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.
> meat fed to pets is (largely) not suitable for human consumption
30% unsuitable for human consumption? This choosiness is a just one more sign of affluence and one of the habits we have to get rid of if we want to improve our ecological footprint.
Go to a rural village in a developing country and you will see them using 95% easily.
I have eaten pig feet, pig stomach, shark fin, unidentifiable organs and very bony meat at somewhat upscale restaurants in China. I'm sure there are some foods that are seen as basically inedible in China, but those do not necessarily coincide with Western tastes.
A lot of this is probably influenced by perceptions of "poor-people food" (like lobster) instead of being based in human nutritional needs. My Chinese friend was surprised when I remarked on the great taste of grilled pig liver, since it was the least expensive of the dishes he had me try out.
Prior to this time, lobster was considered a mark of poverty or as a food for indentured servants or lower members of society in Maine, Massachusetts, and the Canadian Maritimes. It has been suggested servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice per week, however there is no evidence for this. Lobster was also commonly served in prisons, much to the displeasure of inmates. American lobster was initially deemed worthy only of being used as fertilizer or fish bait, and until well into the 20th century, it was not viewed as more than a low-priced canned staple food. [0]
> and one of the habits we have to get rid of if we
> want to improve our ecological footprint.
A much, much bigger improvement (reduction) of humanity's ecological footprint would be for everyone to go vegan two days a week. That would potentially have a ~25% reduction in the number of animals reared and used, and would bring a commensurate decrease in ecological footprint. I think that's a worthy goal.
Disclaimer: I eat meat, but not very often now. I sometimes take milk in tea, but mostly drink green tea and water now. The rest of the time, I follow an Engine 2 diet[1].
If you boil meat to make broth and then throw out the chunks after some hours, you have pulled most of the nutrients into the broth. So, yeah, I would say they use most of the animal.
I know my dogs are. They get lean meat and veggies and very few empty sugars and carbohydrates. They're lean and in excellent health for their age. Me? Very much the opposite.
One thing that can help a lot is to give dogs and cats more vegetables. In particular, they love brassicas, especially brussels sprouts and broccoli. Either mixed in with their regular food or as a treat, it helps fill them up with very few calories - and really good for them too.
If you haven't tried this, I recommend it. Simply microwave some brussels sprouts or broccoli until tender, let cool, and either chop it up, add a little water, and mix into their food, or else take the sprouts and slice them in quarters as a treat.
With broccoli, they like the stems more than the heads. Sweeter and less pungent.
When I give them the sprouts as a treat, the dogs get the quartered sprouts, and the cats like to have me peel off a leaf and tear it into pieces for them. I sit down on the kitchen floor, the dogs line up, and the cats muscle in between them and sit on my legs to get their share. (That's why I sit down, so they don't climb my legs!)
I've had a couple of people tell me, "You must be kidding. Dogs and cats don't like vegetables, they want meat!" They change their mind when they see how our dogs and cats respond to the brussels sprouts.
BTW, if you are used to steaming brussels sprouts for yourself when you don't do something fancier with them, I highly recommend microwaving instead. It cooks them evenly, unlike steaming which ruins the outside by the time the inside is done. Rinse them first - the bit of water avoids burning - and undercook them a little because they continue to cook when you take them out. A microwaved brussels sprout dipped in hummus is a tasty treat. (For people, not for the pets! The garlic wouldn't be good for them.)
Update: I didn't expect this to spark quite such a discussion, but thank you everyone for the replies - I learned some things here. Rest assured that I only give the cats a small amount of the brussels sprouts - the dogs get more.
Occasional greens are OK for cats, but do NOT feed them carbohydrates; and especially do not feed them carbs regularly. Cats are obligate carnivores, and the grains that are common in cheap pet food contribute to kidney disease.
Dogs yeah, they're omnivores as far as I understand.
Cats though are straight up carnivore, and while they might enjoy the taste of some veggies, and some stuff can help with their digestion, they don't really get much nutrients out of vegetables, and a large portion of veggies are downright harmful to them.
Dogs picked up the ability to use some starches for nutrition around the time humans started to farm.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/how-farming-changed-d...
Wolves (from which we domesticated dogs) have only a tiny ability to digest starches.
Dogs that were bred in mostly hunting communities like the Siberian Husky do not have the ability to digest starches well, same as wolves.
Dogs needing bone is incorrect. Plant sources can meet all their food requirements. But the science around if plants can form an ideal diet isn't clear currently (similar to humans).
I'm guessing you're trying to trap me into saying the following:
Why? Because they are direct descendants of the gray wolf.
> Dogs needing bone is incorrect. Plant sources can meet all their food requirements.
They cannot live on a purely protein based (i.e. only meat) diet. They need organ meat and bone as well.
Saying that they cannot live on meat alone is a very weak "they are omnivores" argument. So I make sure to add where they can get their micro-nutrients. A whole prey model is the carnivorous model.
