Quote:
Originally Posted by slapass
Lets hope so. It is amazing we even allow people to have pets in this day and age. I know lots of people are lonely and it takes the place of friends etc but as a society maybe those people could grow up or something?
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The problem is not that people have pets, it's what they feed them.
Pets used to live mainly on leftovers. They didn't mind it, it was cheap for the owners, and it had very little impact on the environment. A situation that didn't need fixing.
Along came the pet food industry, convincing people that their pets needed "special" gourmet foods. People bought the line and bought the food. Now, the pet food industry is worth over $11 billion annually in the US alone, and over a third of all pet dogs in the US are overweight.
And of course it has an environmental impact, too. The meat that is used in pet food comes from factory farms, which feed the livestock high-calorie food consisting of corn, wheat, soy, etc. Those crops take lots of land to grow, but even more importantly, lots of oil - oil for fertilizer, oil for transportation, oil to run farm equipment, etc.
The only ones who benefit from this all are the pet food companies and the farmers. Pet owners, pets and the environment all suffer.