That is the name of a new book of academics Robert and Brenda Vale specialising in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The title is intended to shock rather than be taken literally, which is a mercy. It’s meant to concentrate the mind on the environmental implications of keeping pets, which are considerable.
According to an article in the New Scientist they’ve worked out the ecological footprint required to produce the meat and cereals consumed by individual pets. A medium-sized dog, for example, requires 0.84 hectares. A German shepherd requires a humungous 1.1 hectares. They compare this with a Toyota Land Cruiser’s eco-footprint at 0.41 hectares. Cats come in at 0.15 hectares, slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Even a humble goldfish is the equivalent of two cellphones.
Cumulatively the implications are considerable:
The US, which tops the list for both cat and dog ownership in absolute terms, is home to over 76 million felines and 61 million canines. Taking the estimated cat population for the top 10 cat-owning countries, the Vales calculate that the land required just to feed these cats is over 400,000 square kilometres. That’s equivalent to one-and-a-half times the area of New Zealand. A further five New Zealands are required to feed the pooches living in the top 10 dog-owning countries – which, perhaps surprisingly, does not include the UK.
The individual relativities are captured in this image from the New Scientist article:
I do recall a statistic along the lines that half our food is wasted between paddock and plate. It may be possible to fit our pets into a niche where they are fed from our legitimate waste, but we are going to have to try to minimise our waste in a future food-constrained world.
Nor do the environmental problems stop there. Britain’s 7.7 million moggies kill 188 million wild animals each year, a mere 25 each. Cat pooh is particularly toxic, enough to affect the fish and marine animals in some parts of the world. Even walking the dog disrupts wildlife.
I recall hearing on the ABC a statistic that 97% of the planet’s animal mass (land, including birds, I presume) comprised animals associated with humans, either domestic animals or pets. We really do dominate the ecosystem.
The Vales appear to have had a look at some other areas of our lives as well. From the publisher’s blurb:
Your wedding could consume ten times the energy of your house for one year
Just something else to think about.
Five additional New Zealands … what a horrifying thought.
Lovelock kept mentioning pets and their ecological problems in his latest tome; now can see quite why.
And while domestic pets are obviously problematic, our agri-business practices, resource stripping and pollution outputs are far more problematic. We can’t absolve ourselves of our individual responsibilities but the biggest problems have to be solved in the structural realms; not tinkering around the edges with a carbon credit here and a incandescent bulb ban there.
Particularly as clean coal looks even more unlikely to offer any solutions even in the medium term.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/29/2727262.htm?section=justin
This book should sell well in South Korea.
In case this post prompts calculations of the carbon hoofprint of this year’s Melbourne Cup field, I’d like to point out that I’m just a humble beast, I didn’t ask to be foaled, and neither I nor the other 23 runners in the Cup next Tuesday can be held morally responsible for the consequences of the decisions made by our breeders, owners and trainers.
Those numbers have to be right, our local supermarket has 10% of its shelf space devoted to pet stuff.
Huggy
10,000km each year for a Landcruiser? I don’t think so … try 20,000 minimum
The broader point is right though. I have four dogs, (all rescues) and two cats (both cast-offs) but I prefer to have everyone keep within a budget and work out how they’d like to spend it or how much they’d like to pay to go over.
I do take cast off and about to be discarded meat from the butchers and make up mixes with rice and vegestock residuals for evening meals.
How do pets raised for food (in space already allocated to their owners) compare ecologically with food animals raised outside the home (taking up extra space)? It seems like that they might actually stack up well. The problem is the relationship formed. Chooks are probably better at not having as much going for them. “Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way.” -Samuel L Jackson.
Don’t worry about the dogs, it’s their “owners” – that’s the problem.
GregM: got any recipes to share?
I was hoping that the book had some, Soylent.
“Pacific Hydro say they can’t wee a reason …”
Oh come now!
First you advocate pet-munching, then a respected corporation refuses to urinate a reason?
Are we in a kindergarten, or WHAT ??!!!
I shoot about a dozen feral rabbits a week to feed my working dogs so i don’t feel guilty about owning them at all.
“Chooks are probably better at not having as much going for them.
Not a chook owner, Joe? My five ISA brown hens have great personalities. And they eat the scraps. And they make eggs. And they enrich my compost, and thereby my vegetable garden. And my five year old loves them all dearly. Win!
I call bullshit. Does anyone else think this is meaningless twaddle?
How do you compare the eco-footprint of a dog and a cat and come out with a fucking toyota in between?
rumrebellious, you critic, you!
The assessment of ‘environmental footprint’ is {cough} as yet an inexact {cough} science.
It is not claimed to be precise. It does have certain advantages:
* economical in production
* dramatic presentation
* easy to comprehend
It is therefore a sub-section of *THe Higher Bullshit*.
Ever see an environmental footprint with a {cough} uncertainty estimate [+/- 0.3 hectares]?
No? I thought not. I rest my case, M’lud.
Soylent @ 10, I posted a comment on the wrong thread. It was there for all of 5 seconds, now relocated here.
Thanks for pointing out the typo, now fixed
What a load of shit.
Has anyone heard of “embedded energy”?
The energy required to make a landcruiser will sustain one entire unholy army of the night of cats for their whole lives. [bogusstatisticsoffthecuff.com]
Even just the cost of running one – those figures on running costs sound like:
1) poochies and moggies on pure fillet steak, not shitty scraps from the meat industry
2) a Landcruiser used to pootle down to the shops, and pick up the kids from school, and that’s it.
Fucking ridiculous.
What an absolutely puritanical bunch the green left has become … kids, pets, food, everything joyful in life is seen solely through a prism of guilt and “footprint”.
Of course it’s bullshit, same as problems of over-population are bullshit.
In short anything is bullshit if it threatens our cosy way of life, including the right to have as many offspring and pets as we goddam like.
Bullshit I say, unless its something I don’t like or need such as a 4 wheel drive or plasma TV.
What Emma said about chooks and personality.
And not only bullshit but puritanical as well. Just wait and see how puritanical it’ll get if we continue to treat our current way of life as non-negotiable.
Welcome to the future – not much joy there unless we actually do something now.
Seems like everything vaguely spiritually rewarding has an eco footprint. At least they didn’t call the book time to eat the kids.
I think it might be time to stop labelling those who call for population control as nuts. Of course we can easily stabilise down here with adjustments to immigration, but as soon as you mention such a thing people assume you’re motivated by racism. What if we decreased the rates accross the board including for 1st worlders?
