Gregory S. Okin
Published: August 2, 2017
Abstract
In the US, there are more than 163 million dogs and cats that consume, as a significant portion of their diet, animal products and therefore potentially constitute a considerable dietary footprint. Here, the energy and animal-derived product consumption of these pets in the US is evaluated for the first time, as are the environmental impacts from the animal products fed to them, including feces production. In the US, dogs and cats consume about 19% ± 2% of the amount of dietary energy that humans do (203 ± 15 PJ yr-1 vs. 1051 ± 9 PJ yr-1) and 33% ± 9% of the animal-derived energy (67 ± 17 PJ yr-1 vs. 206 ± 2 PJ yr-1). They produce about 30% ± 13%, by mass, as much feces as Americans (5.1 ± Tg yr-1 vs. 17.2 Tg yr-1), and through their diet, constitute about 25–30% of the environmental impacts from animal production in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuel, phosphate, and biocides. Dog and cat animal product consumption is responsible for release of up to 64 ± 16 million tons CO2-equivalent methane and nitrous oxide, two powerful greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Americans are the largest pet owners in the world, but the tradition of pet ownership in the US has considerable costs. As pet ownership increases in some developing countries, especially China, and trends continue in pet food toward higher content and quality of meat, globally, pet ownership will compound the environmental impacts of human dietary choices. Reducing the rate of dog and cat ownership, perhaps in favor of other pets that offer similar health and emotional benefits would considerably reduce these impacts. Simultaneous industry-wide efforts to reduce overfeeding, reduce waste, and find alternative sources of protein will also reduce these impacts.
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Citation: Okin GS (2017) Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats. PLoS ONE 12(8): e0181301. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301
Editor: Mathew S. Crowther, University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Received: August 25, 2016; Accepted: June 14, 2017; Published: August 2, 2017
Copyright: © 2017 Gregory S. Okin. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files, including the URLs for the databases used for the study. The URLs for these databases are: http://www.census.gov/popclock/; https://www.akc.org/reg/dogreg_stats.cfm; http://www.petcarerx.com/article/dog-breed-weight-chart/267; http://www.statista.com/statistics/188670/top-dry-dog-food-brands-in-the-united-states/; http://www.statista.com/statistics/197947/symphonyiri-tracked-dollar-sales-of-dog-food-in-the-us/; http://www.statista.com/statistics/254171/market-share-of-the-leading-dry-cat-food-brands-in-the-us/; https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system/; http://www.census.gov/popest/data/state/totals/2015/; http://faostat.fao.org/.
Funding: This study was done without extramural or intramural funds besides those used for the normal salary of the author.
Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction
Dietary choices have considerable impacts on environmental sustainability [1]. Compared to a plant-based diet, a meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides, and waste. With over 7 billion human beings on the planet, increasing attention has been paid to the environmental effects of peoples’ diets, with some predicting a 100–110% increase in demand for agricultural production by 2050, which could require ~ 1 billion hectares to be cleared globally for agriculture [2]. Meat consumption, already high in developed nations, is increasing in developing nations as the standard of living increases [1, 3–5]. In addition to requiring greater land compared to plant crops to produce equivalent protein energy, and contributing to soil erosion, animal production has considerably greater impacts on water use, fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emission, fertilizer use, and pesticide use [2–7]. Despite the fact that more than 60% of US households have pets [8], these consumers of agricultural products are rarely included in calculations of the environmental impact of dietary choices.
Given the significant environmental impact of meat production, the contributions of our omnivorous and carnivorous pets deserve special attention. The US has the largest population of pet dogs and cats globally, with an estimated 77.8 million dogs and 85.6 million cats in 2015 [8]. The consequences of these animals on wildlife and water quality have been investigated, with studies showing considerable impacts on carbon usage [9, 10], water quality [11–14], disease [15–18] and wildlife [19–21]
Here, the contribution of dogs and cats to total US energy and meat consumption and the environmental impact of that meat consumption, including the production of feces, is considered. The goal of the study is to understand the scale of these animals’ dietary needs in relation to those of Americans. The number of dog- and cat-owning households is increasing in the US [8], and at the same time there is an increasing trend in the “humanization” of pets and pet products [22, 23]. As a possible consequence, there is a trend toward increasing meat quantity and quality in pet foods, which results in further increases in consumption of animal products by pets. There is evidence that this trend may continue as younger people are more likely to purchase premium pet food that includes more desirable cuts of meat [24]. Globally, the increasing pet ownership in developing countries [25, 26] may serve to increase the potential environmental impacts of pet dogs and cats.
Methods and results
Total energy consumed
Energy consumption was calculated as: (1)where
is the total energy consumed annually,
is the per-capital annual consumption, and N is the number of individuals.
was calculated separately for humans, dogs, and cats.
The Census Bureau estimates that the total population of the US was 321 million in 2015, with roughly equal proportions of men and women [27] (Table 1). The USDA Agricultural Research Service estimates that on average, US males (age 2+) consume 10,330 ± 91 kJ d-1 (2,469 ± 81 kcal d-1) and US females (age 2+) consume 7,607 ± 64 kJ d-1 (1,817 ± 15 kcal d-1). Therefore, the average daily energy consumption for both males and females is 8,966 ± 155 kJ d-1 (2,143 ± 37 kcal d-1) [28]. Using Eq 1, these estimates result in a total human energy intake of 1,051 ± 9 PJ y-1.
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Table 1. Population and energy requirements of US people, dogs, and cats.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301.t001
The American Pet Products Association (APPA) estimates that there were 77.8 million dog and 85.6 million cats owned as pets in the United States in 2015 (Table 1) [8]. Dogs’ energy requirements are taken as ~544 kJ (kg BW)-0.75 d-1 [29]. Dogs’ body weight (BW) varies greatly by breed. To estimate the average BW of dogs, the average weight of the American Kennel Club (AKC)’s list of the 10 most popular dog breeds in the US was used [30]. Average breed weights were taken either from the AKC or other sources [31]. This resulted in an average US dog BW of 22 kg. The standard deviation of the average breed weights represents the variability among breeds, rather than uncertainty in the average dog weight and is therefore inappropriate for the uncertainty analysis done here. To estimate the uncertainty in the average dog weight, data from Meyer et al. [32] were taken for 10 breeds of different sizes. For each breed, Meyer et al. [32] reports the mass and standard deviation of the samples (n = 4 to 9). The standard deviation was regressed against the mass (r2 = 0.87) and standard deviation at 22 kg was estimated as 1.2 kg. Therefore, the estimated average US dog BW that will be used hereafter is 22 ± 1.2 kg giving an average energy requirement of 5,594 ± 443 kJ d-1 (1337 ± 106 kcal d-1). Multiplied by the estimated number of owned dogs in the US (Eq 1), this results in an estimate of 159 ± 13 PJ y-1 consumed by dogs [29].
