Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog

R3d M3rcury writes "New Zealand's Dominion Post reports on a new book just released, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. In this book, they compare the environmental footprint of our housepets to other things that we own. Like that German Shepherd? It consumes more resources than two Toyota SUVs. Cats are a little less than a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters are about the same as a plasma TV. Their suggestions? Chickens, rabbits, and pigs. But only if you eat them."

Comments

Good grief..

[Anrego]

I think when your ultimate goal is to slaughter and consume .. an animal stops being a "pet". And would sure make an interesting dinner, as your daughter chokes down Fluffy, her pet rabbit.

I mean.. it's an interesting report.. but I don't think anything realistic has been proposed here. They may as well have proposed we treat our cars as pets..

Why even bother looking at this stuff.. there's all kinds of other areas that could realistically be addressed. For example phone books! The amount of resources spent printing and distributing something that 70% of the time probably ends up in a land fill untouched is astounding. I saw some documentary where they were taking core samples at junk yards.. there were literally layers of phone books.. they used it to date the segments..

Re:Good grief..

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget the health of the animals themselves. Most of the anti-hunting nuts haven't seen what rampant overpopulation does to a herd, but living in AR I've seen it first hand. You get sickly and diseased animals breeding among the healthy and bringing the health of the entire herd down.

And I have to say that the hunters I have known have been really good about not letting anything go to waste. They tan the hides, the bones go to the dogs or end up in soup, and if they have more meat than they can eat personally they are quick to give it to the poor, and deer meat is very healthy and can really help the budget of those that ain't got much to begin with.

So I have to agree, it is all about sustainability. While I am completely against the overfishing we see in the ocean and refuse to touch seafood anymore I see no problem with sustainable resources, like controlled culls in the deer population or the plentiful catfish farms we have down here. And you are so right about the increased accidents, as we had an anti-hunting group in the 80s cut down the number of deer allowed and not only did entire herds become sick and diseased but the accident rate down here just got insane, with quite a few in the hospital and a few even in the morgue. It is all about keeping a balance, and since most folks wouldn't tolerate large wolf packs or black panthers hunting in their neighborhoods the deer hunters have their place.

Re:Good grief..

[drinkypoo]

I know this might be hard for people in the US to comprehend, but not all farms are rolling Iowa cornfields.

I know this might be hard for the arrogant to comprehend, but not all beef in the US is produced in feedlots. There are many (many!) independent ranchers running cattle through hill country, grazing them on whatever is around. Those with the cojones to compete for the land with mexican weed farming operations can rent BLM land access for grazing, but honestly this is decreasing in popularity; a lot of ranchers are actually being hassled on their own land by this particular phenomenon, at least in California.

Also, all Buffalo is produced in a non-feedlot situation; they won't stand for it. It's also illegal to give them antibiotics (not sure why) so you couldn't put them in that situation anyway. The result is ranging, unadulterated meat. One solution is to get your red meat fix only from free range beef, and buffalo. We the consumer are responsible for this situation, all over the world.

Huge wastage

[TheLink]

Actually, maybe we should indeed be eating more different sorts of species to help "spread the damage", particularly for nonfarmed animals and plants.

One of the other things I am very disgusted about is "bycatch" in the fishing industries.

In simple terms what happens is a shrimp boat goes out to catch shrimp, and then for every 1 pound of shrimp they catch, they throw away 5-20 pounds of other animals (fish etc)- which do not survive (usually dead by that time).

Then a sardine boat goes out to catch sardines, and if they also catch shrimp or some unwanted fish they throw that away too (even if that species is edible).Then a tuna boat goes out to catch tuna (and throws away other fish). Then a cod boat goes out, etc...

Tons of perfectly edible fish are wasted and killed. Many of the discarded fishes are sold on the market for decent prices, they just happen to be landed by the "wrong boat".

That is a HUGE FUCKING WASTE. This practice should be banned!

If any fisherman can't cut down on bycatch and stay in business, he should be banned from commercial fishing.

Heck at worst force them to turn their "bycatch" to dogfood, if they can't figure out how to turn it to food for humans.

Re:Huge wastage

[twostix]

Good grief where to start...

In EU waters (and most western waters) boats are only allowed to take species that they are licensed to take, and of course there are limits on what they can take and once they reach the limit on one type of fish / crustacean they face hefty fines if they *dont* throw them back - dead or alive.

I was watching an interesting doco a while ago where the captain of a prawn trawler was almost in tears as they had had two weeks of terrible prawn hauls so the crew were near mutiny (pay is directly related to how much the boat takes on) but were dragging in tonnes and tonnes of prime fish and under EU law had to throw it all back mostly dead, each time every time as to take it back to port risked him losing his boat.

So laws and regulations written by "well meaning" bureaucrats mandate that in many instance captains MUST take the action that you condemn and ironically you demand more laws and regulations made by the same to make them stop doing what the first set of laws forces them to do in the first place!

Nothings ever so simple as "they should just make a law". In this case they did, because people like you demanded that what they catch and how much they catch be regulated...and huge waste is largely a (now mandated by law) "unintended" consequence like the captains said it would be.

Not to mention, who are you to force anyone to do anything? They're supposedly free men who own fishing boats and catch fish. If you don't like it don't buy their fish or pay more for pet food so it doesn't *cost them* money to bring in junk fish just so you can feed your dog. Truly I hate to sound like a libertarian but you throwing around like phrases like "force them to turn their "bycatch" to dogfood," makes you look like an mini fascist. Just because they own a boat and supply something that you rely on doesn't suddenly make them your personal slaves. Tell us what industry you're in so we can start discussing "forcing" you to do various things that cost you huge sums of money just to satisfy our own personal attitudes.