THE PACK Plant Pact

Dogs, did you know that your meaty dog food is making our planet sick? 

Pet parents, have you ever considered your dog’s environmental pawprint?

Today pet parents and their dogs will gather to celebrate Earth Day, a global call for action on the climate crisis. Now, as we face unprecedented global warming with scientists warning that we’re on the cusp of irreversible climate change, it’s never been more important to take action. After all, we can’t fetch another planet!

This year’s Earth Day theme is ‘Invest in our Planet’, so we’re asking dogs around the world to take part in THE PACK Plant Pact. Paws up if you’re with us!

A quick introduction: we're THE PACK and we’re on a mission to cook up drool-inducing, nutritious, plant-based meals for every dog bowl in the world. Food that’s not only better for dogs and their health, but better for the planet too. But enough about us; let's get back to THE PACK Plant Pact.

The Pact

This Earth Day, we’re asking dogs around the world to add more plants into their bowl. You could start small by swapping your meaty treats for plant-based treats, or go flexitarian (or as we like to say, flexi-dogian) and split your meaty food with plant-based food. Or maybe you’re ready to go all the way and switch over to a nutritionally complete and balanced plant-based food full-time! 

By taking this pact, you’re creating pawsitive change by lowering your environmental pawprint and helping to save our planet. After all, what self-respecting pooch wants to live in a world without trees to wee on? 

If you’re already a plant-based dog, you can still take the pact too: the more signatures we get, the more THE PACK Plant Pact will be seen.

Environmental Facts About Pet Food

Last week, a major new study led by Professor Andrew Knight revealed that plant-based dog food could be healthier for dogs than a conventional meat-based diet. This Earth Day we want to show you how plant-based dog food is better for the planet too. 

It turns out that the food we’re currently feeding our dogs is giving our planet indigestion. Producing pet food creates 64 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year and so much is meat when it doesn’t have to be. It takes more energy and resources to create and results in more waste than plant-based dog food.

Given that animal farming is responsible for roughly half of the world’s harmful greenhouse gas emissions, meaty dog foods are now a major player in climate change. In winter 2020, ground-breaking research from the University of Edinburgh found that the pet food industry produces almost 3% of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from farming. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the same amount of CO2 produced by a sixth of global flights.

Imagine all the 76 million pet dogs and 58 million pet cats in the United States of America, all eating meat around twice a day. If those pets had their own country, it would rank fifth in terms of global meat consumption! Now add the 12.5 million dogs and 12 million cats in the UK. Then the 54 million dogs and 58 million cats in China… and so on. That’s a lot of meat being gobbled down by hungry pets.

Plant-sourced alternatives to meat need far fewer natural resources and create lower greenhouse gas emissions. A third of all calories in the crops we grow are fed to animals we farm, with only 12% of those calories being ‘recycled’ by humans when we eat meat, eggs, and dairy. That’s an enormous waste! Put it this way: if we stop growing plants to feed farm animals and instead grow pulses, fruits and vegetables for humans and pets, we could feed an extra 350 million people (and a whole lot of dogs too).

So this Earth Day, why not be part of the positive solution to tackling the climate crisis and add more plants to your dog's bowl? You can get 20% off THE PACK plant-based dog food using the code EARTH20 at checkout. Just head to our shop here.  

Bite-sized environmental facts (sources below):

• The environmental pawprint of a 70-pound golden retriever eating a raw meat diet is almost twice the environmental footprint of an average meat-eating human.
• Dogs and cats don’t just eat ‘by-products’: in the US, 30% of factory-farmed cows, pigs, and chickens are bred and killed specifically to feed our dogs and cats.
• Making meat-based food for cats and dogs uses up a landmass twice the size of the UK, every year.
• If we stop feeding plants to farm animals, we could feed an extra 350 million people (and a lot of dogs too).
• Because of an unprecedented outbreak of bird flu, ‘free range’ eggs are no longer available in the UK.
• Some brands of fish-based pet food have been found to contain endangered shark species.
• The ingredients in a can of regular beef-based dog food produce over 17 times more CO2, uses 10 times more water, and 80 times more land than those in a can of THE PACK’s No-Moo Ragu.

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s the research:

• Andrew Knight, PLOS ONE (2022)
• Gregory Okin, PLOS ONE (2017)
• Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats (2017)
• The Clean Pet Food Revolution (2019)
• The Global Environmental Paw Print Of Pet Food in Global Environmental Change (2020)
• The Opportunity Cost Of Animal Based Diets Exceeds All Food Losses, Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences (2018)
• The Guardian (2022)
• DNA Barcoding Identifies Endangered Sharks in Pet Food Sold in Singapore, Frontiers in Marine Science (2022)
• THE PACK Carbon Footprint Assessment, Innovate To Zero (2021)