Researchers at Griffith University suggest that transitioning pets to vegan diets could have significant environmental benefits. While it may take some time for pets to adapt, the potential positive impact on the environment is a compelling reason to consider such a change.
Livestock industry has detrimental impact on environment
The livestock industry’s environmental impact is well-known, with significant land, water, and pollution effects. Past research has mainly explored how livestock affects human diets, neglecting the dietary impact of pet cats and dogs. Recent studies suggest that vegan diets, without meat, eggs, or dairy, can be safe and nutritionally sound for dogs and cats, potentially offering similar health benefits to meat-based diets.
Prof. Andrew Knight conducted a study to assess the potential advantages of cats and dogs in the U.S. and worldwide switching to vegan diets. He utilized pet population data from 2020 for the U.S. and a 2018 global dataset, incorporating prior research and government databases.
The estimates indicate that cats and dogs in the US consume approximately 20% of the livestock consumed by humans and 10% globally. If all American cats and dogs switched to a vegan diet, it could potentially save around 2 billion land-based livestock animals from annual slaughter. This number increases to 7 billion if all dogs and cats worldwide adopt a vegan diet, not including the additional billions of aquatic animals that would also benefit.
Switching to vegan diet has many environmental benefits
The study suggests that switching to a vegan diet for pets could have significant environmental benefits, including reducing land and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, biocide usage, and other pollutants. If all dogs and cats went vegan, it would free up land areas larger than Saudi Arabia and Germany, respectively.
Similarly, if all humans adopted a vegan diet, it could save land equivalent to Russia and India combined. Furthermore, the shift to vegan diets for all dogs and cats would result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions greater than the total emissions of the United Kingdom for dogs and Israel for cats.
