🐶 Pets

We speak here about domestic animals, whose population increase (about 10 millions of cats in France in 2000 against 15 million currently (2020)) is linked to human beings (unlike wild animals, whose History seems to show a stable GES balance).

According to the FACCO annual report (Chambre Syndicale des Fabricants d'Aliments pour Chiens, Chats, Oiseaux et autres animaux familiiers) 202243.5% of French households own at least one cat or dog. Nearly 1 out of 3 French households owns a cat and 1 out of 5 owns a dog.

It is therefore clear that we cannot ignore the footprint of our pets and these emissions are, by definition, of anthropogenic origin.

The domestic life of our animals leads to additional emissions to be attributed to a human individual (the one who owns the animal).

According to the study Environmental Impacts of a Pet Dog: An LCA Case Study, 2020, it appears that 90% of a pet's climate footprint comes from its diet (relative to the impact of animal waste and associated waste according to the scope of the study).

For our case, we initially considered feed and veterinary services, which represent only a few kilos of CO₂ whereas feed is responsible for hundreds of kilos for some animals.

We consider that an animal belongs to a household. In the same way as an object shared within the household, the footprint of an animal is amortized as well.

For the impact of food, we used the paper: The global environmental paw print of pet food, 2020, which presents an interesting methodology. On this subject, the article "Environmental Impacts of a Pet Dog: An LCA Case Study" cites The European Pet Food Industry Federation (FEDIAF); C&D Foods; FACCO, Chambre Syndicale des Fabricants d'Aliments pour Chiens, Chats, Oiseaux et autres Animaux Familiers (the French Pet Food Association for Dogs, Cats, Birds and Other Domestic Pets); Mars PetCare Europe; Nestlé Purina PetCare Europe; saturn petcare gmbh, and Quantis. Product Environmental Footprint Screening Study-Prepared Pet Food or Cats and Dogs; The European Pet Food Industry Federation: Brussels, Belgium, 2015, unfortunately no longer available...

Some questions could be explored further:

• Is it relevant to associate a "basic" footprint per animal linked to the purchase of equipment or the like?
• The emission factor selected for our calculation is the result of a study with a specific methodological approach (i.e. a choice of assumptions specific to the work carried out for this article). It will be necessary to continue monitoring developments in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the life cycle of this type of food (including packaging?).