Help is on the way for the animals of the East London Zoo which have been in the spotlight since Sunday when a petition to remove them and close the zoo started gaining mass traction.
Yesterday Pick n Pay told the Dispatch that their five East London stores would be providing emergency food for the animals.
Pictures of the zoo’s mother-and-daughter bears, Jan and Emil, posted on Facebook, evoked high emotion, especially a picture of one of the bears with its mouth open revealing rotting teeth. By last night the petition had garnered 18852 signatures.
The bear photograph was shared 1900 times.
Excited animals activists Neil Ovens, of AID 4 SA, and Lionel de Lange, CEO of Lawrence Anthony Earth Organisation Ukraine, said they were hard at working finding help for the zoo’s animals.
They said they had struck a deal with Pick n Pay to supply food in order to supplement the diets of its many animals.
“Fortunately through my connections from managing in-house radio for retail stores I was able to contact Suzanne Ackerman-Berman and she agreed that Pick n Pay would provide out-of-date fresh produce to the animals,” said Ovens.
Ackerman-Berman, said: “Pick n Pay’s CSI (corporate social investment) programme offered to assist the East London Zoo, and they have welcomed our help to make sure their animals are well-fed and cared for.
“For 50 years Pick n Pay has been part of the community and in line with our core values in participating in every sector of society, we felt the East London Zoo was one of the beneficiaries that needed our help.”
Ackerman-Berman said that they would assist in the following ways:
- Pick n Pay’s CSI programme would immediately donate R5000 worth of food to alleviate the current crisis;
- Their five corporate East London stores have committed to donating fruit and vegetable produce that is all past its sell-by date;
- The Pick n Pay Greenfields franchise store would donate R2500 worth of ripe fruit and vegetables, on top of their sell-by date produce. The Greenfield store had already sourced 200kg of crushed maize to be delivered to feed the zoo’s birds.
She said that the produce which was past its sell-by date was perfectly safe for animals at the zoo but not for humans.
“We aim to make a delivery every day or every second day,” said Ackerman-Berman.
Pick n Pay are expected to make their first delivery today.