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Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats (2016)
- eric4smith 6y agoBut what portion of the meat products? Traditionally pet food was made from that part of the animals that were not favored for consumption by humans. The abstract did not really mention that.
- eknkc 6y agoYeah, at later stages they mention the increasing demand for "premium" pet food, which likely contains better meat cuts. I don't think it still would be a huge deal but my gut is known to be an unreliable source and the article is too long.
- mc32 6y agoThis I don’t get. Why does a pet need ‘premium’ meat cuts? They live <20 years. It’s not like fat, sinew and gristle is going to cut their lives short. And if they get the innards and less tasty bits, I mean, isn’t that what wild dogs eat? Like the dogs give two licks about the cut of meat. I’m sure they’d like some marrow. What they probably don’t enjoy is the filler stuff. Dogs aren’t connoisseurs of meats. They will eat any meat. Sure they avoid skunk and maybe other meats foul to their tongues, but cow, horse, sheep, etc? They like them all.
- swirepe 6y ago> They live <20 years Crazy thing about nutrition, eating better means living longer :)
- thebean11 6y ago> They live <20 years. It’s not like fat, sinew and gristle is going to cut their lives short. I don't think I follow, why couldn't their lives be cut short by potentially bad food?
- mc32 6y agoIt takes time for a bad diet to catch up to animals of relatively short lifespans.
- grawprog 6y agoBut the effects of bad food are also accelerated. I noticed a huge difference just in a few months after switching my cat from dry to wet food after years. He'd started to get fat and wasn't really active or anything at 5 years old. He was having trouble breathing, drinking water constantly. Within a few monthw of switching his food, he was down to a normal weight, running and jumping around again. I didn't change the amount of food or anything i was giving him, just the quality of it.
- swirepe 6y agoMy rescue dog was having trouble learning until I cooked her an egg for the first time. It's pretty hard to grow a brain out of whatever garbage she was finding to eat.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoI'd hazard a guess any prime cuts that might end up in animal feed is likely product that spolied in some way, or had son kind of packaging defect, as to make it not suitable for human consumption. And / or, there's plenty of offcuts generated in preparating prime cuts that could still he called prime.
- londons_explore 6y agoFun fact: in Europe all pet food is safe for human consumption. It's too legally expensive dealing with the fallout when a child tries to eat dog food and claims they got sick otherwise. It's cheaper for the manufacturer to just show up in court and say "it's certified for human consumption". It also means that equipment can be swapped between making pies and making dog food.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cgriswald 6y agoPremium pet foods generally have more meat protein in relation to fillers like grains and legumes than other pet foods . They don’t include what we would call “premium cuts”.
- VectorLock 6y ago"Premium" in pet food doesn't mean better cuts of meat, it means less fillers and grain.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> This I don’t get. Why does a pet need ‘premium’ meat cuts? They don't. This is a market exploiting the fact that a lot of pet owners care strongly about their pets' well-being. Pet owner communities are full of people who insist all mainstream pet food is garbage and packaged cancer, and that you're a bad person if you buy them. There's a lot of social pressure - which I believe is in large part manufactured on purpose by marketers - to buy premium foods. Like all other animals, including humans, many pets can get suddenly sick, and suffer a lot before they die. Pet owners tend to know it (even if they avoid thinking about it), so it's trivial to exploit this latent fear - "you wouldn't like to make your pet sick because you're buying processed food". Literally the same strategy that's used to push overpriced "healthy", "natural" human food.
- swirepe 6y ago>Literally the same strategy that's used to push overpriced "healthy", "natural" human food. Would you describe yourself as a particularly healthy person?
- TeMPOraL 6y agoHealthy enough. My non-optimal body shape has more to do with genetics and bad habits around anxiety management, than with not being obsessed about the most expensive granola I could find in a "healthy food" specialty store.
- AussieWog93 6y agoI don't get why a human needs "premium" meat cuts. There are so many parts of the animal that are delicious and overlooked - brains, livers, bone marrow etc. simply because people in the West from about 1950 onwards have had this weird aversion to eating any meat except skeletal muscle unless it's presented as processed food.
- mc32 6y agoTrue. But at least people develop a taste and preference. At one time I ate liver because I was poor. I never liked it. My sibling liked it. One of my relations loved tripe. I did not. But dogs? Until quite recently they are scraps.
