Time to ban pets? Scientific study: Your dog and cat are destroying the environment

Like everything in this world, there are best and worst practices. The cheap dog food in the 40 lb bag at the grocery store is made up of feed grade animals and can include just about anything from road kill to dead zoo animals to sick livestock. It is made safe for pets to eat by a very energy intensive rendering process that cooks the meat down to the crunchy kibble. Feeding your pets raw food or the higher grade processed food that comes in cans or tubes can cut down on the carbon foot print because that stuff does not have to be roasted for an hour to make it edible for pets.

Poo in landfills is not that big of an issue because it breaks down quickly. The main issue with poo is that it washes into the storm water system and ends up in rivers in lakes. This elevates the bacteria counts and makes rivers and lakes unsafe to swim in under certain conditions and fish unsafe to eat. But you can compost dog poo with yard waste (grass trimmings, weeds and leaves) and use it in your garden (best practice is to only use it for flower beds and mulch to avoid transmitting worms and diseases through veggies, although some dedicated composters can kill of the worms and bacteria in dog poo under the right conditions).

So, pet ownership, like so man other human activities, can have a very big carbon footprint and environmental impact or a very minimal impact using best practices.

the_german inquisition wrote:

Maybe ban reproduction until a person can pass a spelling test?

Ehh, what's your thoughts?

what is your thoughts???? Talk about needing to pass a spelling test.

Maybe if we as consumers demanded safer environmental practices then these companies would start using them.

It's simple economics, if we start buying only products made by companies that use environmentally friendly practices, then these other companies would take notice and change their practices.

john utah wrote:

are you talking about dog fighting?

With editing ability why do you not use it Rojo?

Ban vets? Then who will take care of our animals?

Why so extreme? Let's compromise and burn our pets in our fireplaces.

I'm glad Fido and Fluffy are making libs mad about something or another.

Why does everyone say "dogs and cats" rather than "cats and dogs"?

Isn't this animal-order-centric in placing dogs before cats?

This level of bias is inscrutable.

There are so many other things that are more damaging and stressful to the environment that this is irrelevant. There are lots more, but below are a few things MUCH more relevant to us humans.

Mining byproducts not properly captured. Think strip mining, fracking, etc.

Oil products that leak or do not get recycled.

Single use plastics: Straws and drink lids, food wrappers, coffee pods, etc. Very little of this stuff gets recycled.

All of the above get into the water supply and poison the water we drink and food we eat.

Just the number of humans on earth is depleting even renewable natural resources at an unsustainable rate.

I only read the title, but no I don't think we should ban betting on dog/cat competition. If they want to race each other and engage in fighting matches, we should be allowed to bet on them as spectators.

Lets Keep it Real wrote:

john utah wrote:

are you talking about dog fighting?

With editing ability why do you not use it Rojo?

He does use his editing ability, just not very well. You should have seen the original before editing.

If you missed the original, it was gold.

Edited sentence: "If we are going to ban pets, should we also ban fireplaces?"

Original sentence: "If we ban pets, should we buy fireplaces?"

Then any post referencing it got deleted.

Why the heck would he edit, most likely, the funniest thing ever written on this site?

Since, I saw the original I decided to go around asking random people "If we ban pets, should we buy fireplaces?"

I bet the looks I got from people is what happens to Rojo on a daily basis.

NotATroll wrote:

I don't like pets and don't really think it's worth the hassle to keep one. Walking, feeding, early death, medical expenses, etc. The return on your investment is pretty minimal. Dog wagging it's tail when you come home from work after being left in the house for 10 straight hours? I'll pass.

What I do think we should do is eat dogs (or cats or horses etc). There is a hunger problem in this country and animal shelters are overflowing with meat. Most people eat animals everyday. What do you care if your burger or sausage is ground golden retriever rather than ground Angus. You'd never know the difference. Get real people.

I always appreciate logic that knocks a ridiculous ideal in society on its rear.

That has been studied already.

In India they haven't allowed many niches for defenseless animals (cows are not defenseless, they are holy). China, with a strong central government, has set aside many niches for farm animals. The population density of India is three times that of China. (luckily there is no starvation yet)

India is now taking the lead from China in many ways. (how long before they claim the whole Indian Ocean for their economy?) The U.S is doing much better, we can afford to eat beef and own large dogs.

Did my part.

Good, hope my dog destroys the whole Earth himself. F u all .

Thank you

cbenson4 wrote:

NotATroll wrote:

I don't like pets and don't really think it's worth the hassle to keep one. Walking, feeding, early death, medical expenses, etc. The return on your investment is pretty minimal. Dog wagging it's tail when you come home from work after being left in the house for 10 straight hours? I'll pass.

What I do think we should do is eat dogs (or cats or horses etc). There is a hunger problem in this country and animal shelters are overflowing with meat. Most people eat animals everyday. What do you care if your burger or sausage is ground golden retriever rather than ground Angus. You'd never know the difference. Get real people.

I always appreciate logic that knocks a ridiculous ideal in society on its rear.

Just came a cross an interesting article on patch.com:

Patch.com wrote:

Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found. That's the equivalent of driving 13.6 million cars for a year. The problem lies with the meat-filled diets of kitties and pooches, according to the study by UCLA geography professor Gregory Okin.

Dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the impacts of meat production in the United States, said Orkin.....

And what goes in, must come out. In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts.

The article got me to thinking about other things that we enjoy but can't be good for the environment. If we are going to ban pets, should we also ban fireplaces? I can't imagine a wood-fire is good for the environment.

I imagine babies aren't good either. Should we say one child per couple max as well? But that may not work as we need a ponzi scheme to pay for SS.

What's a good solution?

Editor's note: The initial thread initially had a typo in it and talked about banning "bets" instead of "pets"

Precious Roy wrote:

Poo in landfills is not that big of an issue because it breaks down quickly. The main issue with poo is that it washes into the storm water system and ends up in rivers in lakes. This elevates the bacteria counts and makes rivers and lakes unsafe to swim in under certain conditions and fish unsafe to eat. But you can compost dog poo with yard waste (grass trimmings, weeds and leaves) and use it in your garden (best practice is to only use it for flower beds and mulch to avoid transmitting worms and diseases through veggies, although some dedicated composters can kill of the worms and bacteria in dog poo under the right conditions).

.

So can you please tell me how the world survived when there were very few people but tons of wild animals running all over the place pooing into the streams and what not.?