Cats require ~544 kJ (kg BW)-0.67 d-1 energy [29]. The body weight of cats varies less than that of dogs, so the average and standard deviation of cat weight in Bermingham et al. [33] (4.2 ± 0.2 kg) were used to represent average cat weight, resulting in a total cat energy requirement of 1,426 ± 79 kJ d-1 (341 ± 19 kcal d-1). Multiplied by the estimated number of owned cats in the US (Eq 1), this results in an estimate of 45 ± 2.5 PJ y-1 consumed.
The proportion of the dietary energy in the US consumed by dogs and cats was calculated as the sum of the energy consumed by dogs and cats (203 ± 15 PJ y-1) divided by human energy intake (1051 ± 9 PJ y-1), with the result that dogs and cats consume about 19.4 ± 1.6% of the energy that humans in America do (Table 1).
Energy from animal sources
For humans, the fraction of energy that is derived from animal sources, FA, can be calculated as: (2)where EA,C is the energy consumed by humans from animal sources (subscript A). EA,C can be calculated from data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Table 2): the total amount of red meat (including beef, veal, pork, and lamb), poultry (including chicken and turkey) and fish (including fish and shellfish) eaten by each Americans is 59.6 kg yr-1. Given the energy density of each food used by the USDA (Table 2), and with the conservative assumption that this meat provides the only animal-derived energy consumed by Americans, it is calculated that Americans consume 206 PJ yr-1 from animal sources, which constitutes 20% of their total energy intake.
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Table 2. Per capita meat consumption in the US.
Data from [28]. Uncertainty not available.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301.t002
For dogs and cats, direct data on consumption is not available and therefore FA cannot be calculated directly using Eq 2. Instead, new calculations must be made based on available data: ingredient lists for dog and cat foods and the composition of these ingredients in terms of substrates which have well-known energy densities (i.e., Atwater factors for protein, carbohydrate, and fat).
To do this, the ingredient lists for individual pet foods were used. Individual ingredients were considered in terms of the content of energy-providing substrates, protein, fat, and carbohydrate and non-energy providing components like water, ash, and fiber. Compositional data analysis is required for these calculations because the substrate components must sum to unity [34]. For a particular pet food, m, the center (analogous to the arithmetic mean) dry mass fraction of substrate k (protein, fat, carbohydrate, other), expressed as average grams of k per gram of m, was calculated as the closed geometric mean: (3)where
is the mass fraction of substrate k in one of the first five ingredients, i, in a particular food (i.e., grams of k per gram of i). For these calculations, the category ‘other’ was included to provide closure [35], that is, so that the fractions of all categories would sum to unity.
was estimated for each ingredient by equating it with a general ingredient category for which substrate content is available (Table 3) [29, 36].
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Table 3. Simplified ingredient list including dry matter content and content of protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
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Similarly, the average dry mass fraction of animal-derived substrate k for a particular food (i.e., average grams of animal-derived k per gram of m) was calculated as the closed geometric mean: (4)where
is the mass fraction of animal-derived substrate k in one of the first five ingredients, i, in a particular food (Table 3 asterisks indicate animal-derived). For these calculations, the same approach was used in calculation of
, except non-animal derived protein, fat, and carbohydrates were added to the ‘other’ category to maintain closure.
and
are (geometric) average mass fractions and therefore explicitly assume that the first five ingredients in a food are present in equal proportions and that they constitute nearly all of the mass of pet food m. This assumption is wrong, but conservative, as explained below. Uncertainty in
was calculated as the variance across all m for each substrate k [35].
The fraction of energy derived from animal products in a food m (animal-derived joules per total joules) was calculated as: (5)where Ek is the energy density of the substrates (i.e., Atwater factors: Eprotein = Ecarbohydrate = 4J/g, EFat = 9 J/g [29]). Eother was set to zero in for both total and animal-derived calculations. In the former case, water, ash, and fiber, which provide no dietary energy, comprised the ‘other’ category. In the latter, ‘other’ contained water, ash, and fiber as well as non-animal derived protein, fat, and carbohydrates, on the logic that these do not provide animal-derived dietary energy. The total animal-derived energy was calculated as
(6)which is the weighted average fraction of animal-derived energy in four categories: premium dog food (n = 102), market-leading dog food (n = 9), premium cat food (n = 163), and market-leading cat food (n = 9).
is the annual total energy consumed by dogs and
is the annual total energy consumed by cats (Table 1) Px,y is the proportion of dog or cat owners and (x = Dog and Cat, respectively) who prefer premium or market-leading foods (y = P and N, respectively). Likewise, Mx,y is the number of foods considered here in each category. More premium foods were used in these calculations because there is more diversity in this market sector. For dry dog food, nine foods from just five manufacturers constitute 48% of the market [37]. For dry cat food, nine foods from just four manufacturers constitute 49% of the market share [38].
Dry foods were used for these calculations. For both dogs and cats, dry food sales dominate wet food sales (billions of US dollars in sales for various foods in 2012: 8.7 (dry dog food) vs 2.3 (wet dog food) [39], and 3.6 (dry cat food) vs. 2.4 (wet cat food) [40], and thus are more representative of the foods fed to cats, and especially, dogs. The dominance of dry food as the preferred form is especially true when the price per serving is taken into account. One market-leading wet cat food costs approximately $0.83 per serving while a dry food by the same manufacturer costs approximately $0.23 per serving. Using the this per-serving price ratio, dry cat food outsells wet cat food on a per-serving basis by a factor of about 3 to 1. Furthermore, dry food typically has lower animal content (as determined by the list of ingredients in descending order of mass contribution) than wet food. Thus, use of dry food for these calculations provides a conservative estimate of the greatest proportion of dog and cat food sales in the U.S.