- thiago_fm 6y agoPremium dog food isn't about meat cuts. My dog reacts very differently from different kinds of meat and quality, so does her skin. Also I can't believe to your argument about lifespan and diet. Can only be a troll.
- orra 6y ago> better meat cuts. Better is quite subjective. Yes, we humans nowadays generally prefer to eat muscley meat. But other animal parts like offal can be quite nutritious. Traditionally the Inuit, for example, had a diet incredibly high in meat. But not meat as in solely 'premium' cuts, but rather making use of most (all?) of the animal.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoYeah, I'm not exactly concerned that I'm going to lose my valuable supply of pig snouts to the dogfood industry. But I suppose the point to consider here is that some pets are carnivores, and you won't be able to turn them vegetarian without seriously affecting their health. So if we as the human species decide to stop domesticating pigs for food, our pets might run into trouble.
- cgriswald 6y agoI’m aware of a woman who claimed her dog was vegan. Not that he eats a vegan diet. That the dog itself was vegan. That is, of course, impossible, since a dog cannot comprehend veganism even in the unlikely case an informed dog would make such a choice.
- jhardy54 6y agoThats very silly. Source: Am vegan.
- cgriswald 6y agoI agree. Even when feeding our dogs a raw diet, we fed them meat not bound for human consumption or the occasional leftover trimmings from our own meals. The things that were human consumable were not meats and are generally not eaten by the average American although they are more common in other diets.
- thebrain 6y agoSuch a misleading article, the meat producers and processors are maximizing their use of the product to ensure there's minimal waste, that's basic economics. If I'm looking to make chicken stock, I have to call up my local butcher before going there to make sure they haven't processed all of their chicken spines into dog food...
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoThey seem to factor this in, table 6 shows how they weighed it: > the environmental impact of animal production (compared to a plant-protein substitute) used to feed dogs and cats is 25–30% of that used to feed humans Based on this paper: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/664S/4690011?login=true https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/664S/4690011?logi... So unless I misunderstand they're saying it's 25% as bad as meat production for humans. I'm too tired to look at their methodology though.
- hinkley 6y agoHow many pounds of tripe in a cow?
- centimeter 6y agoI assume pets are mostly getting the parts of the animal that humans don't want to eat, so this doesn't necessarily imply that pets increase the scale of animal agriculture.
- whatever1 6y agoBut it does mean that you cannot reduce the meat production without affecting the pet food.
- coding123 6y agoMost likely the human consumed meat amounts will change very little. But let's say for some reason 50% of humans suddenly started only eating Impossible Foods style meat - I would imagine that along with that sea change would be pet food. (And when I say suddenly I would say expect at least 25 years - 50 years)
- gsteinberg 6y agoThat's interesting. I wonder if that is in fact the case. There could also be a surplus of meat waste in the meat industry, some of which could go to pet food if the overall production decreased. I admittedly know very little about the meat industry.
- bewareandaware 6y agoIt can increase, because by selling unwanted parts as animal food we are getting a 30% price decrease in wanted parts. We can't raise beef cattle with no limbs to shorten our expenses.
- cynoclast 6y agoAren't a lot of them 'waste' products that humans wouldn't? I mean, I know Labradors will eat fucking anything.
- unethical_ban 6y agoMany of your comments seem to be dead, including this one (at first). You might be the victim of a shadowban.
- unethical_ban 6y agoReply since edit is dead - I am not crazy. Many of this user's posts were marked [dead] including this one. I see this is no longer the case for posts that earlier looked dead, and I have never seen that before.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m463 6y agoMany pets also suffer from the shortcomings of the western diet. Not that they don't have a long life living indoors and with the benefits of medical (veterinary) advances and attention.
- canadianfella 6y agoWhat do you mean?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tokai 6y agoThe date should be (2017)
- ademup 6y agoI'm curious how many animals are slaughtered strictly to feed people's desire to feed carnivorous pets. And if "extra" animals are raised, what is the climate cost?
- captainredbeard 6y agoProbably almost none given that selling them for human feed is going to always be a better option unless it is valueless for human feed (e.g. cull cattle, old heifers, etc., which aren't appealing in the market outside of low-end microwave meals)
- adnzzzzZ 6y agoI think we should ban pets. The planet is dying.
