Our pets don’t deserve this
Recently, a Denmark zoo had started asking for people to donate their pets to feed them to the predators in their zoo, such as large cats like the Lion, in order to preserve “the natural food chain”. This means that owners can send their pets to be slaughtered and fed whole to zoo animals, raising some ethical issues over whether it’s right to do that to their pets. In my opinion, this is something that shouldn’t happen.
The Aalborg zoo spoke on Facebook about how they would welcome animals, regardless of circumstance, that might be nearing the end of their lives. They would then be “gently euthanized” and used as food. This is a very utilitarian and indifferent view of animals and their connection to us as pet owners. This also promotes the easy abandonment of possibly healthy pets, not to a shelter where they can find love again, but to a more permanent fate.
By allowing people to donate their pets, we are lowering the value of the pet’s connection with us. You have loved that pet for almost all of its life just to toss it to be euthanized and fed to a lion. You are reducing the value of your pet to just something less than something that loves you. Something to be turned into food once it’s dead. With the zoo’s accepting system, you cannot even donate sick animals most of the time, so the animals that are donated are just unwanted. This attempt at getting use out of dying animals will just support the abandonment of beloved pets and reduce the value of their relationships with humans.
Experts also disagree with the zoo’s actions, with Clifford Warwick, a UK-based consultant biologist and medical scientist, calling the situation ‘far beyond the pale” as well as “bizarre and wrong.” Warwick wondered about how the zoo would euthanize the pets, as they did not specify how, as there may be no way to humanely kill the animals, and ensure that the animals would remain safe to eat by predators. “And there’s no validity to their claim of needing to give animals a natural diet this way,” he also added. “Lynx don’t eat guinea pigs. Where do they get guinea pigs from? Lynx would eat almost any small mammal, sure, but they can’t turn around and say that’s a natural behaviour.”
Some people may argue that allowing pets to be donated ensures that the predators in the zoo will be able to have a “natural diet” by being able to eat whole animals. However, is this worth sacrificing everything else? Is it truly worth devaluing the life of your pets and just saying, “Your time is up, time to be fed to a lynx”? Not only that, but would feeding a whole horse or guinea pig even really help give predators a “natural diet”? I say that it really isn’t worth it; the cons completely outweigh any of the pros.
The idea of donating pets to be eaten at a zoo is not something that should be supported: it supports the abandonment of pets, reduces the value of pets, may not even be necessary or helpful, and may not even be safe.