USDA labeling rules require that pet food ingredients be labeled in descending order of weight contribution, as they do with foods intended for humans. Calculations were made on the assumptions that 1) each of the first five ingredients contributes, by mass, equally to the mass of the pet food and 2) collectively, these first five ingredients make up nearly all of the mass of the pet food (that is, there are no other ingredients that contribute substantially to the mass of the food). With regard to the former, for marketing purposes, animal-derived ingredients typically appear in in the top couple of places in the ingredient list. This is particularly true of premium foods, where 100% of both dog and cat foods examined here had animal-derived products as the first ingredient (Table 4). For all types of dry food examined here (market-leading v. premium dog and cat foods), animal-derived ingredients appear among the first two ingredients more commonly than among the third and fourth ingredients (Table 4). Thus, the calculations made here over-weight the later ingredients, which are less likely to be animal-derived, compared to the earlier ingredients, which are more likely to be animal derived. Although there is no way to know, in proprietary recipes, the exact proportions of ingredient, by weighting the first five ingredients equally, a minimum overall estimate of animal-derived energy in dog and cat food is produced.
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Table 4. Frequency of an animal derived ingredient in one of the first two positions or one of the two following positions in the ingredient list of dry foods considered here.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301.t004
With regard to the second assumption, that the first five ingredients make up nearly all of the mass of the pet food, ingredients appearing past the first five in the ingredient list are often nutrients (e.g., tocopherol) added in trace quantities. If ingredients past the fifth are not trace, then given the requirement that ingredients be listed in decreasing mass contribution, the sixth ingredient must contribute less than 16% of the mass of the food. In the case of seven substantive ingredients, the maximum fraction of the mass in the 6th and 7th places is 29%. Among the premium brands that were examined, the proportion of animal-derived product decreased as they occurred later in ingredient lists with only 21% of the sixth ingredients in dry dog food being animal-derived. Thus, even in the extreme case, a maximum of 3–6% (21% of 16% = 3.5%; 21% of 29% = 6%) of the animal-derived content may be missing in the foods examined here. Although the methodology use here cannot give exact amounts of animal-derived content from foods, the potential maximum exclusion of 3–6% of animal-derived products is sufficient to draw important conclusions about the amount of animal-derived energy consumed by dogs and cats.
The APPA’s annual pet-owners survey [8] provides data that can be used understand consumer preferences, thus providing information about ratio of premium vs. non-premium (market leading) foods consumed. Non-premium brands tend to have lower animal-derived content whereas premium brands tend to have higher animal-derived content. The premium brand category used here includes the ‘premium’ and ‘gourmet’ survey categories. For dogs of all sizes, the average percent of owners who usually feed these meat-rich dog foods is 38%. For cats, this number is 30% (Table 5).
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Table 5. Values used in the calculation of the fraction (and total) of energy consumed by dogs and cats in the US.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181301.t005
The final market-wide estimates of the fraction of energy in dog and cat foods that is animal-derived are 34% ± 4% and 31% ± 4%, respectively (Table 5). In total, Eq 6 yields an estimate that animal-derived energy constitutes 33% ± 6% of the diets of dogs and cats in the US. This is significantly higher than the fraction of humans’ dietary energy that is animal-derived (19%). Because dogs and cats consume, together, 203 ± 15 PJ/year, it is estimated that dogs and cats consume a minimum of 67 ± 17 PJ/year in animal-derived energy, which is 33% ± 9% of the animal-derived energy consumed by humans in the US or 25% ± 6% of the total.
An important caveat for the calculations of the relative consumption of pets and humans is that the sources of the data, and mode of calculation, are dramatically different. As a result, their ratios may be systematically biased. Nonetheless, the calculations of absolute amounts (e.g., PJ/yr) are informative, and the relative amounts still provide important insight into the magnitude of pets’ consumption.
Plant-equivalent energy consumption
Calculating the dietary energy in animal-based diets compared to the equivalent plant energy required support animal production for those diets is an important way to contextualize different dietary choices (e.g., [41, 42]). Here, plant-equivalent energy calculations are used as a means to understand the scale of the impact of dogs’ and cats’ meat consumption in relation to the energy requirements of people. The plant-equivalent energy consumed by humans and animals can be calculated as: (7)where FCRE is the feed conversion ratio for meat on an energy (J/J) basis rather than the more common mass (g/g) basis. FCRE is calculated to be 4.7 joules of meat energy per joule of plant energy, which is the average of loss-adjusted FCRE for beef+lamb, pork, and poultry, weighted by their relative availability in American’s diets [43]. Mass-basis feed conversion ratios are reported by Rosegrant et al. [44] as 7, 5, and 2 for beef, pork, and chicken. These values were divided by total proportional loss from primary weight to consumer weight [43] to adjust for processing and waste loss and converted to energy units using their average energy content from [43].
EPE for dogs and cats is calculated as 453 ± 105 PJ yr-1 compared to humans’ 1810 ± 16 PJ yr-1, resulting in the conclusion that pets’ share of the total plant-equivalent energy consumed by pets and humans is 20% ± 6%. Because these calculations involve a ratio with FCRE in both the numerator and the denominator, it is not very sensitive to the actual value of FCRE; within a realistic range of estimates for FCRE (2–10), the range of pets’ total share of the plant-equivalent energy is 18%–22%. 139 ± 34 million people, eating 8900 kJ d-1 (2143 kcal d-1) could be supported by the plant-equivalent energy of US dogs and cats, whereas 553 ± 14 million people could be supported by the plant energy equivalent consumed by people in the US.
