Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

Clickbaity title.

Original: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

Anyway,it's not like the article seems like being a particularly good one, while it cites the concept that meat fed to pets is (largely) not suitable for human consumption, doesn't take into account the actual related impact and vaguely talks of post-processing the non-suitable parts.

The IMHO terrible part is this one:

>And much pet food probably is already edible and serves as a potential source of protein as a food of last resort; there are reports, both official and unofficial, of impoverished Americans eating pet food as a necessary supplement to their diet [55–57, 58, 59]. At any rate, the trend toward premium pet food with more animal products that Americans would recognize as edible indicates that pets are eating animal products that could also be eaten by humans and that there is direct competition with the human food system for ingredients in some of these products [10].

TL;DR: Your cat and/or dog is probably too fat, and you should somehow feel bad about it.

Having worked in a meat processing plant, I can assure you that no humans would want to eat anything that goes into "rendering" for use in pet food.

I'm not talking about offal, tripe, small goods, etc., all of which have markets for human consumption. Some of those items are high margin, too.

There are markets somewhere in the world for just about every last bit of an animal. The only stuff that goes into pet food is stuff that has been contaminated or that has no higher margin use in other applications. Basically, pets get the waste.

Fun fact -- The highest margin product in a beef house is fetal calf blood. It typically goes for about $400/liter and can sometimes spike up to $1000/liter.

The article says 30% of what humans consume, so I think that means 30/130 = 23% of "all" meat products. (Where "all" is human plus pets.)

For the environmentally conscious couple, a dog or cat is an excellent replacement for the exceptionally wasteful human baby. From that perspective, re-directing your baby instincts into a dog instead of another human is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint.

My dogs eat a lot of animal protein, but from what I can tell it's not anything anyone might really want to eat. That or the products leverage old waste or by-products.

For example, fish skin leftover from processing sea food. Cow esophagus. Pizzle. Or the little bits of meat and connective tissue left on a carcass after butchering ground up into a 'stew' along with vegetables that didn't pass muster for human consumption.

I also give my dogs ribs and knuckles, though it's not always easy to find bones at the grocer any more. Most people just want boneless, bloodless shrink-wrapped steaks, whether that's beef, chicken or pork.

I'm sure most pets wouldn't be able to survive on their own, so its pretty obvious that we are putting an inflated strain on the food chain by providing meals for them.

I wonder if there are a lot more carnivores than would otherwise naturally exist (with pets included), or if there is a similar number of carnivores but less diversity (e.g. an ecosystem that would have housed other carnivores is now hosting pigs and cows).

I never would have thought I would see "pets" as environmental argument but its a no brainer.

Sounds like a perfect application for lab grown meat.

My dogs get human grade food. None of this 'maybe good enough for people' stuff. They get real meat and vegetables that are in a recognizable form. They also don't get table scraps. This means my dogs aren't eating dodgy Chinese proteins, and also aren't fat (you may have noticed but most of the food we eat here in the US is terrible for us).

This is exactly the type of debate that makes conservatives question climate change alarmism and shuts down the economic debate. The question should always be: to what extent is it cheaper and easier for humanity to reduce carbon emissions?

The motivation behind this research could be construed as: increasing your carbon footprint by owning a pet is immoral. This is crazy. It is not morally wrong to use the materials of the earth to improve human happiness. If you can afford pet food you should be able to have a pet. If your city can want a nature preserve, it should be able to have one.

Is anyone surprised that having another mammal in your home increases your carbon footprint? Should we restrict babies to one per family? Should we not use more of the earth's resources than we used as of 2017 years after the death of Christ? Is this all a political satire?

This is a large part of the reason we went with rabbits for our house pets. That and the horrifying breeding situation going on with dogs right now.

Article makes many implausible assumptions and the conclusion is too radical for at least the amount of effort thats been put into bringing this article together.

It's obvious that the author hates dogs and cats and thus wants to reduce their numbers. Ad hominem might have been your best friend right here - the conclusion is agenda-based and doesnt follow directly from the paper, so either ignore it or make it so that Osin never has access to any publishing facility ever again. And dont forget to wash your hands after reading his research.

There's a documentary on Netflix called Pet Fooled[1] which covers how dogs and cats, are fed now and the effects a modern, processed diet can have on them.

I've watched it, enjoyed it, and felt I learned from it. I don't necessarily endorse its conclusions, but anyone reading this who has pets may enjoy it.

[1]: https://www.netflix.com/title/80164393

"Americans are the largest pet owners in the world"

-1 No need to bring Americans' weight into it!

the crap that is put into the most of the dog/cat food may be 30% by weight, yet it isn't a 30% of "all meat products" - because it isn't "meat product", it is "by product" like hoofs, beaks, bones, some internal organs nonconsumable by humans , etc... which at best would be processed into chicken/cattle food (and which doesn't make for good chicken/cattle food) or would be just thrown away.

Right. The 30% that humans don't want to eat.

So the big question is, why do some many keep dogs? Is it mostly loneliness? If so, should we build towns that makes people less lonely?

In my view, we produce enough food, that it would be considered toxic if we were forced to consume all of it. Any identifiable chemical in our food, that caused as much disease as the food itself causes, would be banned. To find consumers for the food that we do produce, it has to be formulated by scientists and psychologists to override our natural satiety responses. Some of the surplus has to be converted into fuel and burned, at an overall net energy cost.

So, in this perspective, subsidizing corn farming and drilling for natural gas, to feed cattle, in order to maintain dogs, doesn't seem any more absurd than the food system in general.