Alleged Links With Circus
In October 2009 the BBC and the Captive Animals Protection Society charged that the zoos tigers and camels were owned by the Great British Circus and that the owners had kept this arrangement secret from visitors and from the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). The zoo owners replied that the zoo did not hold circus tigers and that its tigers came from Linctrek Ltd, a DEFRA-licensed collection that provides animals for films, television and zoos, and that Noah's Ark had accurately described the source of their tigers to interested visitors as a 'private collection'. One of the directors of Linctrek, Martin Lacey, is also the owner of the Great British Circus.
The BBC Inside Out programme showed a tiger's head in a freezer at the farm and described the burial of a deceased tiger on the zoos private farmland contrary to DEFRA regulations. The documentary described how the head, paws and skin were kept with the owners permission and the intention to display these articles for educational purposes.
In December 2009, BIAZA terminated the zoo from its membership for what it claimed was the refusal of NAZF to provide BIAZA requested information and for bringing "the association into disrepute."
Earlier in the year, the Western Animal Rights Network (WARN) and the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS) made several claims of animal cruelty against the zoo, and charged that it regularly culled animals during winter months to reduce costs. The zoo denied these charges and explained that it had euthanised some chickens to protect the quality of the flock. In March 2010, an investigation by North Somerset Council into the claims made found that all CAPS allegations of animal cruelty against the zoo were "grossly unfair". However, zoo inspectors said there were some failures to comply with the Secretary of State's Standards of Modern Zoo Practice. As a result tighter licence conditions were imposed including bringing independent vets in to check every six months.
Read more about this topic: Noah's Ark Zoo Farm
Famous quotes containing the words alleged, links and/or circus:
“About the alleged condition of the property. Does it have to be intact?”
—Margaret Forster, British screenwriter, Peter Nichols, and Silvio Narizzano. Georgy (Lynn Redgrave)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)