Feces production
I used data from Lampe et al. [45] to estimate the average fecal matter produced by people as 0.147 kg capita-1 d-1, wet weight. De-Oliveira et al. [46] estimate that cats produce 0.042 kg cat-1 d-1 of fecal matter. Meyer et al. [32] has produced estimates of the amount of fecal dry matter (FDM) and fecal water excretion (FEW) produced by different breeds of dogs with both dry and canned diets. These data were fit to separate power laws (dry: FDM = 46.2 BW-0.052, FWE = 2.57 BW0.059; canned: FDM = 34.5 BW-0.111, FWE = 4.69 BW0.110) and values for a dog of estimated mass 22 ± 1.2 kg (calculated above) were calculated. Results for dry and canned diets were averaged and total fecal matter production was calculated as 0.15 ± 0.07 kg dog-1 d-1. Therefore, the amount of fecal matter (wet weight) produced by dogs, cats, and people in the US is4.4 ± 1.8, 0.72 ± 0.03, and 17 ± 1.3 Tg yr-1, respectively. In total, US dogs and cats produce 5.1 ± 1.9 Tg yr-1 of feces, which is 30% ± 13% that produced by humans and 23% ± 12% of the total.
Assuming that Americans throw away about 2 kg d-1 as garbage [47], if all of the feces from US dogs and cats, not including kitty litter and bags, were disposed as garbage, their feces would be equivalent to the total garbage produced by 6.63 million Americans, or approximately the population of Massachusetts (population 6.64 million in 2015 [48]).
Relative environmental impact
I followed Reijnders and Soret [6] in determining the environmental impact of dogs’ and cats’ land animal meat consumption. Reijnders and Soret [6] used life cycle analysis to determine the relative impact of producing meat protein compared to producing plant (soy) protein in several categories. In separate calculations for pets and humans, the impact of animal production compared to plant production was calculated as: (8)where Ij is the impact of animal production in category j (land use, water use, fossil fuels, phosphates, biocides) and Wj is the relative impact of meat protein production (Table 6). The non-animal product energy consumed (i.e.,
) was given an implicit value of unity. The resulting values can be used to determine the relative impacts of pets’ and people’s diets in a way that accounts for varying energetic needs of pets and people.
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Table 6. Weighting factors for categories of environmental impact.
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With regard to land use, water, and fossil fuel, 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 (Table 6). For phosphate and biocide use, this proportion is 26–27% ± 5%. An important caveat in these calculations is that the animal-derived energy used includes fish. The approach of Reijnders and Soret [6] is strictly for land animals, which have clear land use, water, fossil fuel, phosphate, and biocide impacts. There is no clear way to determine the amount of fish-derived energy as a proportion of total animal-derived energy in animal feed. However, if the number is similar to that in food consumed by people in the US (~1%, [28]), then the proportional calculations are approximately correct. An additional caveat in the interpretation of these calculations is that they do not differentiate between different sources of animal protein, which can have distinctly different environmental footprints. We used the range/uncertainty provided by Reijnders and Soret and Pimentel and Pimentel [6, 7] to provide reasonable bounds on these results. Without market-wide knowledge of recipe and sales data, much of which is proprietary, a more detailed calculation is not possible. However, this does not mean that these calculations are not valuable to provide an estimate of the scale of the contribution of dogs and cats to these environmental impacts.
Non-CO2 greenhouse gas production
Eshel and Martin [41] calculated ~0.8 kg cap-1 yr-1 CO2-eq due to livestock-related non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (specifically methane and nitrous oxide) produced nationwide. Assuming the mean American diet (with inefficiencies) and multiplying by the population of the US yields an estimate of 260 million ton yr-1 CO2-eq methane and nitrous oxide produced in the course of livestock production in the US. The proportion of total animal-derived energy consumed by dogs and cats is 25% ± 6% and thus the pets’ share of the livestock-related methane and nitrous oxide production is up to 64 ± 16 million tons CO2-eq GHG, although this number may be lower because, presumably, there is less waste in the production of dog and cat food.
Discussion
People love their pets [49]. They provide a host of real and perceived benefits to people including companionship [50], increased physical activity [51], improved mental health and social capital [52], benefits for child development [53], and social status [54]. Many dogs are also working dogs and have roles in assisting the disabled, contributing to military and civilian security, and in traditional roles on ranches and farms. Cats, too, have traditional roles in pest control in addition to their roles as pets. This analysis does not mean to imply that dog and cat ownership should be curtailed for environmental reasons, but neither should we view it as an unalloyed good. It is clear that a transition to pets that eat less meat, and therefore have less environmental impact, would reduce the overall US consumption of meat.
The results presented here indicate that exclusion of pets in calculations of food consumption can skew considerably estimates of the total energy actually consumed. As calculated, US dogs and cats consume as much dietary energy as ~62 million Americans, which is approximately one-fifth of the US population. Although there are fewer dogs and cats in the US than people, they derive more of their energy from animal-derived products (33% ± 6% vs. 19% for people). Thus, if pets’ consumption was included in calculations, the US would be equivalent to a country of ~ 380 million in terms of raw dietary energy consumed and a country of about 690 million in terms of animal-derived energy consumed. Thus, it is clear, at least for countries with considerable populations of dogs and cats like the US, that the consumption by these animals should be considered when calculating national food consumption. Their smaller size, lower energetic needs, and primarily herbivorous biology means that small pets, like birds, rodents, and reptiles consume less animal-derived energy making them less important in these calculations.
It could be argued that dogs and cats eat meat that humans cannot consume and which is simply a byproduct of production for human use, and therefore should not be counted as consumption beyond that of humans. To some extent, this is certainly true; humans, for instance, do not generally consume bone meal, a common ingredient. But other ingredients in pet food that are byproducts of human meat production are certainly edible after processing. The argument that dogs’ and cats’ environmental and energetic impacts are obviated by the fact that they eat byproducts from the human food system, and that otherwise the material would go to waste, relies on the assumption that these same byproducts could not be made to be suitable for human consumption after suitable processing. 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].
The proprietary nature of and incredible variety in pet food recipes makes a detailed calculation impossible, but for the sake of argument, if just one-quarter of the estimated 33% animal-derived energy in pet food was consumable by humans, it alone would support the animal-derived energy consumption of 26 million Americans (with 19% of their energy in derived from animal products). This same energy is equal to the entire energy requirement of almost 5 million Americans, or approximately the population of Colorado [48]. If animal-derived energy was converted to its plant equivalent, one-quarter of the animal-derived energy in US dogs’ and cats’ food would support ~35 million humans. If even only 5% of the animal-derived energy in pet food could be eaten by humans, this would be equivalent to the animal-product consumption of more than 5 million Americans, and the total energy consumption of 1 million Americans, or about the population of Montana [25, 26, 48].
