This guy thinks it's wasteful to feed our pets good food

and it seems wasteful to feed high-quality meat to pets who can’t tell the difference. It is, in a sense, a laudable form of recycling.

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He thinks, since animals "can't tell the difference", we might as well just give them the 4-D foods.

http://www.vnews.com/lifetimes/5833274-95/dog-eat-dog-pet-food-not-just-beef-and-chicken


WASTEFUL to feed our pets decent food? Does this guy really think an animal's body "can't tell the difference" between real nutrition and junk that may be full of drugs and other inappropriate things?

Of course, an animal can't tell the difference on an intellectual level. But I assure you that you will see a huge difference in health, coat, activity and general well being, if you feed your pet a better food.

WASTEFUL to feed our pets decent food? Does this guy really think an animal's body "can't tell the difference" between real nutrition and junk that may be full of drugs and other inappropriate things? Of course, an animal can't tell the difference on an intellectual level. But I assure you that you will see a huge difference in health, coat, activity and general well being, if you feed your pet a better food.

His attitude seems to be "it's just an animal who cares if it feels good?"

That's not what I got from it. . .I actually really like the article. Many people aren't educated as to how a higher-quality food can help a pet feel better, so it really all seems comparable. And logically, there's no difference between feeding your pet chicken or beef and feeding your pet cat or dog meat, it's just the ick factor for us humans.

The last 4 paragraphs, are, I think, the point of the article.

I did feel guilty about feeding good human-quality meat to pets, but after learning that 25% of meat produced ends up in the garbage (not even in a rendering vat!), I don't worry about it now. Until we can get a handle on our wasteful system of doing things, I'm just not going to worry about it; any use is better than sending it to the landfill.

Willowy said:

That's not what I got from it. . .I actually really like the article. Many people aren't educated as to how a higher-quality food can help a pet feel better, so it really all seems comparable. And logically, there's no difference between feeding your pet chicken or beef and feeding your pet cat or dog meat, it's just the ick factor for us humans.

The last 4 paragraphs, are, I think, the point of the article.

I did feel guilty about feeding good human-quality meat to pets, but after learning that 25% of meat produced ends up in the garbage (not even in a rendering vat!), I don't worry about it now. Until we can get a handle on our wasteful system of doing things, I'm just not going to worry about it; any use is better than sending it to the landfill.

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 So you're saying because many people aren't educated as to how a higher quality food can help a pet feel better it doesn't matter??

I would never feel guilty for feeding human quality meat to pets. Human quality isn't even that impressive these days anyway. My cats eat the best quality I can afford and I don't feel guilty about that, I feel good about it.

I too think the last few paragraphs are key. I think he was deliberately trying to be shocking in order to make the point.

Seemed like a rather defeatist article, to me.
The writer claims to have been up in arms about what they were learning initially, particularly the dead pets and drugs therein, but became angrier at the human species. It's sort of like dismissing depression or unemployment as unimportant issues that shouldn't be addressed simply because cancer and world hunger have not yet been cured. it's disrespectful to undermine one issue as irrelevant just because, on a global or general sense, you feel it is more insignificant.

Chances are someone CAN'T ensure all food products don't go to waste. Someone CAN control what they feed their pets, however. If this writer was as put off by the industry as he said he was, then he wouldn't support "using the food because it is there." He would be more interested in finding alternatives to that industry, and educating others, which eventually forces the hand of the industry to find a more effective method (to get the business back).

For example, if 5% of pet owners suddenly stopped buying Meow Mix in favour of Natures Variety, how much of a loss in revenue would that result in for the producers, suppliers and vats of the former? Even a slight shift can cause worry for such industries.

I think it's a bit ignorant to claim animals don't know the difference between a rotting, diseased dog and a healthy fresh kill. The only reason they don't know the difference is because it was put in a blender, roasted then covered in other flavourings or preservatives. We wouldn't know the difference either if someone put a hamburger in a blender with some infected meat and sawdust if they deep fried it and served the mush with soy sauce after. In fact, in some cases this has happened, and people have become highly critical of the food industry and its food processing.

I feel the dead animals would actually be better in the land fills. They would decompose naturally and help the decomposition process of everything else around it that might not decompose as easily as organic matter. After all, life returns to the dirt - where do our processed gooes go?

Soylent Green is people.

What I got out of the article was irony: we live in a nation that throws a lot of food away yet most people blindly pick up bags of whatever midgrade pet food not knowing what's in it to feed their "babies." I was one of those people for a long time.

But nothing decomposes in the anaerobic conditions of a sanitary landfill. Everything will still be there fully intact in a thousand years. Even a banana peel :/. And when stuff does decompose, it produces methane. Which isn't good. So it would need to be rendered anyway. . .I guess best-case scenario would be to find a way to make it into fuel or some other useful substance instead of animal feed. Well, the BEST case would be to stop the waste and the killing. But people are largely attached to the way things are, change comes slowly if at all.

I just think that, ideally, animals should be eating the food products that humans won't/can't eat, especially when it comes to meat. Meat production is a huge drain on natural resources; it takes huge amounts of fuel, land, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. to raise/process the grain to feed to meat animals, plus raising/processing the actual animals. Antibiotic resistance, runoff into the waterways, topsoil loss. . .the list goes on. If we paid as much as it costs to produce meat, nobody could afford to consume as much meat as we do. It's only because of government subsidies that we have cheap meat. To feed human-edible meat to animals, particularly "unnecessary" animals like pets, only increases the burden on this planet.

But. . .(more defeatist reasoning), 40% of food produced in the U.S. is completely wasted. About 22% of meat, 50%+ of fruits/veggies, 50% of seafood, 38% of grains, 20% of milk: http://washingtonpost.com/blogs/won...od-actually-gets-wasted-in-the-united-states/ The rest of the world doesn't do any better. So feeding it to pets actually seems like the least of all evils.

I just read the quote and could clearly see bthat it was taken out of context.Vtherevis nothing wrong with feeding cats out of date meat so long as it is still healthy. Do you think us feral feeders can afford royal canin?

I am vegan now but have eaten out of date meat before.

cussypat said:

I just read the quote and could clearly see bthat it was taken out of context.Vtherevis nothing wrong with feeding cats out of date meat so long as it is still healthy. Do you think us feral feeders can afford royal canin?

I am vegan now but have eaten out of date meat before.

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+1.  IIRC cats are know to "stash" their kills.  Surely after a couple of days that kill isn't what we'd call Grade A, but we're talking feral/wild cats who have very short lifespans.