This idea was initially proposed by Peter Singer in his very famous book and my textbook- "Animal Liberation". The basic idea revolves around the key concept of "specism", just like racism, sexism, etc, specism means to have a preference for one species over another. In our case, we prefer our own species the most. This is a question of Applied Ethics in Philosophy, and as always, rather than giving a direct answer to the question, Philosophy gives multiple approaches to solve this problem.

There has been so much anger about the way ferrets are treated at Petco, but nothing ever seems to help. Anyone who tries to talk to them about it gets stonewalled, and nothing comes of it. The only way we can get their attention is to be loud enough that they can’t ignore us anymore. Ferrets are the top small animal pet in 15 STATES in America. Considering the popularity of buying ferrets from Petco, that is a LOT of people going into pet ownership with inadequate/inaccurate information about the animals they want to love and nurture.

Petco needs to take responsibility for the animals they sell, and for giving accurate information about those animals. Prospective owners need to understand the amount of time, and energy that goes into caring for these amazing creatures, as well as the added cost of seeing an exotic vet.

All we want is for Petco to start respecting their own care standards.

Again, for emphasis: