Tainted meat in New Zealand zoo kills lioness, rare Sumatran tiger

Mara, a 14 year old lioness, joined Jambi, a rare male tiger, in being felled by a batch of tranquilizer-tainted meat that was shipped to the Wellington Zoo in New Zealand earlier this month.

The death of the tiger (a member of the rare Sumatran dark-coated subspecies of which there are about 500 left in the wild of Sumatra and 200 in captivity) was a hard blow to the zoo. The blow was doubled when the zoo was required to put down the lioness little over a week after she consumed the meat, which lead to kidney failure. Jambi's mate, another rare Sumatran tiger, also ate from the tainted carcas, but so far has shown no ill effects.

The petfood company which supplied the cow carcas tainted with Pentabarbitone has had their operations suspended by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry pending investigation.

Read the two articles here and here