I do share Soylent’s doubts about blue heelers vs landcruisers though. I suppose alot of it is transport miles for bags of food?
Cats don’t need as much food partly because they’re little but also because they ate four king parrots before breakfast.
Again, this is why “ecological footprint” gives me the screaming willies.
The numbers seem to assume that the meat that gets fed to pets would be used to feed humans otherwise. Trust me, those bits of beef in your kitteh’s “tender beef casserole” are not coming from Wagyu steers, or even nice fat Herefords. It’s where Holstein cows end up when they aren’t milking so well, I’m afraid.
The second point to consider is that, if necessary, we could feed our dogs and cats more dry pet food (and possibly fish, which are much more efficient converters of plant material into protein than warm-blooded animals) and less meat.
Just don’t tell Clive Hamilton!
No, Adrian, but it is pretty flawed, as FDB points out, there’s a lot of category errors going on here. To pretend that the slurry of lips and arseholes that goes into Mitten’s Can O’ Mush is responsible for the death of the cow/horse/other – as opposed to the place 80% of the meat ends up (aka, our plates) – is pretty damn misleading.
I’m not saying that cats and dogs run off the smell of a (non)oily rag, but there are far, far bigger fish – to fry, not to keep. Speaking of fish, I find that two cellphones stat kinda dodgy – I have a fish tank filter and heater on 24/7, and a light for 12 hours each day. If that adds up to only two cellphones’ worth of power a year, I’d be shocked.
Well hannah is absolutely outraged and has demanded I refute this…outrageous still seems to be the right word…slur.
Now whilst she, and I, are agreed that what appears to be the general thrust of this new book, that we need to look at our the costs of our lifestyles and all associated through a different lens, is worthwhile, she cannot accept that she costs the earth more than does even our humble Holden Rodeo ute much less one of those monstous Toorak Tractor thingies.
‘Something aint right about the way the relative costs have been worked out’ she just woofed at me gently and then slunk off, hurt and unhappy, to curl up under the dining room table.
Uncritically accepting anything that purports to be environmental science is not a good idea.
Idiots with agendas abound, and it would be very naive to think they’re all on the “other” side of any debate.
May I just point out that anyone feeding their pet Mittens Can’O Mush is really feeding their much loved animal a can of shit which isn’t doing it any good, unless your beast is good at running on salt, sugar, water and preservatives.
Excuse me while I feed my dog some nice minced kangaroo, sheep tripe and chicken gizzards. Yes, there good at leftovers, but only good leftovers.
“salt, sugar, water and preservatives”
…and protein and carbohydrates and fat and fibre and trace elements and vitamins and minerals.
So… what else do you want?
It’s where Holstein cows end up when they aren’t milking so well, I’m afraid.
And something else as well – but I won’t mention it just now so as not to spoil the massive party that is the Melbourne spring carnival, and upset Mr. Efficient upthread there…
Sean @21: “Cats don’t need as much food partly because they’re little but also because they ate four king parrots before breakfast.”
Our moggie doesn’t always want his food, because he catches varmin. By varmin, I mean large rats, which lurk around our neighbour’s bird cages, presumably to eat the bird seed.
Occassionally he has a good day’s hunting and brings one home for us. We are suitably impressed and grateful for another dead rat, and transform it into an aerorat over the fence into the vacant block.
We have been getting less presents of late – don’t know if the supply has dwindled owing to effective varmin patrol, or if our gratefulness has been in doubt.
My question here is the lifecyle carbon costing on rat breeding versus rat control?
Our moggie would like to know if the carbon footprint of his varmin extermination efforts can be subtracted from his own footprint, makes him a possible net carbon sink (counting the aerorats)?
It’s what you don’t want that they add FDB.
In other news, fishing is not a sustainable way to gather food, because of all the scallops and king prawns used for bait, and the diamond nano-rod nets, as against the relative sustainability of only turning on your matter-replicator once a week for a bowlful of sea-slurry.
Helen #29, I thought my less successful speciesmates ended up contributing to the Tuesday Night Specials consumed with such alacrity by your less affluent speciesmates.
I guess there’s no more lobster for our cats then.
The tinned fish cat food we ocasionally give our cats as a treat looks and smells suspiciously like human tinned fish, but I’ve never been brave enough to try it.
Actually, that’s much too kind. I’m implying that this study compares apples with apples. Or at least with pears and quinces.
Even if the figures weren’t so obviously wrong at a glance, what is the point in comparing pets with transport? Where they coincide (as Helen points out above) it’s a win-win.
Our neighbours out the scrub were fairly irregular in opening cans for their pooch, but guessed he would help himself to a rabbit or possum if he got really hungry.
Putting unwanted bits of scrag Holstein into pet food is USING all of the beast (minimising waste), so should score high marks from those who oppose waste. Chinese cuisine for Chinese human bipeds follows similar principles.
But there’s the embedded energy in the Holstein……
And of course Dairy is Species-ist Imperialism.
Following Robert Merkel, we should go straight to the source (captured solar energy in algae, base of food chain) and eat seaweed. So should Fido and Pussykins.
Further to dog footprints, we have an omnivorous dog.
He eats fruit, nuts, broccoli, avocados (off our tree, not the bought ones – owing to him eating the home-grown ones!), etc. He also eats leftover vegetable-based curry and rice, stale bread toasted with vegemite, etc, so we have minimal wastage.
I should like to point out that we are in no way responsible for the omnivorous tendancies of our dog…
Presumably one has to correct the carbon footprint for the non-meat component and the synergistic, reduced wastage component?
Not to mention salmon, couta heads and carp and diesel fuel and cray pots and all those un-recycled bloody plastic tags used to seal the stackers of crays.
Our moggie has roo mince and dry food when the blowies get too savage. Pooches get dry food, scraps, bones and chicken to clean their fangs. All of which makes them suitably grateful, except the moggie who is always superior and aloof as befits his self-bestowed title of King of the Universe.
He has also become too idle for hunting pursuits, preferring to while away his time blackly slumbering on various beds until it’s time to eat again.
Elise, dogs are natural omnivores.
Don’t worry about Efficient the Horse. He’s got a nice job lined up as a clerk of the course horse once he’s retired.
Odd. My 20 or so goldfish require the odd bucket of water in summer, and that’s about it.
One of my cats eats corn on the cob.
And at least one plate of scraps left on the coffee table has shown evidence of pea-disturbance too. Albeit gravy-covered.
