The FTC Just Freed 1,800 Pet-Cremation Workers

We read the FTC’s order, and here is what it says.

On November 25, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission finalized a consent order against Gateway Services, Inc., a pet-cremation company. According to the FTC, Gateway had imposed noncompete agreements on almost all of its employees — agreements that typically barred a worker from taking a job anywhere in the U.S. pet-cremation industry for one year after leaving. The order requires Gateway to stop enforcing those agreements and bars it from using similar ones going forward. The FTC says it frees nearly 1,800 employees.

The complaint alleged the noncompetes were anticompetitive: that they unfairly shifted the bargaining power between workers and the company, and that they discouraged employees from leaving to start or join a competing pet-cremation business. Those are the FTC’s allegations, resolved by a consent order rather than a court finding of wrongdoing.

Here is our read for pet owners. This is a labor-market action, not a ruling about cremation quality — nothing here says Gateway did wrong by any grieving family. But it is a rare window into a part of the business most people never see. When a single company employs nearly 1,800 cremation workers and can write a noncompete covering the entire country, it tells you how concentrated the back end of “private cremation” has become.

That matters because the crematory behind your vet’s office or the pet store down the street is often not a small local operation. It may be a national company you never hear named. We think that is worth knowing before you hand your pet over — not to alarm you, but so you know to ask who actually does the cremation, and where.