Whether you can substitute that with a plant based model and have them survive is arbitrary. I did not claim that they are obligate carnivores. They will forage when starving and survive, cats will not.
> Dogs needing bone is incorrect.
Bone gives them calcium and most of the other minerals that they require. So yes, what bones give them is something they absolutely require. Can it be artificially substituted, yes.
My Mom is a hardcore vegan. She inherited a cat that was unwanted. Mom was not about to feed that cat meat. Despite the comments here, there does exist vegan cat food and my mom fed that cat vegan cat food for the last 10 years of its life. The cat lived to be 19 years old.
TLDR; it's possible for a cat to survive on vegan cat food (even if its not recommended). I know from experience.
The important part is that cats need taurine, an amino acid that only comes in nature from animal protein (the taur- is from the latin word for bull). Cats can not synthesize taurine in their bodies -- if you do not include taurine in your cat's diet, IT WILL DIE.
This food explicitly includes synthetic taurine, which appears to be lab-synthesized so that it does not have to come from animal sources.
Our dog absolutely loves carrots -- if you dare to eat a carrot near him, you won't hear the end of it until he's had one too.
We stopped making homemade (meat) treats for him in favor of just keeping a baggie of small carrots in the fridge. It's still hilarious to me, but he just goes crazy for them, time and time again. I'm not sure if it's just the crunch, or maybe the 'social factor' of him watching my wife eat them, but he truly adores a healthy carrot snack/treat. =)
My parents had a dog that would go out to the garden and dig up carrots to eat. They thought it was varmints until they caught him doing it.
Our Pit Bull/Mastiff mix will come running when he hears a cereal bowl being filled. That would be because when cereal is served, odds are there's fruit going on top of it. That dog is a hound for bananas, but he'll settle for peaches. It's blackberry season here in Seattle, so he gets a handful or two on our walks. Broccoli, brussel sprouts, I don't recall that we've found anything yet that he won't eat. Makes for low-calorie snacks to put in his Kong.
For cats, the corn, grain, and otherwise carb-filled cat foods that dominate store shelves and are cheaply available are absolutely terrible. Cats are obligate carnivores and aren't built to deal with that kind of food composition at all. Some cats deal with it better than others, but generally feeding your cat these cheap foods will result in it becoming very obese and highly prone to several types of disease.
I don't go as far as some pet owners, buying frozen pet food from Whole Foods and the like, but I do buy my cat high quality meat-based grain-free dry cat food. It's a little pricey but a 9lb cat eating proper amounts of protein doesn't eat much and a large bag lasts a long time. Just make sure to get a good airtight container to keep the food in.
+1 for airtight container. We had cheaped out on this and just purchased some cheaper plastic Rubbermaid-style containers -- to my wife's horror, she opened it one day to find maggots. She was sicker than the dog ever was (the dog didn't get sick and we threw that container out wholesale, food and all).
We purchased an airtight "food container" with a screw-on lid -- from a major pet store chain, and for some absurd amount of money -- but haven't had an issue sense, and the peace of mind was well worth it for my wife's sake.
I take care of people's dogs for extra income. There are two primary reasons that my clients' dogs are overweight. The first group don't monitor their dog's weight or how much it eats. "Just keep some food in the bowl so he doesn't get hungry." The second group derive pleasure from feeding their dog, provide expensive meals for it and, in their enthusiasm, end up overfeeding.
Nah pet weight is all quantity and table scraps. Limit scraps and measure well and your pet will be the correct weight. So much easier than my diet. Wish someone measured my portions.
>Slightly above 50% of US pet dogs and cats are overweight.
because they are spayed/neutered. We've never limited food consumption by our cats and by our dog and never neutered them, and they have never been overweight.
Philip K. Dick famously ate horse meat prepared as pet food at various times in his life. Whether this was out of necessity or because of preference is open for debate.
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.
No doubt. But there are huge qualitative differences between good and bad animal food, by and large reflected in the price, but higher price being negatable by buying in bulk.
Everything sold in supermarkets - at least where I live - is junk with a clear and immediate negative impact on health and wellbeing. Why anyone would feed that stuff to anybody is beyond my comprehension.
Interesting fact, thank you. I didn't know anything about the use of animal blood in medicine. Good to know we can find uses for most things to reduce waste.
I've read an anecdote about McDonalds in the Soviet Union. They were selling meat scraps to dog owners, but they did it covertly, because of concern that poor people would buy it for consumption (meat was in deficit at the time).
What you consider as waste, someone would gladly eat.
I realize transportation is a problem, these people live mostly in developing countries.
Many humans do not want to eat the cheap meat I eat.
If you are saying that the responsibility of killed cow should be distributed by costs and not by kilos of meat, I'm probably as virtuous as vegan with three dogs.
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.