As you may or may not expect, my 523,765 worms live quite happily on kitchen waste and also make excellent fertilser as well as being very loyal and loving pets.
A pity her indoors won’t let them indoors, however.
Adrian – just imagine the calculation this crowd would run on your worms though. Under their assumptions, you’d be buying fresh fruit and vegies to feed them.
Elise, this rat thing may be true but is inconvenient to my anti-cat propoganda efforts. What I need most, in the pest controlling pet sense, is a mongoose. Seriously how cool would that be? Freakin’ brown snakes. “Yo Mong! Skitch ‘em!”
As to animals with personality, it depends how you interact with them I suppose. Someone else in my family is getting squeamish about eating our steers, but she just watches them. My own thought OTOH is that the one which pushes through the bloody fences all the time is first on the bbq. Fat bastard.
I suspect that the problem is more on the other side of the comparison.
The analysis seems to take a potential best-case scenario for the production of the car’s energy, ignoring the costs that are associated with the way the energy actually is sourced. They also ignore the impact on wildlife, urban livibility etc etc from the car, although they are quite happy to discuss them at length for the pets.
Of course it’s not obvious how you make different kinds of environmental damage commensurable – eg energy usage vs GHG emissions vs habitat destruction. But surely its not too much to ask for this difficulty to be acknowledged.
Well, it was an easy post and I couldn’t resist!
I must say I had trouble comparing the pooch to a 4WD, but I didn’t write the book.
I’ll say this, though. The value of blogging is that by the end of a thread you usually know what you think about a subject and it’s often not (or not quite) the view you started out with.
But Adrian, you precious womry friends actually emit nitrous oxide – a terrible greenhouse gas!!!
I’m not saying don’t buy a worm farm btw, but these metrics are harder to break down than initially appears.
Wilful @39, I presume the “Time to Eat the Dog” people would want to count the consumption of water weed as part of your fish fin-print?
Further to lifecyle carbon costing, what if your fish are actually consuming mozzie wrigglers for their protein content?
The mozzies have a carbon wing-print too, we might presume, especially in terms of consumption of red blood from their victims?
As such consumption of mozzies @ wriggler stage by your goldfish might be a net saving on their future lifecycle consumption of contained carbon in blood? Your goldfish might be carbon neutral…!
Hey, isn’t this discussion fun!!!
On vermin control, we used to have a carpet python that move along our side of the street and back again, mopping up any vermin. Haven’t seen it for a few years. Some silly bugger probably killed it.
We did have a cat once that was particularly hopeless at hunting. Her only known success was to knock off the ham sandwiches a workman had in in his vehicle parked in our driveway!
I have another question about whether these people have counted domestic frogs and snails, versus contained emissions in making snail bait.
Since we installed our frog pond, we have had a resident population of trilling frogs. They make the most wonderful trilling noises at dusk, but that is another story.
Anyway, before the frog pond we used to get lots of garden snails – you couldn’t walk down the path without treading on them all the time, and they ate all the softer leaf plants.
I was reluctantly using snail bait, along with our time-honoured aerosnail technique into the vacant block. The latter was probably not so effective in this case, since they landed in long grass and probably found their way back, not being the brightest of creatures.
Anyway again, after the frog pond we have a manageable population of snails and there are a lot of empty snail shells in the garden. I haven’t needed snail bait for several years. Two questions:
Do frogs eat snails?
What is the inferred footprint of a domestic garden frog, counting implied snail consumption, AND counting reduced household usage of snail bait with further contained emissions?
Specious twaddle. Let’s get rid of the pets right after we eliminate all purchases of pointless “stuff” in the pursuit of a consumerist high… and all unnecessary second cars, and driving to shops when you could walk, etc etc.
At least pets serve a healthy purpose in people’s lives. And taking the Vales’ argument to its extreme, you could justify involuntary euthanasia of anyone deemed “unproductive” who is using up resources.
I believe one of my KFC franchises in Brisbane found a creative solution to the probem of cats surplus to requirements.
I too call chickenshit on this footprint garbage…
More practically, Elise, perhaps you might prefer to forgo the frog for this: http://www.recipeland.com/search/?q=snail
While I’m not prepared to eat a dog myself, and the mere thought of cats (alive or dead) turns me off: http://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Lemongrass-Dog
Naturally, NZ continues to be years ahead of us: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10591164
Colonel,
Years ago in Melbourne a rumour wandered around, as rumours do (lazily increasing its gossip-print) that when there was no chicken, bleached rabbit was being used. KFR.
By the way, KFC is only one letter away from the dreaded GFC. (Don’t tell daggett.)
shabadoo said; “What an absolutely puritanical bunch the green left has become … kids, pets, food, everything joyful in life is seen solely through a prism of guilt and “footprint”.”
I couldn’t agree more shabadoo, I couldn’t agree more. And I think this continuous and over the top scaremongering or “awareness raising” is tending to have a detrimental impact on the green movement as people are seeing it as either too hard or a bit of a joke. Most, including me, with throw their hands in the air, think; “Oh fuck it – now my dogs killing the planet, I might as well just give up and enjoy it”. Throw the dog in the people mover and go on a road trip.
I had a cat once that just used to go bananas for sliced tomato, with pepper and salt. He preferred it to meat.
btw, I think ‘environmental footprit’ and various other kinds of green footprints are in the Macquarie Dictionary now,or will be in the next edition. So they must exist, eh?
Paul, anything folks talk about can get into the dictionary.
Under “cat food” the best dictionaries include: ‘sliced tomato with pepper and salt [Aust. anec. circa 1987]‘
just for completeness.
I must check that out,Soylent.
btw, everyone, chihuahuas rule, OK?
(And, much as it saddens me to admit it, the Aztecs used to eat them. (Though that might be a pernicious myth put about by the Conquistadores.)
The concept is reasonably sound although, as Elise has had fun pointing out, every physically extant thing has one, and high order predators always have a larger range than say a vole.
The point is that we are a plague species by any reasonable definition. Either we try to live as something we are not, or we get some population control happening. I don’t think this need be as drastic as some assume. Australia is already below replacement rate, and the govt pays you to pop ‘em out!
As to “what about the other countries?”, we have limited influence over them and I really can’t see a world govt in the near future. However, it has been shown that lowering the infant mortality rate lowers the birth rate, so there’s opportunity for better targeted aid in that respect I s’pose. Which in turn has other benefits.
