In the noisy world of pet food trends, it can be hard to sift fact from fiction: are dogs miniature wolves craving meat? Is raw meat best? Isn’t using up meat by-products a more sustainable way to feed our pets? Is ‘real meat’ really healthy for dogs? (Spoiler: the answers are no, no, no, and no!). We’ve dived in nose first and sniffed out five of the most impactful – and science-based – facts about dog food.
Fact Number 1
Dogs are omnivores. Yep, it’s a simple one - but a surprising number of people still think dogs are carnivores that need meat to survive. Not so: dogs have evolved over many thousands of years to digest plant-based starches and get all the nutrients they need from a plant-based diet. You can read more about the science here.
Source: Ollivier (2016, Royal Society Open Science) | Axelsson (2013, Nature)
Fact Number 2
Raw meat pet food is more likely to be contaminated with disease-causing bacteria than other types of pet food. In fact, the trend for feeding dogs raw food may be fueling the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a public health risk that compromises not only our pet's health, but that of the whole pack, humans too.
Sources: FDA Pet Food Study, Finisterraa (2021, International Journal of Food Microbiology)
Fact Number 3
We’re in the midst of a dog health crisis. Vets estimate that 1 in 4 pet dogs will develop cancer, while more than half of dogs in the UK are overweight or obese. Overweight dogs are at risk from all sorts of painful, even life-threatening conditions, including diabetes, arthritis and, you guessed it, cancer again. In this blog, we explain why these terrifying stats are linked to meat-heavy diets.
Fact Number 4
The pet food industry produces almost 3% of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from farming. To put that in context, it’s the same amount of CO2 produced by a sixth of global flights.
Source: Alexander (2020, Global Environmental Change)
Fact Number 5
If the dogs and cats in the USA alone had their own country, it would rank fifth in terms of global meat consumption. Just imagine that for a second: that’s a lot of meat being noshed down by pets. In this blog, we explain why the meat that these pets are eating isn’t just by-products.
Source: Okin (2017, PLOS ONE)
Sources: Vet Cancer Society FAQs |Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association Report, 2019 | Adams (2018, Vet Record)
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