- EGreg 6y agoNorth Korea banned dogs https://dnews.com/life/north-korea-s-kim-and-and-his-dog-ban/article_722ffd1a-af37-5824-96f9-2445913c9b22.html https://dnews.com/life/north-korea-s-kim-and-and-his-dog-ban...
- excalibur 6y agoAnd/or ate them all
- selimthegrim 6y agoRelevant Bloodsport clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDdmsnCe9_U&t=32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDdmsnCe9_U&t=32s
- selimthegrim 6y agoAnd apparently there is an actual dish in Tianjin called ‘ignored by the dog buns’ named after an inventor with a canine last name. Who knew.
- HideousKojima 6y agoI present this post as reason #5,782 why policies to combat climate change are horribly unpopular politically.
- adnzzzzZ 6y agoYou could make it popular if you package it up with a Bitcoin banning proposal. Two birds with one stone.
- majormajor 6y agoThe morality-based "don't create technology to fight climate change since it would allow us to continue current behaviors" position is definitely one of the more infuriating ones. The damage is the big problem here, not the behavioral causes.
- CA0DA 6y agoServe them Impossible burger?
- qbasic_forever 6y agoCarnivores like cats can't survive on plants alone. There are sad stories of folks who thought they could feed their cat a vegan/vegetarian diet and ran into significant, debilitating issues with lack of taurine. I'm not saying it's impossible to feed pets a solely plant-based diet, but you need to do a lot of research to make sure their nutrient requirements are being met. I would definitely do this under the guidance and consultation of your vet. See: https://www.aspca.org/news/why-cant-my-cat-be-vegan https://www.aspca.org/news/why-cant-my-cat-be-vegan
- buu700 6y agoYeah, seems like a bad idea without significant R&D into formulating a plant-based meat substitute suitable for a particular animal's diet. What I'm potentially more interested in is whether cultured meat will be appropriate to feed to pets, which it intuitively should be if the tech lives up to its promises.
- SilverRed 6y agoIsn't taurine artificially added to all kinds of human consumption products? I wonder if it would be good enough to create a meat substitute that contains everything cats need.
- ravenstine 6y agoIf people learned to love organ meats again, the proportion would probably be very different. So many people, especially in the west, will only eat muscle tissue, and even then they prefer it to be very lean. Too bad for them... more tongue, liver, and tripe for me!
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoTongue, heart and stomach is kinda muscle- ish, but generally a delicacy! Not a fan of liver or kidney though!
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoYes the local taqueria has those in tacos. A nice change!
- ravenstine 6y agoLingua tacos and burritos are killer! That's all I order most of the time now. Some places are afraid to serve it to me because I'm white and they think I'll hate it. I always have to insist upon it! Makes it extra special IMO. haha
- aantix 6y agoI've read they're more nutritious than muscle tissue. But I remember as a kid, hating the smell of liver. Maybe I should revisit.
- powersnail 6y agoTrying them at Asian restaurants might be a viable option for you. They usually eliminate the smell, but mostly use the texture.
- elorant 6y agoYou could try leave it for a few hours inside a bowl of milk. It helps remove a lot of its smell. Then you wash it and cook it. Also, here's a recipe that I've used with excellent results. Page is through Google Translate so forgive any errors. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fcaruso.gr%2Ftelio-sykoti-psito%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=h...
- jamesgreenleaf 6y agoBack of the napkin, obviously not accurate, but gives you a sense of scale: 84,553,674 companion animals in the US (dogs/cats/birds/horses) [1] 12,177,476,000 animals slaughtered for food in US annually (chickens/turkeys/cows/pigs/ducks/sheep/fish - excludes shellfish) [2] So, (0.3 * 12177476000) / 84553674 = 43.2 On average, keeping each of our pets kills around forty other animals per year. Those lucky dogs! Gonna go feed my cat now. 1. https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-p... 2. https://animalclock.org/ https://animalclock.org/
- VectorLock 6y agoI don't think pets are adding an additional 30% to the number of animals killed for consumption, companion animals are getting more of the parts that wouldn't be consumed by humans. If all pets suddenly disappeared tomorrow the number of animals slaughtered for food might go down some percent, but not 30. People talk about how the Native Americans would "use the whole animal" and thats very much true for what happens today.