If its designed to shock then the book’s title certainly works. A lot of knee jerk emotional reactions here from people who obviously haven’t read the book or even bothered to skim the linked review.
Got back to this after a couple of meetings and lunch. Emma at 12, I agree it would be hard to eat chooks like yours. I had a bastard of a duck once, attacked the others, I had to get rid of him, and him going into the pot was his best contribution to household harmony. Pet=animal whose company we like, food=animal we don’t know/don’t like? Some cultural variations of course, I believe Peruvians used to keep guinea pigs right where they were most wanted… in the kitchen.
How many polar bears were killed, or New Zealands deforested, in creating and publicising this garbage?
Joe @59, speaking of attack-ducks, many moons ago I shared house with a charming midwifery nurse who loved peking ducks. She had peking duck statuettes, flying trios of ducks on the wall, embroidery ducks, etc, etc.
No harm in that. The problem was the 3 real live peking ducks in the backyard. Back in those days the loo was located in the far back corner, with a dirt path to get there from the kitchen door. It rained a lot in winter so the path became slippery and muddy, and covered in duck doos.
No major harm in that, either. However…those 3 damn attack-ducks went for you every time nature called. All outstretched wings and snapping beaks and enough noise to wake the dead! One was forced to race down that slippery path to the outdoor loo with ducks in hot pursuit, and shut the door quick smart before they charged in after you. Then they laid seige to the loo, requiring an equally hazardous return journey to the house.
And if you think that was bad, then think of my poor old moggie. He spent his days hiding in the branches of the mulberry tree, and was forced into equally undignified flight down the path into my arms when I got home from work in the evenings.
A dreadful business, the keeping of attack-ducks.
Should be banned.
NicM, you are right, I fear, and it’s about more than food. For example, for one reason or another we’ve had a dog in our backyard for the last 20 years, a small 20 perch block that backs onto bushland. Since then no lizard and indeed no snake has been seen in our backyard, whereas in the previous 10 years they were common enough.
We also used to see wallabies grazing on the green pick near the creek. Their disappearance coincided with some idiots keeping bull terriers over the other side of the ridge and not keeping them locked up.
shabadoo said; “What an absolutely puritanical bunch the green left has become … kids, pets, food, everything joyful in life is seen solely through a prism of guilt and “footprint”.”
I couldn’t agree more shabadoo, I couldn’t agree more. And I think this continuous and over the top scaremongering or “awareness raising” is tending to have a detrimental impact on the green movement as people are seeing it as either too hard or a bit of a joke
Perfectly true, if you’re content to take the MSM caricature of the “green movement” as gospel. Yes, if you were to believe the Murdoch (and, increasingly, Fairfax) media, you would believe the “Greem movemtnt” is a bunch of party poopers intent on taking all your toys. Qui bono? And follow the money.
A lot of knee jerk emotional reactions here from people who obviously haven’t read the book or even bothered to skim the linked review.
There’s been a lot of lighthearted riffing around the topic in general from people who are in the main well aware of their responsibility not to directly attack or defend the text in question withoug reading it. Take a chill pill!
“Greem movemtnt”
That was a total touch typing fail, btw. I blame the Extreme Green movement. Ludddddi…er..Ldod…er…Liuddites….er…Luddites!
Mate of mine has a chihuahua/jack russell cross. Great dog. Small footprint(s).
“recall hearing on the ABC a statistic that 97% of the planet’s animal mass (land, including birds, I presume) comprised animals associated with humans, either domestic animals or pets. We really do dominate the ecosystem.”
That really, really doesn’t sound right…
If wikipedia is accurate humans are about 100 million tonnes and domesticated animals are another 700 million for a total of 800 million. Ants, just by themselves are between 900 and 9000 million tonnes. Fish are estimated at between 800 and 2000 million tonnes. No idea about plankton, but that has to be another huge number. And that’s just animals, not counting the rest of Eukarya, let alone Bacteria and Archaea.
d
Darryl @66, maybe they meant to say “97% of the planet’s land mammal mass…”?
Helen @ 63 – My admittedly snarky comments were directed at the more dismissive remarks of shabadoo, etc. Maybe I should have said “pavlovian response” instead of “knee jerk” reaction to lighten the tone. Even so a lot of the critiques raised here are covered in the New Scientist article, and supposedly are also in the book.
Helen-”That was a total touch typing fail, btw. I blame the Extreme Green movement. Ludddddi…er..Ldod…er…Liuddites….er…Luddites!”
oohh, if the Extreme Green movement really controlled the world from the shadows, could we call them the Ludderati?
there’s an extreme green movement…why wasn’t I told?
I personally dislike most New Zealand opinion about almost everything,this will be the same.I don’t think any of the problematic areas of pet ownership have to be that.For example,why isn’t it possible to see cats as security guards,whilst midnight ramblers,and rescue the night are taking over by rapists young football sides and others morally and criminally astray.I mean if the back alley was well fenced off and gated during the night ,one could have social rosters for cats from neighbouring areas to get to know each other.Football grounds could be night kennels for separated dogs,using mobile removal fencing and robotic pooper scoopers,that then deposit turds in a low smell worm feed environment that has had cat pee added to it and a few little fishes from a fish tank.nitrous oxide does mix with matters in nature generally so it is a very vague point.Clean coal maybe improved as coal if various animals could pee on it,run across coal cuts for exercise,or even herded cattle.Lots of good stuff in cattle manure,and it slowly breaks down.Birds could be given extremely large neighbourhood cages,and thus over time,could do work in the gardens etc.as pests catchers etc.same with chooks.Great domes over neighbourhoods for pets and wild life.Stuff the NewZealanders they are competitors and parasites.
Darryl @ 66, my impression was that insects and fish were not included. It was a factoid at best until clarified properly. I understand the biggest mass of living creatures is actually in the soil.
Brian, research termites. Nasty little carbon dioxide emitters. Then research their combined body mass. And be afraid. Very afraid.
Before them we are puny.
Joe,
In the altiplano at least, Peruivians still keep and eat guinea pigs.
I got the impression dogs were on the menu in Bali in the 70s. Snakes in Viet Nam. Monkey brains in parts of China?
And apparently New Zealanders have been known to eat HENS. Goodness me!
Joe #61:
“I believe Peruvians used to keep guinea pigs right where they were most wanted… in the kitchen”
It’s still common practice in (especially rural) parts of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Tasty too – a bit like rabbit, only better.
GregM, at least we can eat them.
