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Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

journals.plos.org

61–70 of 95 posts

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#61
post #35
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Your cat and/or dog is probably too fat Slightly above 50% of US pet dogs and cats are overweight.

>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.

Is vasectomy bad for health?

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#62
post #41
post #2

Clickbaity title. Original: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats Anyway,it's not like the article seems like being a particularly good one, while it cites the concept that meat fed to pets is (largely) not suitable for human consumption, doesn't take into account the actual related impact and vaguely talks of post-processing the non-suitable parts. The IMHO terrible part is this one: >And much p…

Thanks, we've updated it from “Pets consume 30% of all meat products”.

Thank you much!

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#63
post #23

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

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.

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#64
post #59

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]

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#65
post #59

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

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. If I recall correctly, it was t…

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.

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#67
post #59

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.

One can also just enjoy the company of friends and relatives kids and once they "hit the wall", you can just go home and enjoy some peace and quiet :)

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#68
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

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. If I recall correctly, it was t…

Our cats are pretty strict vegans; they've been eating this stuff for about 5 years: http://www.petfoodshop.com/ingredients/

Neither have had any health problems in that time. And their shit smells a lot better than when they would eat the meat-based kibble.

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#69
post #59

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.

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.

Re: Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

#70
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.

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