The Case Against Pets

In 2021, Owning pets is Unethical

The first and only pet I have ever owned was a little red-eared turtle named Juanita. A tiny, green, and red-spotted reptile, Juanita dwelled in a squared glass tank where she seemed to live a happy life. At dawn, she would climb to the top of her little aquarium when the first beams of sunlight hit her little home, and twice a day I would feed her a delicious shrimp-based meal that I poured — not without experiencing a slight sense always while holding my nose — into the waters she navigated. During the summer, as we went on vacation, Juanita traveled with me. I wonder whether she felt the wanderlust.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could choose only one kind of food to eat, what would it be? Juanita’s life was like that riddle, she lived inside a glass-walled island, but she never got to choose, she knew no better. Still, it was nothing like a life with no food.

Incoherently, in western societies, we keep overfeeding pets while the number of malnourished people keeps growing worldwide. In 2019 alone, that number had already reached 690 million undernourished people, a somber figure considering the speed of global population growth. In contrast, the amount of food destined for pet feeding has risen to more than 48 billion kilograms in 2020. Take a deep breath, now imagine how much food that figure amounts to.

I am a flexitarian myself, meaning that I eat meat or animal products only when it is strictly unavoidable. My dietary choices hail from my worry about global food shortages, the climate, and the terrible working conditions many food industry workers suffer. As a European living in a heavily populated city, I choose to get around by public transportation, as many of my fellow city dwellers do. I avoid buying brand new clothes, brand new books, and anything that comes in shiny plastic wrapping. And bingo, I am not a pet owner.

Millions struggle every single day to feed themselves or their families. More specifically, in the United States, “10.5 percent of U.S. households were food insecure at least sometime during the year in 2019,” according to the USDA’s “Household Food Insecurity in the United States in 2019”. This dreadful picture is expected to worsen as economic disparities widen, the climate crisis becomes more urgent, and the pandemic’s grip on the world persists, causing many more to experience food scarcity.

The pandemic has also caused pet purchases to skyrocket. Consequently, in 2020, the pet food industry is expected to reach record-breaking earnings, hitting its highest point in history this year with $97 billion in revenue.

Around the world, millions of people live in a state of poverty and hunger. Last summer, locusts swarmed through eastern Africa, wreaking havoc and destroying the crops that feed millions in its wake. And of course, the virus is still expected to cause more damage; likely throwing “an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year” according to the World Bank.

Pets’ role as climate change perpetrators can’t go overlooked. Owners must acknowledge pets’ carbon footprint and be aware of their potential for environmental transformation, playing a role in mass climate migrations, famine, and social unrest — challenges that will most likely stress test the foundations of democratic societies.

The total revenue of the pet food business in the United States is expected to reach $32 million this year, while 50 million people in the U.S. (one in six) could go hungry as the pandemic lingers. How many households could be fed if this industry’s infrastructure was utilised to feed humans?

Pet food industry resources could be repurposed to achieve United Nations Millennium Development Goal number 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger. It is time for a reckoning.

Next year, we should stop owning pets. Developed societies must pledge to put human rights before domesticated animals. As the numbers of hungry people soar worldwide, the wealthy should quit feeding oven-baked treats and poultry delicacies to their labrador puppies and siamese cats . In 2021, think twice before getting a puppy — you may be cutting a human life short-, because it is unethical.

As for Juanita, she lived for three long years until, on a sunny summer afternoon, she vanished from her plastic tank — perhaps to finally fulfil her wanderlust or maybe, swallowed by a hungry heron, serving her natural role in the food chain.