I reckon those termites would be tastier to eat than a toyota too.
Not saying it can’t be done though.
Brian,
Bacteria go down for kilometers, I have read some-where that the total mass of bacteria in the earths crust and oceans far exceeds the total mass of both flora and fauna – the stuff we see about us.
Don’t think you would want to eat this stuff.
Huggy
OK then.
One hectare of land can produce that much energy if you are a cow, **maybe**. More likely you would have to be a fire or perhaps a purely theoretical measurement. How many litres of landcruiser useable biofuel can 1 hectare produce? Because the article suggests that my small property can create and fuel 10.06 landcruisers a year! That’s just silly though as I don’t have an iron mine, oil well for plastics etc etc in the back paddock. So lets take production out of it and assume conservatively that I can fuel say 12 landcruisers a year for 10,000 km.
Fuel economy of 16-20 litres per 100 km. Lets say 18 then. Equals 1,800 litres per landcruiser per year, at $1.20 per litre = $2,160. Times 14 = $30,240! Bugger the steers eh? Black Gold! Texas tea!
Come and listen to a story about a man named Sean
A poor country lawyer, barely kept himself in prawns,
Then one day he was growin’ oats & rye,
If he pays his mortgage out then he can retiiiiiiiire.
The way its going cockroaches will take over the world. (If they survive global warming. And why not. Legend has it they can survive a nuclear bomb.)
Katz, I am not quite sure whether the thought is horrifying or the thought of New Zealand is the problem. New Zealand like Australia is a wonderful area of the planet and would be a lot better if the humans developed systems and technology to taken care of it, or known what was required.
Phillip, I will leave you to your attitudes. We sometimes might usually separate attributions and other generalizations from fixed emotions so we might think more clearly.
Our dogs are fully vegan, but they do have an ecological footprint. Still dog breeds are human creations, a product of long relationship of interdependence, so perhaps there is a moral issue here as well. Furthermore I do not let them run around in the bush, to protect the dogs and the wild life, such as snakes and echidnas, from each other.
Exactly Sean. (And 10,000km per year? Thats 30km a day, why not scrap your SUV and get a bike… or better yet, don’t get one in the first place.) I’m not saying don’t think about the cxonsequences of your actions, including having pets, but … seriously … Does anyone know how much energy actually goes into making an SUV??? especially if you include the actual cost of building the required mines and smelters and refineries, factories, all the other infrastructure, the cost of creating the plastics (and the cost of mining the hydrocabons used to make the plastics) and all the rest… transporting the materials from mine to refinery to fuel depo etc, just in the case of fuel. Not to mention the cost of building the vehicles to transport the materials and blah blah blah.
Just out of interest how much land would it have taken to sustain the Iraq war, using their figures/methods?
maybe more than is required for feeding the odd dog.
Why do Chinese restuarants sometimes share a fence with the local Vet?
This leads to unwarranted assumptions and dark tales about dogs, dim sims and cats.
Town planning laws should be amended to avoid such speculation.
Huggy
Cooper@55
I very much doubt that anyone will react as you suggest. Those who don’t care will do what they always do, and those who are impressed may endeavour to modify their behaviour.
It’s worth noting that angst or not, the question is one of who bears the externalities from one’s conduct. It’s convenient to throw live cigarette butts from the car, because others bear the cost/risk. But is that a good thing? Most would say not. People do it when they do because they don’t feel connected to those bearing the cost.
Climate change forcing activity is like that. If most of the people who are worse for it trun out to be other people far from you in time and space and some chap comes on and says there’s an ongoing debate about climate forcing, then all those who see the conevenience and comfort factor in pleasing yourself most of all will feel enabled.
As I said above, I keep dogs and cats, so I don’t think one needs to start living like an ascetic. Rather, I’d say that we all ought to be able to pick our pleasures and stay within a budget, and this wshould be made easier for us all by the government prodviding frameworks for us to to do most of the things we like doing with a lower footprint and/or enable us to have a more generous budget in practice by cutting out wasteful stuff.
The atmosphere, the seas, the topography, the soils and vegetation, potable water — these are all incredibly important to us humans directly and indirectly. Only a reckless fool gets the hump with people who say we ought to nurture and protect these things, if necessary by doing without some of the more frivolous of our activities.
If we are worried about eco-footprint, maybe its time to grind up out moggies to feed our doggies?
Well I’ve managed to track down an example of the calcuation of 135 GJ/ha/yr here.
Note that the 135 GJ is only energy output and doesn’t allow for the inputs. However since we can seemingly take a best-case analyis at will, using locally based sustainable energy sources to produce this crop won’t make too much of a dint on this figure.
But let’s be clear as to what the claim is. It is not a claim that the Toyota Landcruiser you just saw (nearly running over your baby [j/k]) is more sustainable than your pit bull (that nearly ate the neighbours baby [who says I'm not balanced]). The claim is that some future Landcruiser powered 100% with biofuel produced in world’s best practice consumes less energy than a contemporary medium sized dog fed meat produced by current typical practice, while ignoring all other social and environmental measures of sustainability.
Meanwhile, in the paper today:
Makes a good headline, but it’s not clear how many of the 1000 pet lovers had partners.
Actually martin, isn’t it saying that the excess 135 GJ is latent in the rape seed product when harvested, BEFORE processing into ethanol? And when the Vales refer to a 4.6 litre petrol Landcruiser…
Fun with statitstics eh. Someone should see if they’re in PETA.
So it is no longer pollitically correct to keep a pet!! Keep it up, boys and girls, sooner rather than later the long suffering public will wake up and then, watch out.
“The claim is that some future Landcruiser powered 100% with biofuel produced in world’s best practice consumes less energy than a contemporary medium sized dog fed meat produced by current typical practice, while ignoring all other social and environmental measures of sustainability.”
Yep, that’s about the size of it.
Actually David Chapman it’s no longer politically correct to be a dickhead so maybe it’s you that better watch out.
At 89- interesting point when considering pet-owners.
Do they ordinarily find pet company preferable to that of other people?
Do lots of them actually need animals to have some emotional contact at all?
People can be complex to relate to compared to unconditional dependence pets display..
Really does it matter of it is a dog, cat or person sustaining the livestock industry in ways detrimental to the environment? Changes need to occur in all manner of ways from now on.
Hey Hey Australia: Tesla Roadster Breaks EV World Record: 313 Miles on Single Charge (501 KM) The 10th Annual Global Green Challenge
The Global Green Challenge (a kind of spin off from the World Solar Challenge) in Australia….
