Live Animals

Our annual debate over the "Live Animal Policy" dominated our staff meeting agenda this morning. Every year we re-visit various governmental policies on the import/export of live animals. Inevitably, the topic leads to a heated debate over whether or not we should even be in the business of fulfilling Christmas wishes for live animals. We keep the option open every year... working with the UN and individual nations to negotiate special considerations for our Christmas delivery of live animals... however, more years than not, we have chosen to not fulfill Christmas requests for live animals. As you can imagine, it is a passionate debate with more than one facet to the sides that are taken. While we all feel strongly about making the kids happy, there are some that believe that should trump all other considerations. There is a camp, represented by Jolly, our Chief Marketing Officer, that believes that the risk of the animals falling sick and/or passing away shortly after delivery only serves to hurt our brand. There is yet another camp, predictably led by Ollie, our VP of Logistics, that simply believes the live animal logistics are so complex - not to mention expensive - that it jeopardizes our ability to fulfill our commitments on other deliveries. Ollie definitely has a point... almost 55% of the qualifying "nice" list kids placed live animal requests of some type last year. And the requests are for a wide range of animals that require vastly different types of care. Of the ones that asked for live animals last year, 32% wanted a horse or pony. 29% wanted a dog. 16% wanted a snake. 11% wanted a cat. 4% wanted a bird of some type. 2% wanted to keep one of the reindeer. The remaining 6% wanted some other type of animal ranging from goldfish to crocidiles.

Of course, even in the years when we decide to tackle the challenge of delivering live animals and we clear all of the various governmental hurdles, we still require written parental consent. And we have always denied requests for animals that posed a risk such as poisonous snakes or large predatory animals. In short, even in the best case years, it remains very unlikely a child will receive a live animal.

After almost two hours of debate this year, I finally had to weigh in with a decision. Clearly we weren't going to reach a consensus. We are going to allow live animals where it is legal and where we have written parental consent. Given those considerations, Sprite, head of Procurement, believes we'll deliver approximately 25,000 small animals and 5,000 large animals worldwide this year. It's a small number as far as a percentage but we are extremely limited by the sheer number of parents that refuse to grant permission. Ollie will provide an updated logistics plan for delivery of these animals early next week.