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‘Bizarre and wrong’: Danish zoo sparks debate with plea for pets to use as food
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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It’s quite tone deaf of the zoo to call for pets. Pets are family members. We want them to have a respectful death. We don’t send grandma to get eaten by lions when her time has come.
Why is a cow less deserving of a life than a dog? A life is a life
It’s a matter of emotional perspective. If I have a cow as livestock, then I have the mindset that it should provide food. If I have a cow as a pet, then I have the mindset that it should be part of the family.
So then it's about you and not actually about the pet?
Nobody accuses humanity of being rational. We are quite selfish about who we care for and who we don’t.
And yet we have overcome this innate selfishness in so many other aspects. Shrugging your shoulders and saying "Oh well, guess I just don't care about these sentient beings getting killed for my convenience" is just lazy. We are better than that.
If we’re better than that we probably shouldn’t run zoos in the first place. The fact that we do tells me we have a long way to go and I’m saying this as someone who enjoys zoos.
Yeah I wonder what the common evil is here between for-profit zoos and making money by killing animals and selling their body parts.
It’s about showing that final bit of respect to a family member who has given us so much love.
Or do you put grandma in the dumpster?
I neither put grandma in the dumpster nor do I put pigs and other animals in a gas chamber, or pay for that to happen.
I mean...it's not lions, but some cultures does burial rituals by letting the corpse be eaten by animals. In my opinion, giving your body back to nature is quite respectful
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
Not in our culture, though. Forcing a culture onto people is deemed invasive and often seen as an act of violence. You could use vast resources and sway public opinion with propaganda campaigns that last generations. That could do the job. For a while.
Where is the "forcing" part in this?
Obviously people there don’t want it. I’m saying that forcing them to adopt another culture won’t work either. It’s a different culture after all.
Again: where is the forcing?
They are ASKING people to donate their pets corpses. That is so far removed from forcing, I don't know how to explain it, if you think that is forcing people to do something.
If somebody asks for something, you are free to NOT do that thing. But those who want to not just put their pets in the ground, can use the offer.
And regarding "not part of our culture": you know that the act of putting cat babies in a sack and drowning them, because you couldn't care for all of them, isn't out of style that long, right? So that shows you 3 things: caring for pets means different things for different people, not everybody is opposed to killing pets and lastly: cultures change.
This was about explaining how it was normal in a very different culture as if that really changed anything, not about the Zoo.
It isn't tone deaf. People are free to decide for themselves if they want to participate or not. If someone is okay with it they are not doing any damage to those who don't feel like doing it. The same goes the other way around.
The article left out that they weren't asking for cats and dogs but things like rabbits. If the rabbits procreate and can't be given a home, what alternative is there? Euthanize them and bury them? Cremate them?
As with all pets they should be sterilized.
If we gotta have humans eaten, let it be the billionaires. A more greasy version of soylent green, but otherwise much gooder for the environment.