I guess the key difference here is they specifically want healthy animals that might have otherwise been able to have been rehoused. So it’s not like when you have to put your dog down at the end if it’s life, it’s like if it had a couple good years left but you needed to move and couldn’t take him with you.

But they’re not taking dogs fwiw. Article just says chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs. As well as maybe horses in the right circumstances.

I think it’d be pretty wild for anyone who eats meat themselves to criticize the practice of feeding a chicken to a lion. The vegans I can’t speak for but I think they would probably take issue way higher in the chain than this, such as keeping the predator animals in captivity for our amusement in the first place.

Either way I think it’s waaaaay overkill to suggest someone donating their pet rodent to a zoo shouldn’t be allowed to have children lol. The pet store you get them from feeds rodents to the snakes.