A paper which outlines the need for a proper investigation of the impact of the pet food industry points out that Australian cats eat 33,500 tonnes of seafood per annum – both imported and produced in Australia.
The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics has published a paper by Sena De Silva and Giovanni Turchini titled Towards Understanding the Impacts of the Pet Food Industry on World Fish and Seafood Supplies.
While the status of wild capture fisheries has induced many to express concerns using forage fish for feed for farmed animals, it appears “a very large quantity of forage fish” is being also used untransformed (fresh or frozen) globally for other purposes, such as the pet food industry.
The authors point out: “So far, no attempts have been made to estimate this quantum, and have been omitted in previous fishmeal and fish oil exploitation surveys. On the basis of recently released data on the Australian importation of fresh or frozen fish for the canned cat food industry, here we show that the estimated amount of raw fishery products directly utilised by the cat food industry equates to 2.48 million metric tonnes per year.”
They say this estimate, plus the previously reported global fishmeal consumption for the production of dry pet food suggest that 13.5% of the total 39.0 million tonnes of wild caught forage fish is used for purposes other than human food production.
The authors point out that the issue, which appears to have received little attention so far, “needs to be considered in the global debate on the ethical nature of current practices on the use of forage fish, a limited biological resource”.