Additional research is needed to evaluate the animal content and human-edibility of ingredients in dog and cat food after processing, but the calculations presented here indicate that these pets comprise a significant proportion of US energy and animal-derived product consumption, with the consequent environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emission and feces production. Inasmuch as increasing animal production is a threat to the sustainability of the global food system [1, 2], the non-negligible contribution of dogs and cats compounds the problem and exacerbates the threat to sustainability posed by our dietary choices. This is particularly true given increasing pet ownership in some developing countries, and trends in “humanization” of pet food [22, 23] which competes directly with the human food system [10]. Reducing the rate of dog and cat ownership, perhaps in favor of other, less energy-intensive, pets that offer similar health, social, and emotional benefits, would considerably reduce America’s overall livestock-related environmental impacts. Both small (e.g., birds, hamsters) and large (e.g., horses) have been shown to be associated with important benefits, including friendship, verbal interaction, companionship [60, 61], promoting self-care [62, 63], and increased empathy [64]. For children, both small and large pets provide friendship, love, and fun as well as opportunities to learn responsibility and deal with pet mortality and mourning [65, 66]. For children with illnesses, small pets have been shown to improve their attitude and help them keep their minds off their disease [67].
It is not just what we feed pets, but how we feed them that contributes to the environmental impacts of our pets, and obesity is a major problem among domestic animals [68, 69]. The pet food industry has also started to confront the issue of the sustainability of feeding pets through advances in product design, manufacturing, education, and policy in order to reduce overfeeding and waste, encourage recycling, and find alternative sources of protein [10]. Simple measures like feeding domestic dogs and cats nutritionally appropriate amounts will certainly reduce their environmental and energetic impact. However, without large-scale reduction in their number and changes to the food system that drastically reduces the per-capita animal product consumption, the environmental and energetic impact of these animals will remain significant.
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“…Reducing the rate of dog and cat ownership…would considerably reduce these impacts…”
I have many dog-owning friends who dabble on the AGW soapbox. They won’t like the taste of this.
Why stop there? Pets aren’t the only animals that have a diketary footprint. Clearly we need to go all-in to save the planet and start killing off species wholesale. The amount of meat eaten by lions, tigers, bobcats, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, etc, has to amount to a significant factor. I think we have no choice but to slaughter all meat-eaters but man. To save the planet.
You don’t get it. The green meanies would much rather slaughter humans than wild animals.
“Gordon Gekko: That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs: they love animals and hate people.”
Wall Street
I don’t see how replacing meat-eating pets with non-meat-eaters would benefit the environment. trading in my dog for a horse, a cow, or an elephant is certainly not going to help the environment. What happened to the concern about cow flatulence and the large amount of land required to feed such animals? Plant-eating animals that die and decay, instead of being eaten by carnivores, are still consumed by microbes. The process may be a bit slower, but the end results are the same. So do we need to kill off all animals, meat-eaters and plant-eaters alike to save the planet? Certainly not. An ecosystem needs a mix of plants, herbivores, and carnivores to remain healthy. This is another case of the cure being worse than the disease.
What about it all the lobster and caviar consumed by eco-green-renewable-planet friendly politicians and activists? Surely we could do nature a favor by converting them all to a diet of wild grasses and belly button lint.
They should try inverting the equation and calcuate the carbon savings of “Environmental impacts of food consumption OF dogs and cats.”.
This “deep ecology” thing has obviously now become a religion. The only reason it has as much traction as it does is because the lion’s share of the population now has no screen-based, non-propagandized actual contact with Nature. Should people be parted even from pets in the name of Political Correctness and the non-existent “problem” of “greenhouse gases,” our severance from exposure to other species will be complete.
If the over-educated dingbat who wrote this “study” would like to eat the “meat by-products” listed on a can of dog food, he can knock himself out. Ground-up chicken feathers sounds like the content of his brain.
I know of no animal species, anywhere, which is raised exclusively to provide pet food. I might add, that even in the most “impoverished” areas of America today, the primary illness of malnutrition is obesity–caused by overconsumption of refined carbohydrates, not meat.
Michael
It seems there can be a common-sense look at this.
From the lead paragraph:
“In the US, there are more than 163 million dogs and cats that consume, as a significant portion of their diet, animal products and therefore potentially constitute a considerable dietary footprint.” [Date not given that I could see, but published 2 August 2017, which may mean little]
From http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#top20 downloaded at about 2132 Z, 27 August 2017: – “U.S.A. 326,847,362” – almost exactly double the number of ‘dogs and cats’
Yet dogs and cats are reckoned to contribute –
“about 30% ± 13%, by mass, as much feces as Americans (5.1 ± Tg yr-1 vs. 17.2 Tg yr-1)
AS A ROUGH GUESS, THEREFORE, IT SUGGESTS THAT – IF [AN IMPORTANT QUALIFIER] – fecal output is proportional to body weight, then America’s dogs and cats are about – on average – 60% of the weight of Americans.
Some dogs are big – say 100 Kg, or a little more. Some of them are not big – fitting into handbags . . .
Many cats are small – my three are 3.3 Kg; 3.4 Kg, and 5.3 Kg, at last weighing, for what it is worth.
I note that some human – many outside the USA – are pretty big – I am about 128 Kg, ~284 pounds; but others are bigger.
Are dogs and cats really themselves 60% of an average human weight?
Do note – “- IF [AN IMPORTANT QUALIFIER] – fecal output is proportional to body weight,”
To me, this doesn’t pass the back of an envelope calculation.
Undoubtedly, pet animals consume resources, but this looks – to me – to be pretty desperate . . . . . . .
Auto
keep the dog, shoot a liberal, problem solved
I will have to read the rest of article later as i have to take my guppy for a walk.
A brilliant waste of academic effort.
Leftist climate Nazis want to get rid of pets to fight an imaginary bogeyman – how unsurprisingly cruel and idiotic.
When they came for the pets, I said nothing.
Like h3ll!
