Fish - Friends or Food?

Zoos and aquariums are found all over the world, and, as you might expect with any institution with such a global span, there tend to be some major cultural differences depending on where you go.  Especially interesting to me have been the differences between zoos in the United States and western Europe.  You'd think the cultures of the zoos there would be pretty similar (western, liberal democracies with long, shared history), but there are major differences.  One subject of difference arose during the Marius the Giraffe debacle, over contraception and culling.  Another is the feeding of fish.

In the US, the feeding of live fish to carnivores is a fairly common form of enrichment.  You see it with otters, bears, big cats, and a host of other species - some carnivore exhibits are built specifically to accommodate feeder fish, keeping them alive and well on exhibit until the predator gets around to eating them.  In the UK, however, feeding live vertebrates, including fish, is illegal is most cases.  There's a bit of a grey area, and I've told that there's some openness to how the law should exactly be interpreted (animal welfare laws in most countries, US included, can be maddeningly vague), but that's generally how it is interpreted by UK keepers - and accepted by them.  Whenever I see US keepers post videos of a fishing cat, or otter, or bear taking live fish, the response I usually see from the UK keepers is an accusation of barbarism, as if we're just one step away from the Roman Empire and engaging in animal combat.

I wonder what the opinion is about shark and crocodile exhibits, which often include small fish.  The idea is that they are supposed to live there, not get eaten there, but it does happen sometimes... but it's not a deliberate feeding.  Does that matter to the Brits?  It probably doesn't matter to the fish, if the end result is the same.