How a British zoo became a blood-soaked cruelty pit

Lewis identifies a legislative loophole as the reason South Lakes, and other zoos accused of animal cruelty and malpractice, have been able to stay open. “The main issue from our perspective is how the current zoo licensing and inspection process is set up,” he says. “There can be all these scandals and allegations, but when the time comes for the zoo to be inspected, they generally don’t take that into account. It may prompt an inspection to occur, but the inspection can only make a judgement based on what they find during that inspection, and the zoo gets prior warning. So it is easy to hide issues.”‘We regret ever walking through the gates’In a newspaper investigation from 2017, the year South Lakes was threatened with closure, an anonymous staff member reported that the animals were fed out-of-date supermarket leftovers: baboons were given Danish pastries, rhinos stale bread, and the birds left to dine on dog biscuits.“I’d…