[triceratops]

"The animal parts used for pet food may include damaged carcass parts, bones, and cheek meat, and organs such as intestines, kidneys, liver, lungs, udders, spleen, and stomach tissue"[1].

These are all byproducts of the meat industry for humans. Humans don't eat any of these animal parts. Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved. Eating our leftovers is, in fact, the traditional role that dogs have played in human societies.

Reduction in meat consumption has to come from humans, because we actually have a choice. We can (and do) also control pet populations with spaying and neutering programs.

1. http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Pet-Food.html#ixzz662tVEXrH

[11235813213455]

> Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved

Seriously, just the fact of making their food, the food containers/packages (aluminium, plastics or whatever, not talking about the further recycling environmental costs), end-to-end delivery/transport, all of this has a massive impact, e.g. pets industry in US is $75b/year [1], those pet products and services are generating "a great deal of pollution"

Saying pets are environmental-friendly is dangerously wrong, above all in our current state

Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude), given they are not wild animals participating in the ecosystem (when they are feral, they disrupt it [2]), nor farm animals. Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person, that's still significant

You're definitely right about human having to reduce their meat consumption, their consumerism in general, pets included. That's the key to environment problems

[1]: https://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp

[2]: pets/'feral' pets impact on ecosystem https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-dog-is...

[triceratops]

> Saying pets are environmental-friendly is dangerously wrong,

I didn't say that. They're just not as bad as you make them out to be.

> Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude)...Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person,

So like 30-100 million additional humans? You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footprint you're comparing a pet to. Either way, it's not that big - barely 1.5% of the human population in terms of impact.

I can only think of two reasons why anyone would suggest "eliminate all the pets" as a serious solution for environmental problems:

1. They already hate pets. Which is a valid (if unpopular) personal opinion, but not a basis to formulate any sort of policy on.

2. They want to alienate people who might otherwise be on board with environmentalism. Because that's what will happen if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet.

[11235813213455]

> You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footprint you're comparing a pet to. Either way, it's not that big - barely 1.5% of the human population in terms of impact.

speaking for "First-world" countries mostly. I live in France, there is as many pets as inhabitants roughly (63M-66M), figures say 21M of cats+dogs, other European countries are comparable. I compare pets footprint to their owners' basically, and a 10% larger footprint in developed countries is a problem, even 3%, even 1% is something to work on, there is always a start if we want to clean up the planet

About your 1. and 2.

Not specially, I could argue the exact opposite points in return, I'm just pragmatic about it. I'd also want to address the cigarette smoking problem more seriously (my mom died from that), to ban a bunch of cosmetics, all of insecticides, plastic wrappings... Pets seem like an easy lever to deal with, 'seem' because I understand your reaction, people get attached to them, they react with passion more than reason about it, but they must understand the consequences: ecosystem and pollution damages, neutering/spaying doesn't seem enforced in Brasil like showed my previous 'impact on ecosystem' link. Of course, we really can't put every pet owner in the same bag, I'm mostly targeting the way pets become a trend, a norm, e;g. the Shiba trend, the way pets have become so "normal", so present everywhere, internet, TV, young generation are kinda educated with that.. I mean, they wouldn't really question their existence later or their environment footprint, so I'm just here trying to have a critical, in a positive sense, view

"if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet."

I didn't say that either, I said "cut down"

You were right about arguing against my initial argument about "pets eating one fifth of the world's meat and fish" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#Impact] but I hope you understand all the other "invisible" pollution cost for processing, delivering those food, and all the other pets services pollution costs (vet, beauty, ...). So my point stands with their significant environmental impact, even if pets were fed insect-based food like they suggest in the wikipedia link, there would still be a significant background environmental impact

[11235813213455]

I know that argument, but the more there are markets dependent on meat production (like pets food), the more meat production will be hard to reduce

It's like saying "I just give my throwaway to my dogs", this means you'll more or less consciously get more food because you know you need enough throwaway

Or it's also somewhat like saying, "I bought this mango at the supermarket, which came in plane, from another continent. But what am I doing wrong? if I don't buy it, it'll be discarded/wasted". Similar reasoning, the idea is to cut down the downstream demand so we're able to cut down the upstream one

> that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved.

That's not necessarily true, there may some efficient ways to compost/bury/recycle organic material, I don't know how precisely for this case. But compared to the amount of energy for making and transporting dog food to each final consumer? The latter is certainly more polluting

> Reduction in meat consumption has to come from humans, because we actually have a choice

Yes, right, well the vast majority people have the choice to not have pets, for those who need a companion, they can try with a plant, it's less talkative but not less sensible

[triceratops]

Cool, so what are you going to do with all the hundreds of millions of pet animals that already exist?

> Similar reasoning, the idea is to cut down the downstream demand so we're able to cut down the upstream one

That's an inaccurate, backwards analogy. The accurate analogy would be "my pet eats only mango cores, so I'm going to buy the mango even though its from another continent". Which is patently untrue. Pet food demand doesn't drive human meat demand - human meat demand makes pet food cheap and plentiful. Cutting human meat demand would drive up the price of pet food (because there are fewer castoff materials available) and lead to people re-evaluating how many pets they can/should have. Alternatively, it may also lead to investments in healthy animal-free pet foods, similar to fake meat for humans.

Since you're so concerned about the environmental impact of pets, consider also that for many people, their pets are surrogate children. Presumably if they couldn't have pets they might have actual children, which is far more destructive to the environment.

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> [...] making and transporting dog food [...]

add to this their packaging fabrication (often in plastics), what it takes later to recycle them, their storage, all the logistics (IT, ..)

[eMSF]

>Humans don't eat any of these animal parts

People don't eat liver where you're from?

[undersuit]

Black Pudding or Blood Sausage is a complete unknown in the US. Liver is reviled. Gizzards are occasionally sold in restaurants as an appetizer, fried. We don't need the offal from our animals because we can just buy a plastic jug of broth from the store.

[triceratops]

It's certainly a less desirable part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopped_liver#Chopped_liver_as...

I'm aware that stomachs are used in haggis, or intestines in sausage. That doesn't represent the majority of human meat consumption though.