This is an excerpt from an article written by Don Pinnock and published online by Daily Maverick on 25 January, 2023

Parliamentarians were horrified by the cruelty NSPCA inspectors have to witness on lion breeding farms. Warning: this report contains graphic images

It was a briefing to Parliament’s Environment Portfolio Committee on captive lions. But, as NSPCA senior inspector Douglas Wolhuter began explaining the images he was putting on the screen, it became a horror show.

The levels of cruelty his team have been required to witness were sickening.

“The weight of evidence against the captive lion industry,” he said, “calls for its closure. It is irresponsible, inhumane and an unsustainable practice. It’s heartbreaking what our inspectors have to deal with.”

That evidence, he proceeded to show. Skeletal lions, small pens full of rotting bones, water troughs green with algae, cowering and disfigured cubs, disfigured limbs, fragile bones from a diet of nothing but birds from chicken farms, carcasses of lions killed by having their heads bashed in… images very hard to watch.