately, the prevailing theme underscored by the conference was the need for greater industry and government partnerships to work toward healthy (clean) trade and a preference for improved prevention of pathogen spread and testing over regulations that ban the trade of herpetofauna (42)(43)(44)(45).…”