- jamesgreenleaf 6y agoSure, adjust that scaling factor of 0.3 to whatever you think is more accurate. Also, I left shellfish out because the number is ridiculous at 43 billion per year, some appreciable fraction of which I'm sure make it into cat food.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoYou seem to think society can find no other replacement usage for that meat that wouldn't be consumed by humans, it's also a very Western viewpoint because nearly everywhere on Earth eats the whole animal in some way or another.
- VectorLock 6y agoTo my knowledge no appreciable number of humans are consuming bone.
- nonameiguess 6y agoWell, dogs theoretically don't need meat, so if we can feed them impossible burgers, they'd be fine. Cats don't have a choice, but I'm feeling like they get a bad rap now. If we feed them meat we produce, we're destroying the planet. They're perfectly capable of finding their own food if we let them, but then they're decimating local bird populations and disrupting ecosystems. For what it's worth, the trends these researchers are talking about in the US with younger people having more pets and treating them better with higher quality foods is because younger people are having fewer children, instead replacing the lost affection and need to care with pets. Surely, replacing a human child with a cat is eco-friendly. Even if the cat eats nothing but meat, it never grows large, never grows old, and never learns to drive or require its own separate house. Carbon footprint has to be lower than more babies.
- kwanbix 6y agoWhat do you mean dogs don't need meat?
- k__ 6y agoAs far as I know, dogs can live on a vegan diet. Some even have to, because they're allergic to animal protein.
- NineStarPoint 6y agoDogs are omnivores, they can digest a wide variety of things. You could actually feed dogs a vegan diet if you want to, it just requires very careful formulation to get them all the nutrients they need. Even more so than it does for humans I believe, dogs while omnivores are very much geared towards being meat eaters.
- thefounder 6y ago>> Surely, replacing a human child with a cat is eco-friendly. Well the cat produces only waste while a human creates technology/innovation. Imagine raising a bunch of cats instead of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezzos Elon Musk or Warren Buffet. A cat won't develop electric cars for sure.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoDog owners live happier, healthier lives. https://time.com/5028171/health-benefits-owning-dog/ https://time.com/5028171/health-benefits-owning-dog/
- hinkley 6y agoThe pet owners live longer, creating literal survivor bias in the distribution of food consumed.
- dang 6y agoDiscussed at the time: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15110619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15110619 - Aug 2017 (89 comments)
- aaron695 6y agoI don't understand what I see as a religious objection, but cats can be fed vegan pet food. It's a complicated formula, and maybe it's not perfect yet, but I've yet to see anyone actually give scientific proof that vegan pet foods are bad for a cat. Some had early problems, but that was years ago. It is somewhat irrelevant, the thrown out meat from human consumption is enough for pets at the moment. And all this goes back to we need lab grown meat. It should be priority number one across the world. We need to learn to ignore the zealots talking about behaviour change. It's needed for the environment and the poor who can't afford meat.
- pvaldes 6y ago> Cats can be fed vegan pet food. This is a myth, cat is an hyper-carnivore. They don't even have sugar receptors in the tongue. The solution is really simple, if you want a vegan pet, just have a bunny.
- aaron695 6y ago> This is a myth, cat is an hyper-carnivore. And this is your religion. The nutrients in meat have to come from a living animal. The killing is an spiritual part of the process. You can't just take nutrients from plants and other processes. Many humans believe it's personally important to kill and eat gods creatures as they are gifted to us as part of his bounty. But I'm not religious, these are your beliefs. I'm not here to stop you killing, please don't stop those of us want to feed our cats Vegan Cat Food, from doing so without scientific evidence. They have been tested for palatability, digestibility and of course nutrition. Brands are getting to a decade old, we should know if they don't work. Problems in the past were found and fixed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035952/ (Yes, it has some bias) Personally I think domestic cats should stopped, they cause serious disease in humans and kill a lot of wildlife. But that's another problem.
- pvaldes 6y ago> And this is your religion. The nutrients in meat have to come from a living animal. The killing is an spiritual part of the process. You can't just take nutrients from plants and other processes. These are your beliefs. I'm not here to stop you killing... Are you talking to the cat? The cute ball of lava licking their paw in front of me nods. You've got the idea, human. Now bring me real food.
- GoodJokes 6y agoI see an industry has popped up to vilify everything through environmental impacts. Someone told me they were going to stop smoking weed because of the environmental impact. Like cancel culture, stuff like this is a sign that there is no actual moral direction to this type of thing. Just the endless journey for clout.