A twofer on Causes–Veganism and PETA style animal rights activism (PETA hates the idea of pets BTW).
Lost the ability to count past two? I have been up watching Harvey. Three causes, I forgot global warming.
The more AGW/Climate Change nuts I meet, the more I like my Dog… and given the choice between feeding and ANTIFAkir for a year and feeding my dog for a year…there’s no question, I’d feed the ANTIFAkir to my dog.
I will donate my deli slicer to that cause…i hardly ever use it.
I have yet to find a liberal AGW sort that is more valuable than my dog. Enough said.
How about a study on the environmental impact of studies of global warming … just think of all the time and energy spent studying the climate and anything remotely connected to it and all the billions spent on it in a vain effort to find this elusive global warming …
This “study” should be tracked back to its funding source and whoever put up the money exposed and called out far and wide for their idiocy.
If you’re really concerned about the energy footprint in relation to foodstuffs, for people or for pets, consider the use of corn for fuel alcohol production. Most engineering figures I’ve seen indicate it’s a) a net consumer of energy, b) a driver for elevated food costs for those living in marginal subsistence areas of the world, tending to lead to starvation for those with the least ability to either produce or afford food.
I have done an analysis of alcohol fuels. Your conclusions are correct.
Using food for motor fuel is a true crime, IMO.
Thanks for pointing it out.
The list of distinct and separate idiocies connected to CAGW is astounding, and getting longer by the day.
Food for fuel is a crime! Mostly just a government subsidy for Cargill, ADM, Monsanto and other global agro companies. Its main use in fuel is to reduce nitrogen oxide in the exhaust and improve octane rating. It would be significantly cheaper and more efficient to produce it directly from petroleum products and skip the in between steps of farming, fuel, fertilizer, harvest, drying, fermenting, distillation, cooling, special freight handling, and distribution. The oil companies would d all that much cheaper and easier.
Not to worry. Lots of dogs end up in Mongolian beef and cats in chicken and pork chow mein.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1552482/Missing-girls-body-put-into-kebab.html
This came out a while back. I had been waiting for someone to realize that dogs and cats eat a great deal of meat, often of “human” quality. No longer are by-products acceptable to many. It wasn’t that tough to figure out how unpopular this entire idea would be. I guess believers are either desperate or emboldened. Hard to tell with these individuals. I don’t see this catching on.
The vast majority of meat products used in pet food is what is known as offal.
Trimmings, scraps, innards, lips and snouts and ears and what not, and stuff that has fallen on the floor, or is spoiled to some degree but still okay for animals that are happy to eat carrion in their wild setting.
Very little if any is human quality. Even the most expensive pet foods are dirt cheap compared to most any meats eaten by humans.
Dog foods now say “No byproducts”. What you are listing is byproducts, is it not?
All true; but its easy to put this nonsense over on the urban hipster virtue-signaling crowd who have never even seen an “animal product” other than shrink-wrapped, bar-coded or presented with a garnish of parsley.
Sheri,
Do you not mean to say “some dog foods” say that?
Here is a label from Alpo, googled and picked at random :
“Water Sufficient for Processing, Chicken, Turkey, Liver, Meat By-Products, Wheat Gluten, Soy Flour, Carrots, Corn Starch-Modified, Potatoes, Green Beans, Salt, Tricalcium Phosphate, Potassium Chloride, Added Color, Choline Chloride, Zinc Sulfate, Mono and Dicalcium Phosphate, Vitamin E Supplement, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Copper Sulfate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Manganese Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin B-12 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Folic Acid, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Biotin, Sodium Selenite.”
Lets find out the most popular dog food and look at that label:
Hmm, not easy to find. Here are some ones list as most popular on retailer websites:
Cesar:
Rotisserie Chicken Flavor with Bacon & Cheese In Meaty Juices: Sufficient Water for Processing, Beef By-Products, Animal Liver, Chicken, Meat By-Products, Bacon, Cheese, Chicken By-Products, Soy Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Sodium Tripolyphosphate, Carrageenan, Wheat Flour, Potassium Chloride, Natural Flavor, Magnesium Proteinate, Xanthan Gum, Dried Yam, Added Color, Guar Gum, Cassia Gum, Salt, Erythorbic Acid (preservative), Rotisserie Chicken Flavor, Zinc Sulfate, Vitamin E Supplement, Red #3, Monocalcium Phosphate, Copper Sulfate, Sodium Nitrite (for color retention), D-Calcium Pantothenate, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement.
Rachael Ray Nutrish (very expensive compared to the others):
Savory Lamb Stew: Chicken broth, Lamb, Dried Egg Product, Chicken, Egg White, Pea Protein, Ground Tapioca, Natural Flavor, Carrots, Brown Rice, Dicalcium Phosphate, Guar Gum, Potassium Chloride, Spinach, Choline Chloride, Salt, Magnesium Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Caramel (Color), Fish Oil, Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Celery Powder, Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of vitamin C), Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Vitamin A Acetate, Calcium Iodate, Calcium Pantothenate, Sodium Selenite, Riboflavin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Source of vitamin B6), Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Biotin, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (Source of vitamin K activity).
Most dog food has not just by products, but ones from unspecified animals.
Rachael Ray seems to substitute pea protein and “dried egg product” and chicken broth for much of the protein source.
But her dog foods appear to contain a lot of other stuff like gaur gum and tapioca and vegetables that I do not see in the others.
Trust me, they are not using the good parts from the slaughter houses.
I suspect that chicken broth, the number one ingredient in all her foods, can be made from nearly any parts of a chicken.
The same is true for ones that just say “animal protein”.
They rake all the leavings and rend it down and extract the protein. It is then no longer a by product.
But consider…dogs and cats and other predators are able to eat all the stuff that humans would eschew and be very happy. Cook up a batch of organ meats and see if your dogs will eat it if you doubt this.
Cats, on the other hand, have grown finicky. I used to have cats that would eat table food, but for many years now, no cat I have had is the slightest bit interested in eating any human food…not steak, not chicken, not even ham! They are putting something in cat food so tasty to them that human food does not even smell like food by comparison. I suspect it is an amino acid, could be the taurine.
