A while back, an episode of the quiz show we all love – QI, contestants were shown a photo of a typical happy family with 2 children, a car and a dog.
The quiz host Sandy Toksvig asked “What could this family do to reduce their overall carbon footprint?”
The contestant’s answers were “The car must go” = WRONG ANSWER
The correct answer was “The dog must go!”
The contestants had no idea that the family dog, fed two predominantly meat-based meals a day, had a higher carbon footprint than either the family car or the human family meals! We are all animal lovers and knowing the importance of our pets in our post-pandemic lives; giving up our dog is definitely not an option to any of us.
Thankfully for the environment, most meat-based dog foods and treats are made of the byproducts of the abbatoir ie the parts of the animal that we would not eat (not great for our pets, but better for our climate crisis).
The real concern here is the rise in the popularity of companies that produce human-grade meat-based dog foods such as Butternut Box, Different Dog and Pure Pet Food, or the raw dog food companies such as Bella and Duke or Nature’s Menu.
The danger of feeding such high quality meat to even a small dog, accounts for the enormous loss in our natural world’s biodiversity as explained so poignantly by Sir David Attenborough in Life On Our Planet where he encourages us to all move towards a plant-based diet to save our natural world……and we include our pets in this!
