The international convention regulating trade in wild animals, CITES, exists to control trade threats to species conservation. Apart from specifying that live animals ‘should be so prepared and shipped as to minimize the risk of injury, damage to health, or cruel treatment’, the convention gives little consideration to welfare matters. Concerns have been raised about disease and mortality rates in animals taken from the wild for international trade. Although there has been interest among some welfare groups in trying to find ways to strengthen the welfare provisions of the convention, these efforts have met with little success to date. One problem has been with the interpretation of the term ‘prepared and shipped’, as applying only to the act of packing animals before export. If this phrase was also taken to cover all aspects of the housing and husbandry of the animals from capture to export, then CITES could provide a stronger framework for welfare protection.