Interesting information.  I know there are several brands of vegetarian dog food out there.  I know I've seen some pretty outrageous numbers about the environmental cost of raising livestock.  If people go veg/vegan, it won't matter too much what our pets are eating. 

I will ditch the 4WD King-Cab and my cell phone before i saute fido ...

You could always buy local for your pet food, reduce the carbon "pawprint" by reducing how much gas is used in shipping pet food around the world. I picked up a brochure at the Fair from a local pet food company called Nature's Select. I've not tried them, but they are a local company, so I would imagine that's a good place to start if you want to reduce the impact your pet has on the environment. They even deliver to your door for free according to the brochure.

Oh, and on the topic of vegetarian pet foods, only try that for dogs, which are not obligate carnivores so they can adapt to a vegetarian diet, particularly one that includes eggs and dairy. I wouldn't try it with cats since they are obligate carnivores, which means they require meat in their diet. From my reading on the subject, cats cannot convert all plant-based amino acids into the required forms needed for metabolism, so they do poorly on vegetarian diets unless supplemented with synthetic amino acids (and even that may not be good enough). I've also seen some semi-vegetarian diets which contain fish, but even that is not quite right for cats. Despite the popular image of cats dining on fish, cats really dine on rodents and birds when left to their own devices. It's a totally different nutritional profile and cats would do fine without any fish as long as you gave them poultry or small game meat.

Besides, any pet owner knows the real eco-unfriendliness is not what goes in the animal... it's what comes out of the animal (and all the plastic baggies used to clean up after such messes)....

A real win-win situation would be if I could train my four pound Yorkie to eat the cats in the neighborhood.

I think the cats in my neighborhood consider a four pound yorkie to be an appetizer.  Some of the rats might also.

hhah sound advice shwaine..and it was funny too

Im with you goldi..but if this ever became an option my philipino friends say the black dogs taste best..*YUM*

i remember one night when i was working at the refinery i ran one room and a philipino guy ran the one after mine..what he did in his room affected how mine ran..this particular night he kept cranking his machinery up and down which in turn caused me to run my tail off to compensate..finally about 3am i had enough and drug him  outside..I said Emy what the hells wrong with you tonight..he looked up at the sky with tears in his eys and said "my cousin he ate my dog"...

At first I thought he was kidding but then he went on to say while he was asleep during the afternoon his cousin and his buddys were at his house drinking beer in the back yard..they got the munchys and fired up the barbee..fidos demise was enevitable ..i think i woulda missed work that night because i woulda been in jail from beatin hell outta those guys..Id never witnessed Emy ever get emotional before or after that so it obviously tore the poor guy up..

I cant fathom how those guys think..dont want too..they are called mans best friend for a reason..

augh, wow

(crazy avitar too)

i swear the street tacos in tj are made of dog-meat

What a crock.

Some wrong assumptions, and they ignored conversion efficiencies from the real world to make the case.

Total solar energy that falls on a hectare per year is 14,600 GJ, and that’s in the south Sahara desert. 

Plants capture less than  one percent of the total energy.

Her figure of 135 KJ is the entire plant mass, not the net recoverable fuel energy. Take the oil seeds as bio fuel and the total is less than 10% of 135 KJ. Once energy return on energy invested is considered to produce the fuel for the mythical Land Cruiser, you’d have less than 20KJ of fuel equivalent.

1 gallon of diesel is about 0.15 GJ.

20 x 0.15 = 3 gallons of fuel per year per hectare net at best.

She says .84 hectare to feed Fido per year.

That’s 2 1/ 2 gallons of fuel for the land cruiser.

I’ll keep Fido.

i love smart-math people!  good job donm !

Between dogs, cats, and cow gas on dairies, we are all doomed.

But the polar bears are on the way out.....is that good news?

CATPAW:  can we add my husband to your list of 'gasses'?

Al Gore's carbon footprint is HUGE.  I think we need to bar-b-que him, along with a basket of delta smelt, and feed them to the homeless. That should save a few dogs and cats under cap and trade regulations, right?  LOL 

Us meat eaters are helping the planet more than the vegans.... We eat the cows that pollute the enviroment. This coming from a PETA member.... Only in my mind PETA stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. lol