Eating Animals at the Zoo
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Humane Research Council (HRC)
March 2014

In many zoological gardens, safari parks, dolphinaria, and aquaria (zoos) worldwide, all levels of staff work hard to create enriching environments as well as to highlight welfare initiatives. In these same zoos, however, food for guests and feed for animals are often sourced from unsustainable farming practices and/or produced under welfare detrimental circumstances in industrialized agriculture and fisheries.

This paper critiques the conflicting conceptualizations of animal welfare that are expressed by zoos and aquaria when they serve animal products at onsite restaurants.

The authors begin by surveying the goals and values of in the U.S. and E.U., and find that animal welfare is an important value of most zoos and aquaria, even when it is not made explicit. When they examined the online menus of 55 zoos, all were based on meat, with few vegetarian or vegan options, and most meat came from conventionally (factory) farmed sources.

Meat provided to zoo animals was also from conventionally farmed sources, and animals purchased as live food for zoo animals were handled with little concern for their welfare. The authors conclude that these practices are inconsistent with the animal welfare mission of zoos and aquaria, and call upon them to apply animal welfare values to all animals that come within the sphere of their operations.

Abstract excerpted from original source

In many zoological gardens, safari parks, dolphinaria, and aquaria (zoos) worldwide, all levels of staff work hard to create enriching environments as well as to highlight welfare initiatives. In these same zoos, however, food for guests and feed for animals are often sourced from unsustainable farming practices and/or produced under welfare detrimental circumstances in industrialized agriculture and fisheries.

The current paper focuses on the concept of animal welfare, as an ethical dilemma for zoos in a broader sense than is usually considered. More specifically, it is an investigation into the apparent discrepancy between official animal friendly values and the lack of regard for the welfare issues surrounding the origins of the meats and fishes offered at zoo restaurants and in animal feeding practices.

That is, we argue that there is a normative double standard at issue in the dichotomy between how zoos approach and assert the value of their exhibited animals and the way they approach and assert the value of the farm animals and fish that are consumed by zoo visitors and fed to zoo animals. Moreover, we explore the fundamental characteristics of this double standard and the actions that zoos can take in order to avoid this ethical animal welfare dilemma.

Read full text at Critical Animal Studies.

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