City of Vancouver officials are expressing their outrage after learning that livestock retired from a shuttered local petting zoo may not have had the pastoral retirement they were promised.
In a statement released Sunday, the chair of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation said a hobby farmer who was supposed to be caring for sheep and goats retired from the now-closed Stanley Park Children's Farmyard may have sent them to the slaughterhouse instead.
If true, Park Board Chair Constance Barnes said the city's legal team is under orders to take "aggressive legal action."
"We need to be as diligent as we can now, going forward, making sure this person is absolutely held accountable, because this was not part of the agreement," Barnes told CTV Vancouver on Sunday.
According to records from a local animal auction yard, the farmer may have started selling the dwarf and pygmy goats for slaughter shortly after they arrived at his Fraser Valley farm.
The petting zoo had been a park fixture for decades, until a nearly $3 million budget shortfall led to its closure in January of last year.
But even as the zoo succumbed to the chopping block, its displaced inhabitants weren't supposed meet such an abrupt fate.
When the zoo closed its doors, a handful of adopters stepped up to care for the animals under agreements city officials insist specified the creatures would be looked after for the rest of their natural lives. In total, more than a dozen families took on an assortment of animals that included cows, pigs, donkeys, a llama and a pony, as well as other birds and small animals.
According to the park board's animal adoption contract, all of them agreed that the receiver "will not sell, trade, loan or give away these animals .. nor have them destroyed except on the advice of the SPCA."
In fact, the agreement stipulated board or SPCA approval for virtually any change in the animals' living conditions.
According to the board's chair, the terms of the agreement came after careful consideration.
"The SPCA has said that our due diligence was second to none. We followed very stringent, thorough practice to check everybody out," Barnes told CTV, noting that letters of reference were sought and site inspections carried out.
"I've never seen anything like this," Barnes added.
In addition to the investigation of the Fraser Valley farmer, Barnes said the board is also following up to determine the treatment and living conditions of the animals distributed amongst the 12 other adopting families.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Peter Grainger