This line seems straight from a dystopian sci-fi novel. A world where humans preferred caring for other animal species instead of reproducing.
Seriously though, I think middle-class white families are already too hesitant about raising children, even without thinking about the environment. They think it's too expensive, and would rather have other luxuries.
The irony is that immigrants and people in developing countries, which already have low resources, don't care that much about status or 'living standards', and are happily generating a lot of offspring.
My theory is that this is natural selection regulating for too much brain size / intelligence: If you believe in the several studies that mention IQ and brain size differences for races, right now the races with lowest brain size / IQ are having the most babies. I think mother nature is preferring - sorry for the language - 'dumb and strong' over 'smart and feeble'. Actually, many people have a reproduction strategy that involves lowering cognitive ability - getting drunk [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778038/ and others]
Whoaaa... i never thought about comparing a human being and an animal on the sole scale of carbon footprint. I guess it's fair in a way.. but what a difference on how much they bring to the world.
The problem with this attitude is the next generation will then only have only have the offspring of non environmentally conscious people.
You shouldn't trade the chance to shape the culture of the next generation to be more environmentally conscious for the short term quick fix of reducing your environmental impact right now.
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.
There were about 30 million bison in North America before we hunted them near extinction. Bison, especially young ones, are prey to wolves and bears. Bison weight about 1.5x cows.
There are about 100 million cows, and if about 30% of those feed pets the numbers come out similar.
There are also pigs and chickens, and depleted river fish/wild fowl populations.
Wolves/bears are heavier so the same mass of prey supports a smaller population. Still, I think we'd be in the same order of magnitude.
Edit: actually I might be an order of magnitude off, depending on the length of life. If cows live a year before slaughter, vs bison living 10 years. No idea what the real numbers are.
Meat cattle are usually slaughtered at 3 years, which is the sweet spot of quality and quantity of meat. There are also many calves which are slaughtered around 4 months for things like veal
Humans in their current numbers could not exist in a traditional food chain, that's why we made our own. Pets live off that same increased food supply.
While modern agriculture is significantly more efficient, the food surplus and over consumption is also massive. So, I am not sure the numbers are that different.
Plus its not like we have our own food chain in a vacuum. There is a lot of space required to house livestock and even more space required to grow their food.
It's not like we're feeding them filet mignon. As the article states, much of the meat may be either not suitable or not desirable leftovers after human consumables are removed.
That's a great idea. Humans have refined tastes, we're going to criticize meat for not being marbled enough, or for tasting a bit "off", or for not being quite up to par. We will purposefully reject cuts like chuck when offered the option of a strip steak instead.
Dogs wouldn't. They'd eat the strip steak and then eat the chuck and then chase down a mole, dig it out of the ground, and eat it whole. They don't have refined tastes and they are able to eat a much wider variety of meat than humans so their tastebuds didn't evolve to say "this tastes a little off, must be poison", so they'll eat almost anything.
Housecats might be a bit pickier about fresh meant but if it's processed into food, again they're not going to care. And by the time the majority of pets are eating lab grown food, who knows? Maybe the science will have advanced enough that it's palatable to humans as well.
That would be an interesting way to fund and scale production capacity for that lab grown meat too. Some stuff is just hard to figure out until you try doing it at scale.
I don't think it even needs to be meat...just synthesizing the raw amino acids would probably be much easier, and dogs probably won't care that much since their primary sensory pleasure in eating comes from the proteins themselves.
I couldn't disagree more. Dogs definitely have tastebuds, can definitely taste foods, and definitely enjoy some foods more than others. Dogs can, and do, develop genuine, strong preferences for some foods over others. That's not because "their primary sensory pleasure in eating comes from the proteins themselves" -- that's because they derive pleasure from some foods.
My dog loves blueberries and broccoli. These are pretty poor sources of protein, and her enjoyment comes from either the taste or the texture, or both. She also prefers chicken to other meats, and if presented with two otherwise similar bits of meat will choose the chicken first and foremost. She'll eat beef or lamb or pork, too, but will invariably choose chicken if presented with two options.
"Just synthesise the required amino acids and feed them to a dog like that" will not make for a happy or healthy dog. It's basically the same rationale that led us to feeding animals dry food/kibble, and that's not good for them. On paper, though, it covers all of their essential needs.
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).
My dogs eat only raw meat. Cooked meat can remove important nutrients like vitamin C from the meat that dogs rely on. I also supplement my dogs with 150 mg/day of magnesium glycinate. I shudder when I see these prematurely aging dogs at the park, thanks to neglectful owners only feeding them scraps.
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?
Another cool and more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional pets are worms. I purchased a worm farm recently for our garden and I've fell in love with the little things.
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.
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.
That's a primarily Western concept. In India, dogs are usually raised mostly as guard dogs and pet dogs are a recent "western-imported" concept. In the Middle East, dogs are considered unclean and haraam.
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.
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.