Hi COLlive,
A friend of mine went to a farm with his family on a chol hamoed trip yesterday, and he saw some people buying food to feed the animals, some of which was a concern of chometz.
I think a public service announcement should be made regarding this, to remind everyone that it is prohibited to own and derive benefit from chometz even if we do not consume it ourselves.
Here is what the Chicago Rabbinical Council (cRc) said in their Pesach guide:
“We must be careful not to violate the laws of chametz when it comes to feeding pets over Pesach. There is a Torah prohibition against owning or deriving benefit from
chametz, and thus we may not feed chametz to our pets, even if we do not own the chametz.
“Moreover, it is even prohibited to feed chametz to animals at the zoo during Pesach (even if the chametz belongs to a non-Jew) because this is also considered to be deriving benefit from the chametz (see Nitei Gavriel, Law of Pesach, 57:16)
“…Feed available at zoos is often chametz and should not be purchased or fed to the animals on Pesach.”
It’s possibly a “Feeding Fee” to the benefit of the zoo and to the zoo animals. On any random day of the year, say you were to bring your own large container to the zoo and drop your own quarters into the Feed Vending Machine, keep doing it while filling your own large container to take the Feed home with you for your own private use and not to feed the zoo animals; Highly probable that the zookeepers would strongly protest, that although you paid your own quarters into the Feed Vending Machine, still the removal of the Feed from… Read more »
The benefit here is not only to the animals and their owners, it’s the benefit you get from being able to feed them. Visitors feed the animals because it’s fun
Some farms have corn which is kitniyos
give the animals matoza @ 29.00 PER LB. LOL
I was once in Science museum in queens during Pesach and there was a room were kids were offered to do science experiments. One of the experiment was to produce yeast in grains. I think it is a problem. Some lubav families with kids were doing it.