When I was younger, any cat would go nuts for ham, and there where even people who made a living on the appeal of ham to cats:
I don’t feed my cat. It has to earn its keep by catching gofers that ruin my garden and lawn. I do provide it a dish of water when the pond goes dry. She’s 17 years old.
I feed my cat really well. She catches gophers, and leaves part of the carcass in a convenient spot for me to see it. Or step on it. I’ve learned to wear shoes as I walk around the house.
Evolution has programmed your cat to do that. As an ancient Egyptian farmer, of which of your cats are you going to keep the kittens? The once that shows you that she is a good catcvher of pests of course.
I am pretty sure that when my cats bring the birds (are) and mice and other animals they catch into the house…they are doing it for a couple of different reasons.
My cat Dewey does it because he knows they cannot escape once they are inside, and he has great fun bringing them home unharmed and releasing them and them chasing them around the house.
My now deceased friend, Bad Apple Jones, used to bring in the multitude of lizards he caught for a similar reason, although it turned out he also fancied himself the curator of the Jones Museum of Maimed and Mutilated Animals…I found his extensive collection only when I was packing up to move.
For females, I think it is either a gift for the Alpha, or an intended contribution to the communal food cache of the household.
That should be (rare), as in catching birds is a rare thing for most cats…birds are not an easy catch.
The cat, of course, never leaves the boundaries of your yard and invades the neighbors, tearing up the flower beds and leaving “gifts” for the neighbors?
I have a dog that can get those gophers and moles. She gets them just about every time she pounces and digs them out of the ground. But I have a hard time imagining a cat digging a gopher or mole out out of the ground. Not saying they can’t, I just never heard of one doing it. Not having cats as pets limits my experience with their abilities.
My cat Dewey can catch moles easier than any other animal, except maybe moths and dragonflies.
Cats have incredible hearing, and are astoundingly patient.
Once they know where the tunnels are (they will just be walking along and suddenly turn back a few steps looking down with ears focusing like radar antennae. Cats can control the direction and shape of each earlobe independently at will.
Anyway, once they hear them down there, it does not take them long to realize they can just focus on one spot and wait for a mole to walk down the tunnel. They then pounce by standing up and dropping down paws first into the spot.
Voila…mole fricassee is on the menu.
Dewey does not eat anything he catches…he would not know how to kill and eat an animal. He would likely learn if he were starving.
My 21 pound (not an ounce of fat on him) Maine Coon likes to catch and eat the small lizards that run around here in S. Florida. The 16 pound Maine Coon (only very slightly prosperous) only chases squirrels, for sport (she does catch and release). The lizards eat the caterpillars of the (threatened, think) Monarch butterflys that are all over our back yard. The squirrels eat the food that we put out for the birds, which include all sorts of cherished species.
A proper environmental assessment should include that all of these aspects of pet ownership/food consumption, as well. When you get down in the weeds at this level, you find so many issues that lend themselves to academic studies and modeling and all sorts of juicy grants from the government. They would like to get rid of the pets, sure, but the grant money and employment of the academics is a big driver, as well.
I was going to mention Maine Coon cats, but never had one.
Most cats are far smaller or else fat makes up most any weight above about 14 pounds for a large male.
I have had Siamese that were all solid muscle…mean cats those Siamese, I would never get one again. I love regular American shorthair mutt cats.
My avatar is Jellical:The Little Princess, Killing Machine. Six and a half pounds of Unstoppable Killing Fury! Actually she is probably 5lbs or a bit less, getting a bit long in the tooth, still a mean little beeatch.
Hard core feline.
Can this whole branch of “science ” get any more embarrassing?
Wonder how the true environmentalists will react to this? If the capacity of the world to produce enough food is truly in jeopardy they ought to be the first to demand we get rid of our pets (accept for theirs of course). . Liberals never work on how to increase the earth’s bountifulness so more people can live comfortably.
Warmistas pretend food production is decreasing rapidly due to “climate change”.
They also pretend that CO2 increasing has no effect of food production.
Like everything else they believe, they are laughably wrong.
Or it would be laughable, if they were not actually implanting policies that harm us all in order to combat their delusions.
I have argued on every thread it has come up, here and elsewhere, that these numbers being reported for cats in the US is outlandishly far too high. It seems that my argument will have to extend to dogs as well, if the reported numbers are widely said to be as high as this article states.
Before even getting into the polling data that created these speculative numbers, one should stop and consider a few obvious facts.
One is the amount of pet food compared to human food stocked on store shelves.
In most supermarkets and grocery stores, the pet food aisle is a small fraction of the space devoted to human food.
This alone makes the idea that total consumption of food by dogs and cats alone is 20% of what humans eat completely unbelievable. Even without doing any research whatsoever.
The figure of 33% for the total calories from animal sources (plus or minus 9%! So as much as 42%, they claim!) is even more obviously ridiculous.
Once I read these numbers, there was little reason to read any further, although I did get to the part that they advocate for reducing pet ownership, or at least switching to some other unnamed animals that would be just as good but eat less (My paraphrasing, but that is the gist of it.)
Who could possibly believe this? You would have to be an idiot…or a warmista I suppose, those people will buy any malarkey and baloney sandwich you throw at them.
Besides for the made up numbers of such pets being far too high, the fact that cats and most of the dogs are a tiny fraction of the size of a person seems to have escaped them.
Consider…for these numbers of relative proportions of food consumed to be accurate, the average of all grocery bags checked out at every market in the country would have to support these numbers, logically.
Sure, there are pet stores that sell only pet and no human food, but these are not exactly huge businesses compared to the food business for human consumption.
The easiest way to disprove this idiocy would be to compare the total tonnage of all food produced, subtract exports, and compare that number to the reported number of all the producers of pet food.
Lots of people have dogs, and lots of people have cats…but these numbers are ridiculous.
I will gather proof for anyone who buys this crap.
Did you count in the hundreds of pet stores and the internet sources for pet food? I buy all of my dog’s food off the internet (mostly because she cannot eat grain in her food, but partly for convenience) off the internet. Many people do.
Dogs are smaller and eat less, but remember that many people have more than one cat or dog. Some have very large dogs—like 3 St. Bernards. I’m pretty sure those are healthy eaters.
