Pet Food Essay

Consumption in the Pet Food Industry

Facts & Figures

Pet ownership has been on the rise in the United States over the last several years, with roughly 68% of household populations owning at least one pet in 2013. That rising popularity of pet ownership has resulted in increased demand and consumption of pet food. Currently, there are 300 pet food manufacturers in the U.S. who produce over 7 millions tons of pet food each year—giving consumers over 3,000 pet food product options. The humanization of pets in the U.S. has also been a growing trend, making people spend more and more disposable income on products for their pets— it is predicted that pet owners will spend approximately $23 Billion on pet food alone in 2014.

Opportunities for Improvement

The pet food industry has the opportunity to become more socially sustainable by changing the packaging of products to have serving sizes become a more prominent feature. One of the current issues surrounding consumption is that, “often based on consumer demand, rather than nutritional requirements, many commercial pet foods are formulated to provide nutrients in excess of the current minimum recommendations,” which can result in overconsumptions and/or obesity in pets. The simplest solution would be to reformulate the pet foods to reflect the proper nutritional requirements. However, if the consumer demand is for additional nutrients, another solution would be to turn to the packaging to make a vested effort to show appropriate serving sizes for different sized pets.

Governmental Support (U.S.)

Positive Attributes

As of October 2013, the FDA, under the Food Safety Modernization act, proposed a rule that would require pet food manufacturers to write a formal plan and develop ...

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...able packaging options, and have implemented some process and operational improvements to achieve greater efficiency. However, there is still more that can be done to further the development of industrial ecology in the industry. The most feasible improvements that can be made in the near future are to integrate an easily recycled paper bag option for dry food packaging, invest in energy efficient equipment, and retrofit existing manufacturing facilities to decrease energy use. On a larger scale, another improvement that would prove beneficial across many areas of the production process is to have more standardized regulations in terms of nutrient labeling, ingredients, and quality and safety. If any or all of these changes were executed the pet food industry would make significant strides towards achieving greater sustainability and industrial ecology principles.