It's also economically in our best interest to keep feeding the pandas. We're contractually obliged to China to feed pandas in the National Zoo — if a panda di

It's also economically in our best interest to keep feeding the pandas. We're contractually obliged to China to feed pandas in the National Zoo — if a panda dies due to American misconduct, we have to pay them $800,000. See http://qr.ae/N5H14 http://qr.ae/N5H14 // http://web.mit.edu/mherdeg/Public/smithsonian-panda-agreement-2011.pdf http://web.mit.edu/mherdeg/Public/smithsonian-panda-agreemen... . I'm not sure how feeding the other zoo animals would qualify as "essential", but for pandas there are diplomatic (and monetary!) concerns.