To measure the ecological paw, claw and fin-prints of the family pet, the Vales analysed the ingredients of common brands of pet food... over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals... It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares... the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog....Other pets are more "eco-friendly":
...the Vales found that cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares (slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf), hamsters come in at 0.014 hectares apiece (buy two, and you might as well have bought a plasma TV) and canaries half that. Even a goldfish requires 0.00034 hectares (3.4 square metres) of land to sustain it, giving it an ecological fin-print equal to two cellphones...More details at New Scientist.
Addendum: Here's a good counterpoint offered in the comments by Kabbu: "Dog food isn't farmed on new unused land, the food isn't raised specifically to go into dog food. What dog food consists of is the leftover remains of animal processing that is unacceptable for human consumption. Thus the "paw"-print for a dog is almost nothing since they're eating food that should rightfully be counted into the footprint of a human."
I took this issue up with New Scientist themselves and received no response so the least I can do is correct this graph every time I see it.
ReplyDeleteDog food isn't farmed on new unused land, the food isn't raised specifically to go into dog food.
What dog food consists of is the leftover remains of animal processing that is unacceptable for human consumption.
Thus the "paw"-print for a dog is almost nothing since they're eating food that should rightfully be counted into the footprint of a human.
They're also assuming that the Land Cruiser will be driven 10,000 km per year. That's 6200 miles. The average car in the US gets driven about twice that. (I can't find statistics for world-wide use, but it's pretty safe to assume that people who own autos are driving them, not letting them sit in the garage.)
ReplyDeleteRe: Kabbu
ReplyDeleteBut the fact that dog food consists of the leftover remains of animal processing that otherwise wouldn't be used makes animal processing far more profitable which leads to more animal processing which means that the pet dog indeed leaves a nice big carbon footprint.
(Saw this point raised elsewhere where it was put much more eloquently. Forgot where.)
how many land cruisers for a human?
ReplyDeleteKabbu: You're right that as long as pets are eating humans' leftovers, their ecological effects are minimal. But you're missing the larger point of this article: eating meat has huge ecological consequences. The real moral of the story is not "Eat the Dog," but "Go Veg." (Or at least "Eat a whole lot less meat while we try to solve this global crisis.") And it should go without saying that if humans aren't eating meat, there aren't any leftovers to go to our pets.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do disagree with the article's eco-condemnation of pet ownership. There are domesticated animals that need homes. It makes no sense to condemn them all to death when there are less gruesome ways of controlling the pet population.