Fido gets a full tummy

 Even from a distance the barking is hard to ignore. Around a dozen owners and their dogs are waiting outside an old refuge in the Berlin district of Baumschulenweg for the pet food bank to open.

They’ve come from all over the city and arrive much too early – it’s a very popular place.

“Sometimes people wait for an hour in the queue,” says the food bank’s director, Linda Oldenburg.

Every two weeks, together with other volunteers, Oldenburg distributes food and accessories to animal owners who cannot afford to look after their pets.

“Around 220 owners come every time, on average they’ve got two animals,” says Oldenburg. It’s usually dogs, but also cats, rodents, birds and some exotic animals.

The owners can also take their animals to see a vet at a reduced price.

There are pet food banks everywhere, even in richer cities like Munich and Hamburg, and they work along similar principles to food banks aimed at people: Volunteers collect donations and distribute them to the needy. That usually means pensioners, the unemployed, the chronically ill and the disabled.

“Unfortunately we’re seeing a rising trend. More and more people need our support,” says Andrea de Mello, a director of the board of the Munich food bank.

Many owners are despairing, she says, worried that they might have to give up their animals because they can no longer afford them.

“For many of them their animal is their last remaining friend,” adds de Mello.

Pet food banks originated in the Brandenburg town of Rathenow, which founded the Association of Pet Food Banks Germany in 2006 and coordinated them from there.

But most of the distribution points, including those in Berlin and Munich, have now separated themselves from it. That’s because state prosecutors in Potsdam have been investigating its former chairwoman on suspicion of fraud since 2013.

The former chairwoman, who was unavailable for interview for this feature, has already been interrogated but the investigations are continuing because more bank statements have come to light, a spokesman said, declining to add more.

At the moment Juergen Degenkolbe is acting chairman of the association. Between 2012 and 2013 he was cash auditor at Pet Food Banks Germany.

“It was then that I noticed certain inconsistencies,” he says. When they couldn’t be cleared up internally he went to the police.

The case concerns the embezzlement of donations to the association.

“It’s a shame that it got so out of control,” says Degenkolbe. He says only two of the 18 food banks now belong to the association.

But independence means fundraising has become easier, says Oldenburg. The Berlin food bank collects and donates around 2.5 tonnes of pet food every month.

That includes tinned and dry food, as well as treats and expensive pet foods for animals with diabetes or sensitive stomachs.

The donations come from collection boxes in zoos and pet stores as well as from online orders by supporters who choose from a wish list put up by the food bank.

“We buy what we don’t get with the donated money,” says Oldenburg. 

She is keen to emphasise that those who acquire a pet when they’re already in financial difficulty are irresponsible.

The food bank wasn’t set up to help those owners: “We only support people, who already had an animal before they became needy,” she says.

Edeltraut P, who is on benefits and from the Berlin suburb of Spandau, is one of those people. “I buy food but it’s not enough for my dog,” she says.

She also comes because the vet cuts her 13-year-old border collie Judy’s nails for 3.40 euros (Bt120) instead of the usual eight. 

But Stefan Selke, a professor of social change in Furtwangen, is doubtful that the food banks do anything to fight poverty.

Looking at the food banks springing up everywhere for both animals and people, he talks of the “food bankization of society.”

“These moral businesses market a good feeling for the rest of the society, which tells them that the affected people are being helped and that there’s nothing more to do,” he says.

“That leads to people feeling unconcerned by the problem and distracts from the responsibility of the state,” he adds.

But, he says, that fits an era in which people are more concerned about the symptoms than the actual problem.