‘Bizarre and wrong’: Danish zoo sparks debate with plea for pets to use as food | Animals

AThe Danish zoo has laid a reminder of its longtime program allowing people to give their small healthy pets “gently euthanized” and supplied to predators, the reaction has poured around the world.

But beyond the battlefield, playing on social networks – where some protested the idea of using pets like Prey and others praised zoo’s efforts to stimulate a practical food supply – some were quick to emphasize that the zoo was simply the reality of keeping carnivores in captivity.

“If you accept the fact that you have carnivores in human care, either as a pet, be as a zoo, you will accept the fact that you feed them in animal matter. Basically, there is no other choice,” said Marcus Clauss, the codirector of the clinic for zoo animals, exotic animals and the university of Zurich, of Vegan, as one of the exceptions of a few. “And then the next logical step is the question, where do you get this animal product?”

While the zoo plea made the headlines around the world, the Aalborg zoo closed comments on its post, citing a “hateful and malicious rhetoric”. The zoo said that it simply aimed to imitate the natural food chain by urging those with chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs that must be put to put them back to the zoo. “In this way, nothing is waste – and we ensure the natural behavior, nutrition and well -being of our predators.”

Few would question the alternative, even if it had the risk that the animals of the zoo can end up being fed by animal meat raised in relatively mediocre conditions, said Clauss. “As long as it is beef of the slaughterhouse, no one sees it and no one needs to think about it,” he said. “As soon as it is an animal that is killed at the zoo, it is in front of everyone.”

Part of the counterpouss was probably due to the wording of the call, Dan Ashe said of the association of zoos and aquariums, which has more than 200 accredited installations extending from the United States to water. “I think the thing that people may consider as potentially shocking is the use of the word animal,” he said.

He wrote cultural differences. “Professionally, I would not expect something to happen in one of our accredited zoos, certainly not here in the United States. But our accreditation policies do not necessarily prohibit it. ”

The plea, however, spoke to a common understanding among zoos around the world: the importance, both nutritionally and behavioral, to imitate nature by nourishing carnivores of all the carcass of animals. “Food of carcass is a regular characteristic of what our members do when available, some of our members accept donations of deer or animals killed by road,” said Ashe.

Some zoos had actively sought to highlight this, he said, quoting a recent event to the Denver zoo where the public was invited – and warned appropriately in advance – to see that the lions were fed in pork carcasses. “The Lions seemed to benefit from it, and certainly the guests who chose to look at him-he was crowded,” he said.

Others, however, found little buyout in the Danish call. “For me, it was so far from the pale,” said Clifford Warwick, a consultant’s biologist based in the United Kingdom and medical scientific. “Everything is weird and false.”

As the zoo did not specify how the pets given would be euthanized, Warwick feared that it is impossible to do so in a way that was both human and has ensured that animals remain sure of being consumed by predators such as the European lynx.

“And there is no validity of their pretension to need to give animals a natural diet in this way,” he said. “Lynx does not eat guinea pigs. Where do they come from guinea pigs? Lynx would eat almost any little mammal, of course, but they cannot turn around and say that it is natural behavior.”

The Aalborg Zoo did not respond to an interview request.

At a time when animal shelters around the world are struggling with overcrowding, Warwick also bristled what he considered the wider implications of the message of the zoo. “It still devalues the life of pets … It is a horrible devaluation of animal life,” he said. “Are you really happy to say:” Ok, well Rex or Bruno, when there has come, there is a hungry lion at the local zoo. Goodbye, to go. “”

The wide range of reactions indicates the many factors that play in the broader question of how to keep carnivores fed in zoos, said Alessandro Di Marzio, the head of science at the Riga zoo.

“Zoos are distributed in a wide range of fields, you will therefore find places where certain techniques are considered acceptable and more or less normal for society, while in other areas, they are not,” he said, with local laws, economic resources and a culture also helping to shape these tactics. “It depends on all these circumstances.”

The resulting culture shock has sometimes been obvious; Earlier this year, the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany sparked demonstrations after confirming that he had killed six of his 12 baboons in Guinea due to overcrowding and had fueled primates with lions, tigers, mane wolves and marbled polecates.

In Denmark, the Copenhagen Zoo was at the center of the world’s demonstrations in 2014 after having tabled an 18 -month giraffe, citing the risk of inseanguinity and fed part of the meat of the zoo lions.

For Clauss, the heated debate unleashed this week recalled one of the emails sent to the Copenhagen zoo after the euthanasia of the giraffe. “He said,” Why should you kill animals to feed your carnivores? Can’t you just buy meat? “”

Although he did not think that the point of view was representative in any way, he was amazed at the way in which the Danish call had been used to launch a global conversation. “What is surprising is that we learn these things because of the zoos,” he said. “And not because of what we do in the supermarket.”