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According to their figures, feeding a medium-sized dog for a year has twice the environmental impact of driving a luxury SUV for 10,000 kilometres.
The Vales based their calculations on the amount of acreage needed to sustain the dog's diet of 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals in a year – both figures measuring food weight before it is dried and processed into kibbles.
The Vales based much of their research on work done at the University of British Columbia in the early '90s. Researchers there created the framework to gauge a person's ecological footprint. Called a "global hectare," it measures how much useful land each of us – and now our pets – use to sustain our lifestyles.
According to the Vales' inputs, your chowhound requires the produce of 0.84 global hectares (gha) to sustain him for one year – either as food or feed for livestock. A larger dog, say, a Labrador, might require as much as 1.1 gha of space.
A Toyota Land Cruiser, by contrast, requires 0.41 gha of biocapacity in year. A North American uses about 9 gha.
The book’s playful title, and serious suggestion that pet animals may be usefully “recycled”, by being eaten by their owners or turned into petfood when they die, may not appeal to animal fans.
"Some people have said maybe we should eat academics instead," Vale said, laughing.
According to the Vales' inputs, your chowhound requires the produce of 0.84 global hectares (gha) to sustain him for one year – either as food or feed for livestock. A larger dog, say, a Labrador, might require as much as 1.1 gha of space.
Originally posted by kommunist
"Some people have said maybe we should eat academics instead," Vale said, laughing.
In the case of these two academics, I would have to agree.
The saddest part of this article is that theses people have actually stopped keeping cats. I had to go back to read that to make sure I'd remembered it right.