So is it the case that we can deny that having a pet is a problem?
Failing that, the portion of the problem ascribable to pets is so small that doing something about them is not going to help reducing carbon emissions at all. Good heavens in China they have a thousand pets a week more than us.
Now where have I heard that before?
Disclaimer:
I own no pet, no car, no little ankle biters to emit carbon after I go, have a very small insulated dwelling, and my last power bill was about half the national average. (Not good, I know, but…)
dogs and cars have nothing to do with each other!
GregM @75: “Brian, research termites. Nasty little carbon dioxide emitters.”
Aha!!! The trilling frogs in our garden eat termites.
They wish to claim carbon sink status.
Paul Burns @82: “The way its going cockroaches will take over the world.”
Not if the frogs have any say in it…they eat cockroaches too!
Minor detail is that we have been dewatering their usual habitats, and they can’t function without moist environments.
I think the general point is valid, that the environmental impact of all aspects of our lifestyles should be considered.
The use of particular examples to shock, when it turns out that those numbers are based on highly dubious methodology, is not a really great idea and unlikely to successfully advance the argument.
Excellent creatures, frogs.
Delicious too.
I am so morally inept and other matters in this Post Singer age that to know I was a Vegan once,and claim to be a Vegetarian now,must surely rankle the pure at heart who find New Zealanders the Bees Knees.If the Do of the various letters accumulated into one throbbing mess of animalness,WMMBB, that can be sympathised with across two continents as a pointer of finger at me.One Australia,and the other New Zealand,then blow me down with a Koala Doll as representing their sexuality.Fond as I was of KIWI Shoe Polish,and the occasional New Zealand coin,my innocence has been questioned here ,by the concerned runner of a dog.Spare me, your exhibitionism when running the dog, if it really does mean,in doing so a moral and ethical act higher than being derogatory towards those poor bloody New Zealanders.New Zealanders pretend to live on a Continent,whilst Australians pretend we live on an Island.It must be me that is the problem,I must change my name using Deed Poll other than the Travers name of Mountain of New Zealand,because I obviously have no reason for generalities have I! Internet posting is like baring your inner most realities of experience,Australians need to import Baboons and other monkeys with interesting proboscises[plural of the singular] and backsides!What does a barefoot wmmbb need as the higher virtue again!?A non leather neck belt for the dog,thus representing, may the circle never be unbroken!
You humans think you domesticated the animals?
Judging by some responses you find when the topic of canines and felines arises, maybe it was the other way around…
Meanwhile I’m just awaiting official declaration of my extinction (eastern quoll) on the mainland of Australia, my home and playground for millenia.
Maybe ~2013? fifty years since I was last spotted on the mainland in 1963, in Vaucluse Sydney, believe it or not.
Dead in the gutter, you can certainly believe that.
Us quolls get about, well we did once.
Anyway, then some hardworking folks can try and reintroduce us. Well, at least some of our long lost and long suffering Tasmanian relatives, who are the only survivors.
The rest of us will remain in hiding until you humans p*ss off, or at least start looking after the place a bit better.
PS our carbon footprint was previously accredited as fully accounted and integral to local ecological processes (Mother Natures Carbon Accounting Pty Ltd), leave us to do our thing and we’ll take care of your small mammal problems as well.
Actually considering the parlous state developing for lots of my cousins more recently in this land… and the contribution your pets/masters, the canines and felines, have bought to my extended family in this land.
It seems necessary to remind humans that there are actually more than two types of animals in the world, and what a god damn boring and stupid world it would be if that’s all there was. Not to mention how much cheaper most of them are (nothing in dollars? a bit of mindfulness), and they don’t expect you to wait on hand and foot for them. But can be friendly enough, if you are.
Australia’s mammal extinction crisis
http://abc.gov.au/science/articles/2009/09/02/2674674.htm
However Australia’s medium-sized mammals have had to deal with a different range of issues to the vicuña: the introduction of feral animals, particularly cats and foxes; increased grazing pressure; altered fire regimes; the clearing of habitat for development and production; and now, the effects of climate change.
It isn’t that any of these pressures are particularly important by themselves, but the fact that many of them act in concert has had a significant impact on causing the crashes in population numbers, and increasing the risk of species becoming extinct.
For example, the crescent nailtail wallaby was once an abundant and widespread macropod of central and western Australia. The pressures of feral cats and foxes coupled with clearing for agriculture and grazing, and altered fire regimes pushed this little species over the edge and it is now classified as extinct.
The problem is also more far-reaching than we first assumed. Many people may think that animals are becoming extinct in the south of Australia where habitat destruction is quite evident.
But the populations of iconic species in the north of Australia such as the northern quoll, golden bandicoot and the Carpentarian rock-rat are also collapsing. In our lifetime populations of some species have greatly reduced in number, and others have completely disappeared in landscapes that are considered to be in excellent condition.
The golden bandicoot, listed as a vulnerable species, used to be found across much of the north of Australia. It is now only found in very small populations in the Northern Territory and on the isolated Burrow Island off the coast of Western Australia.
Quoll, I’d give you a home if I could.
But the pet police won’t allow it.
Congratulations on your Carbon Neutral Accreditation! It will be a lovely epitaph. And means you get eaten after the dog, car, cat, cellphones and fish.
Well said, Martin B.
GregM: any frog recipes you recommend?
Quoll: what an erudite specimen you are… good luck, cobber.
A friend of mine reckon cat tastes a bit like chicken. Not having ever tried it, I wouldn’t know. I do know cat skins make excellent floor mats. Also helps preserve native species. Just sayin’.
Paul, I am told that the Tambourim, used in Samba, is the size it is because you can make a cat skin stretch that far and no further. Bit too small for a floor mat. They make excellent polishing rags.
Huggy
Sorry Huggy, but the contemporary Tamborim is stretched with a nylon film. However, most common hand percussion drums are either skinned with cow/buffalo or goat skin (djembe = djem/log bec/goat). Some of the more exotic drums, like the warup from up the Torres Straights, is skinned with File snake, while in some places in New Guinea they prefer Goanna. Anyway, I streched a few drums and my preference is Wallaby skin and xray films. Wallaby skin is extremely tough and does not absorb much moisture and thus does not need much retensioning.
Got rid of dog and cat years ago and have a great mob of wallaby on the property now. Their meat tastes good, like some of the best game I had in Europe. Just as good are my meat chooks!
