Who needs a lap dog when you can have a sloth?

I do doubt it would create more animals that are poorly looked after, maily because you have to be a cruel bastard to do that to an animal and this legislation wont make anymore cruel bastards. It will increase the amount of animals in shelters and vary the type of animal needing rescuing from the evil f***ers that get bored of not looking after dogs and move on to something more exotic to not look after.

ok, i'm against this, i hate domesticating animals
....but i would bloody love a pet sloth

The pet shop i use is actually very very good, they do tell you that if the pet becomes too much for you to cope with to take it back, or if it becomes sick, particularly if they are unconventional pets. And they wont let you have it without information on caring for it. But there are plenty of breeders who are simply in it for the money.

If only more places were run like that, I wouldn't be nearly so concerned. Unfortunately that's pretty rare.