Dec 22, 2009 2
Could Fido be more of a tax on the environment than your SUV?

According to a book by two researchers from New Zealand, because of what they eat, dogs have larger carbon footprints than SUVs.
Researchers Robert and Brenda Vale studied the composition of the most popular dog foods and found that the land it takes to produce all of the meat and grains is larger than the land it takes to produce the energy to fuel an SUV.
The book “Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living,” has gotten a lot of buzz. While the title may be provocative, the researchers don’t exactly suggest eating your pup, rather changing its diet to reflect a more sustainable food regimen.
However, they say a more eco-friendly pet choice would be a rabbit or a chicken. They find it socially acceptable to eat those pets.
But the book has left a lot of dog lovers and environmental types snarling over what they call shoddy figures.
The Vales say a typical medium sized dog eats 360 pounds of meat and 209 pounds of “cereals” each year, using about 2.07 acres of land. The SUV (they used a Toyota Land Cruiser) driving about 6,200 miles a year uses 1.01 acres of land.
But Clark Williams-Derry, director of research for the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit research center focusing on a sustainable economy and lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest, points to U.S. Department of Energy numbers that show that Americans drive our SUVs about 13,700 miles a year. He also says the energy consumed, plus what it takes to produce the gas and the car, are underestimated.
Then there’s the issue of the dog data. According to a study done by the Animal Protection Institute, a nonprofit animal advocacy group, dog food is made up from the scraps of human food — the stuff we wouldn’t deign to eat.
Pet food provides a place for slaughterhouse waste and grains considered “unfit for human consumption” to be turned into profit. This waste includes cow tongues, esophagi, and possibly diseased and cancerous meat. The “whole grains” used have had the starch removed and the oil extracted — usually by chemical processing — for vegetable oil, or they are the hulls and other remnants from the milling process.
Williams-Derry says that because most of what dogs eat are the scraps of what we eat, considering the carbon footprint of their food as completely additional to ours is inaccurate. He recognizes that dogs do have an environmental impact - just as SUVs do, but he takes issue with the Vales’ suggestion that owning an SUV isn’t so bad for the planet.
He says the idea that dogs are worse than SUVs is invalid. It might be time to put that idea to sleep.

Not that you would do this, dear readers, but the 


What do you get when you cross 