I am planning to make up a small prototype Aquaponic system and grow my own sushi. Apparently you can grow in a small backyard 50kg of fish a year in a 1000 l tank. That equates to a feed of fish every week while you grow all your herbs in the filter system. My kind of pets!
O0tz
I am talking the size of the Tamborim being set long before synthetics.
Djembes are girls drums, real Men play Surdos
Kangaroos skin is really good but most skins are now synthetic.
Huggy
Ootz at comment 109:
So how many fish are you planning to crowd into your small, backyard tank? It sounds creepy to me.
Huggy@110
I enjoy your interesting comments here, so please do not take this personally, but if people could refrain from comments like “X is for girls, therefore bad” that would be excellent. It’s this type of defining ones’s humanity in opposition to “girls” and therefore women as a less human category that is a major contributor to this kind of behaviour. I hope LP is a mature enough forum not to perpetuate it.
No apologies for thread derail, as it appears that horse has well and truly bolted.
I myself own a Pearl DLX series kit, and the fact that I’m a woman has never detracted from its awesomeness (and loudness.)
Thanks Huggy for the clarification. Yes everything is going synthetics nowadays, even the old catgut suture has been replaced with nylon and poly.
James, an AP system this size will yield approximately 30-50kg per year. Considering the diminishing fish stock around the world and the dubious quality of farmed fish and the environmental problems associated with it, AP is a going to be a major food source in future as it has been in the past.
What I find creepy is how industrial food is being produced and how little its production and quality, never mind ethics is questioned. Perhaps a little reminder with the courtesy of the “fresh food people”. Next time you tuck into your Chicken Parmigiano you may want to keep this in mind.
My prediction is, with increasing production costs and diminishing resources more corners will be cut in industrial food production and systemic food failures, such as England had awhile ago with mad cow, will more common. Thus, the edible pet option will look less creepy and more’natural’ over time.
As far as fish farming is concerned, plenty of people round the world consume fish from waste stabilisation ponds (read final ponds in one of the lower energy sucking processes for bulk sewage treatment).
http://www.cepis.ops-oms.org/bvsacd/cd53/greywatervol3/wwuvol3ann1.pdf
Of course, even though the final ponds in most WSP systems are just as good as most rivers from a bacteriological pov, and the high nutrient removal via consuming the fish is an environmental plus, and the WSPs are all SOLAR driven, how many people would eat fish from them?
I would, but then again I am for a low carbon future. Such waste treatment systems are ideal for many parts of Australia because the biggest issue is land availability – which we have in most rural and remote areas. Not to mention trucking food to these remote places when food could be grown locally with recycled nutrients.
Most people, however much lip service they give to recycling and lowering carbon footprint, would prefer to see this resource highly treated with high energy consuming processes and then used for industrial useage only, rather than use low energy recycling and have to eat the stuff. So I applaud people who have the space to do it at home. It makes a very good point.
Dear Groke,
My comment was intended to be entirely satirical, it was meant as a dig at those who promote and use variations of this terminology. It is a long way from incitement to pack rape.
In my samba group, about half of the surdo players are female BTW.
Ootz,
One essential item we need is a urine collecting toilet. Until we embrace this we are just talking hot air when we talk of recycling, urine collecting toilets would be the single most important source of nitrogen, phosphorus and other plant nutrients
Huggy
Marks,
thank you for kind remarks and support. I do realise that I am pushing buttons re eating pets, hence I was not surprised by James ‘creepy’ comments. I suppose my stance has been influenced by my distant past, when growing up on a small farm in them hills of Heidi fame.
At the tender age of seven the farmer gave me a young bunny rabbit. Every day I tenderly cared for it and cleaned the timber box in which it was housed, one of the many that lined the back wall of the farm. However, the day arrived when the farmer took me aside and gave me a gentle lesson from where the food on my plate came from and what is shortly going to happen to my rabbit! No question I was sad, however today I thank that farmer for giving me respect for my food, meat or no meat. I believe these timber boxes are still lining walls on small farms and ordinary houses in villages. As I believe, that in not too distant past the chook yard was an integral part of the Aussie suburban backyard.
What happened, today we have an over abundance of neglected (no walkies and habitat) fat cats and dogs with a huge industry attached to it, all locked up most of the day or worse roaming the neighborhood for distraction. Millions of dollars spent for surgery on fancy breeds or for grooming. The pet food isles in the supermarket promote Gourmet food at gourmet prices, which by the way not only contains cow lips and a…holes but all the other ‘waste products’ of industrial food production.
We not only neglect the intrinsic value of native wildlife, as Quoll poignantly points out, we also absolutely have no regard for live which sustains us and overcompensate with this perverse love for ‘Mans best friends’ (Sorry Ladies).
Huggs,
urine collection is a fancy new word for the age old practice of farming with night soil. Whole civilisations were built on the appropriate use and recycling of human as well as animal waste. The modern version of it is growing sunflower and corn to feed my chooks. I live in the hope that the only footprint I leave is the growing recognition that, yes comfortable and sustainable living can be done without too many sacrifices.
Ootz,
You need to get yourself one of these:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s17821.htm
Urine collection is a taboo subject, but think on this, there are about 6 billion people at a litre of urine per day each this is 6 billion l of high quality nitrogen fertiliser that finishes up in the waterways and the sea – every fucking day. (Not sure of the actual quantity per person) but even if my estimate is way off it is avast quantity of high quality largely sterile fertiliser that simply goes to feed algal blooms and that destroys coral reefs etc.
Is it not about time that we did something here? More use than pining after nuclear reactors.
Huggy
Phillip, best as I could I was not saying you, or anybody was morally inept. My point was emotionally responses, particularly those fixed or frozen, get in the way of thinking.
To equivocate, thus to step gently into the quicksand of cognitive dissonance, I also believe that compassion and clear thinking, are both necessary and possible for us to realize our essential humanness. The power of compassion is not just that it connects and reconnects individuals to others, but importantly to their natural environments. We like the quolls are products of nature, and it seems we have acquired some assets such as mirror neurons.
Also, Huggy, since Phosphorus is actually getting scarce, the price is going up to the point where the daily pee normally contains a cent or so worth of the stuff. Not much, but considering that even a few years ago, its worth in such terms was not measurable, that is a significant increase. If nothing else, the lack of P will mean recycling of pee will become much more useful over time.