Cats are smaller and eat less, as I am sure you meant to say, true. But the food is generally more expensive per ounce, and somewhat more calorie dense.
Since last night, I have looked at a lot of labels…most wet foods are about 80% water, and about 10% protein.
Dry foods are about 12% water, and are 30% protein.
Cat foods that is…have looked at fewer dog food labels. Dogs eat more but the food is cheaper.
I know that a large number of people have all sorts of ideas about what they themselves “can eat” and “cant eat”, but these are mostly hallucinations.
Very few people, for example, have gluten intolerance, but lots of people say they do.
I suppose the same goes for pets.
Not saying your dogs are not grain intolerant, just that for many many years all dog foods were virtually the same and every dog ate them. Marketing has advanced tremendously…I am not sure dogs or people have evolved to be more intolerant of common food items.
Just sayin’.
And of course I know that many pet owners have multiple pets.
For any thing you can think of, in a country of over 300 million people, there will be many of any particular example of such things.
The question is, how many are there, how does anyone know, and why are they so sure if they think they know?
I have looked into where these numbers came from, because although in many places lots of people have pets, in those same places many people have zero pets. Just look at how many people jammed into the pet food aisles of stores.
As for online sales, obviously they are increasing, but for food in general, sales penetration are low. That could change. Do you have evidence that pet food is a trend leader in online food sales?
Of course I also know about pet store…there are several large chains.
I buy a lot of my cat food at them now, not because it is cheaper…it is more expensive, but because i made the mistake of occasionally giving my cats certain pricy foods, and they quickly refused to eat anything else. I know I could get them to go back to Meow Mix and Special Kitty, but I do not have the heart to make them go hungry for long enough to do that.
I suspect you many have a similar problem.
Pet stores are sparsely inhabited, and i have never seen anyone else in the food aisle while I was there getting their food.
The same is largely true for supermarkets. Pet food aisles are not a bustle of activity, as they would have to be if that one little section was selling as much as 20% of all the food sold.
And there are no cat or dog restaurants, a huge business that rivals retails sales in annual revenue.
Pizza, hot and fresh, is by itself a bigger business that pet foods of all types. By over 50%.
Cost of pet food and human food on a per calorie basis vary over about an order of magnitude for the majority of common foodstuffs, and overlap very well with each other.
This makes sense…it is all to some degree the same stuff, prepared and packed and selected differently.
If pet food was way more expensive, people would feed dogs and cats eggs and chicken.
There are low cost options for those of limited means, but our pets to a large degree are family members to many people, and they live in the house and can smell what we are eating.
So, there are many high priced selections for people who can afford it.
Personally, i want to buy the cheapest they will happily and healthfully eat.
But the cats have figured out how to play me like a fiddle.
In any case…These number (in the article) are far off the real truth, I would bet money on it.
The truth seems to be somewhere under one twentieth of what they assert.
41 cents per day.
That is how much is spent per cat and dog if the entire $24 billion was spent on dogs and cats food, none on anything else, and the spending was similar.
It seems it may be similar, although i tend to still think the average dog costs more to feed than the average cat.
Trends in dogs have changed…many small dogs are owned now compared to decades past.
What is most clear is that the labels on cat food tremendously overstate how much to feed cats, as the authors of this article do. But those labels are written by people in the business of selling a product…they would be very happy if everyone throws away half of what they buy for their pets.
Look at a label and tell me if your cat eats like that…several cans a day for an average cat, or one whole cup of dry if they get only dry.
Those are ludicrous numbers compared to what cats really consume in a day.
They can have my dogs (4) and cats (6), all rescues, right after they take my guns away from me.
That’s my attitude, too, SMC. I only have two dogs, and they aren’t getting either one of them. They are part of my family.
Does this nonsense ever end?
Not in the near future.
Consider that almost no one has read this “study,” except someone with excessive time on their hands to even find it, and post it here, where we who have excessive time on our hands to contemplate the bogosity of “climate change” (TM) could even find it. 99.99876% of everyone is out ENJOYING their pets without a care in the world! Only leftist extreme nutbags read the leftist nutbags paid to churn out this stuff.
we need some simple calculations here- average life for large dog? 15 years, so if you want to buy a big SUV, you need to figure out how many dogs you need to get rid of to cover the carbon deficit. Why concentrate on domestic pets? Shooting a polar bear might be a good way to cover for a snowmobile carbon footprint, one bear = how many seals or penguins if you are at the other pole. Why aren’t greenies providing this information in an easy to understand format? How many squirrels for a pair of jetboots?
What about all the bison that were slaughtered? how much CO2 was saved by that?
Soylent green anyone? Why do the Progressives believe they have the answer to Utopia when they wouldn’t know it if it stared them in the face?
But places like North Korea and Venezuela are veritable utopias. Who wouldn’t want to live like the North Koreans and Venezuelans? 🙂
Maurice Strong, speaking for the UN, said years ago, “Red meat is unsustainable.”
Given the choice between our cat or the neighbour’s dog or the average Global Warmista, it would have to be the Global Warmista who walked the plank to Davey Jones’ Locker.
Cats and dogs are more intelligent and caring than your average Global Warmista.
I’m sitting here waiting for the Mayweather-McGregor slobber-fest to start and I see this:
5,400 words about the danger cat & dog poop pose to the world.
In 30 years, our children/grandchildren will look back on this era and laugh so hard they might hurt themselves.
Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing.
Wow.
Just how OCD can these loons get with their Carbon hatred? Who let them out of the Climate Matrix?
There seems more maths applied to this than one might find in ‘the models’!!!
I might read this schlock out loud to my dogs and see if that will put them to sleep.
This wierd stuff is eventually going to be called Ozzie literature with the rest of the world having got the memo that Trump shut down CAGW Inc. Catastrophic and Dogastrophic global warming will never replace it, sorry.
BTW, the cats are getting fat eating bats and birds at the Deathstar farms and Solar Barbie sites. Anyway, aren’t they all contributing to biodiversity? And what other kind of diversity is there besides “bio”?
What kind people are these? Thank you Donald for foiling the plan for people like this to run the world.
They start going after pets and they’ll lose big time. That’s worse than going after cows!