Edinburgh Zoo is preparing to dig deep in its pockets for £70,000 a year to import organic bamboo shoots for two pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, arriving from China.
15 tonnes of bamboo from the Netherlands will be imported to feed the pair of peckish pandas that will already cost the zoo £1m a year to look after.
Will Travers, the chief executive of the Born Free Foundation, described the plans as "madness". He told The Independent:
"Panda conservation should take place in China, where both giant pandas and bamboo occur naturally. If Edinburgh has panda cash to spare, that is where it should be invested."
A 10-year breeding programme is supposed to be taking place but the sustainability of it, given the 1,200 round trip required for the bamboo, is being questioned.
The bamboo will be making its way from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, from where it will be ferried to Harwich, before being driven to Edinburgh every fortnight. It will be then be kept in a specially created storage facility for maximum freshness.
British-grown bamboo could not be relied on, the zoo said, as it is the only the food the endangered species will eat. It did add that it hoped to use more British-grown bamboo in three years' time.
The zoo is hoping that the arrival of Tian Tian and Yang Guang from their home in the Ya'an reserve in Sichuan will be a big visitor draw. The zoo is even recruiting a special new "Giant Panda Team" of around a dozen people to handle the visitors.
The loaned pandas are arriving in Edinburgh in time for Christmas, making them the first pandas to live in Britain for 17 years.