The way forward is for new towns and major subdivisions to have the separate urine and #2 chutes and for #2 to go via vacuum sewer to a digester for production of digester gas to produce electricity and convert methane to carbon dioxide. The digested sludge then is good for composting with green waste and then onto agricultural use. Unfortunately the on-site loos still produce methane.
Marks
# 2 is bio-waste like any other and should be treated as such, methane conversion to energy is very efficient.
Urine is worth $60 million per day on a global basis?Wow.
My main concern about fish farming, even backyard fish farming, relates to the living conditions of the fish which are farmed.
For one thing, there’s the issue of space. According to this Aquaponics website: “As a general rule, backyard systems can stock between 10 – 30 kg of fish per 1000 litres of water”. In other words, generally backyard Aquaponics systems can stock around 20 kg of fish per cubic metre of water. Admittedly I’m no expert on fish, but this seems claustrophobically crowded to me. For an 80 kg human being, the equivalent would be to give the human being 4 cubic metres of space for a few months or a year (prior to suffocation of course). Fish aren’t humans, needless to say, so they might react differently to spending their lives in a very confined space. Perhaps fish need more open space than humans.
There’s also the issue of the sterility of the living conditions of these fish. It seems these fish would spend their lives in a small, opaque, plastic tub, or at least that’s how things seem on the basis of the Aquaponics website mentioned earlier. It’s hard to imagine an environment more removed from most fishes’ natural environment than a small, opaque, plastic tub in someone’s backyard.
I suppose I view fish farming in the same way I view battery egg production, at least at the moment. If battery egg production spread into Australian backyards, so that every backyard had it’s own small battery cage crammed with hens, I’d view this as more dystopian than utopian.
Of course…those serious about lowering their greenhouse gas footprints could consider (as suggested by Nicholas Stern) eating less meat and more vegetables.
So HuggyBunny does this high value of urine/phosphorus mean that the calculation of the family pet’s carbon footprint quoted by Brian is invalid? Would it help if humans were trained to ensure that their pooches and pussies peed somewhere appropriate for processing? Granulated pet phosphorus could possibly sell as a product like granulated urea?
I already do a pretty good job of praising my dog if he avoids pooing in public places which mandate the use of plastic bags. My cat who walks with us in the morning was born environmentally conscious and able do her own little cover up job.
That’s poo, of course. The pee presents problems. Sorry about the predominance of Ps in this post. They poured out of me so to speak.
Ootz @116: “Whole civilisations were built on the appropriate use and recycling of human as well as animal waste.”
Ah, actually some pockets of Aussie civilisation are currently built on exactly this principle. Hervey Bay (Queensland) for example.
Most of the town is not connected to the small sewage farm – it’s capacity has not kept up with the exponential growth rate of the town. Some old houses have the old septic systems, and you can see their outfall pattern by the lush green vegetation in their gardens. All the newer houses have their own smicko, new technology sewage system in a subterranean tank in the backyard. Their gardens grow wonderfully on the treated fluid, so I’ve been told.
Like a spiral, we come back to the beginning, but a bit further along technologically speaking.
Goodness, can’t believe nobody has paused to consider the real reason for the high ecological footprint of cats … it’s people turning onto their computers to read LOLcats!
Seriously, this book is, verily, a load of crap. But I have witnessed apparently sane people condemning local Greens councillors for supporting off leash dog areas, on the basis that such activity encourages those evil greenhouse gas producing dawgs. Oddly enough, many of the same people choose to drive motherfucking great big cars themselves. Cheesh.
Give me a small car and a furry animal any day.
I recollect if you feed your dog fresh meat rather than Pal – they fart less.
I think Pal is canine heroin.
I thought there was distilled wisdom in Martin B’s comment @ 100:
There was also a comment which I can’t find now that referred to dogs having evolved with humans and whether this meant we have an ethical responsibility towards them now. I have heard the argument put that dogs and humans are co-evolutionary, cats possibly less so. Irrespective of how strong you make that case the bottom line is that we should not cast them lightly aside. Dogs and cats have a right to a future on the planet and their future is clearly with us.
The day before I wrote the post there was one of those touching news items in the MSM here. A man living alone since his wife died a few years ago has a dearly loved dog as a companion. He has heart rhythm problems and one day he fell down hurting himself severely. Whether his heart stopped temporarily we’ll never know, but as he lay on his back the dog started to pound his chest with both paws at once and barked into his face to rouse him. He came to enough to ring his brother who took him to hospital with a fair bit of loss of blood, since apart from his heart he’d cut himself badly.
Anyhow he reckons the dog saved his life and the RSPCA gave her a medal for her efforts. On the TV she looked a lovely animal, extremely well groomed and cared for and a very happy pair they made.
Speaks for itself, really.
That almost made me tear up, Brian.
It also reminded me how much I miss my little dog, who had to be put down last year, and how much I’ll miss the two cats I have when they go.
According to wikipedia two of some of the oldest known domesticated dog breeds were nearly wiped out by WW2.
The Kuvasz
The Shiba Inu
Incidentally, I’ve enjoyed this thread and learnt heaps. Didn’t know for example that t. gondii could infect dolphin and whale. Evolutionarialy, (if that’s a word) I kinda think that’s cool. And we don’t have to worry about climate change – the viruses have a master plan I’m sure. Just joking. Kinda.
More on topic, South Park was on topic this week (last?). The Cartman Lady Gaga remixes are also popular on youtube and their seems to be copyright claims being thrown out everywhere – from studios like Viacom and remix artists. Double awesome.
Perhaps Robert and Brenda Vale should be writing a sequel, entitled “Eat Each Other”?
They need to address the core problem, rather than the auxiliary problems…
Perhaps they should go first, in the interests of providing us with good role models.
Why not just acquire a pet who’s ecological footprint can be absorbed into yours when the time comes?
While it’s true you won’t get much emotional and haptic quality time with an oyster (not great couch snugglers) they do taste better with a dash of tabasco than yer average short-haired tabby.
Lamb! Now there’s a good compromise between cuteness and tastiness.
Dunno, Nabakov. There’s nothing that isn’t rendered palatable with enough Tabasco.
Nabakov @131, what about chooks, angora rabbits, pheasants, etc?
You can eat the eggs and spin the rabbits, then knock them off when they get a bit rickety? Like the good ol’ days?
The trouble comes when the kids have pet names for them; and even more impossible when you have pet names for them yourself…
“…even more impossible when you have pet names for them yourself… ”
Depends on what you name ‘em.
“Here, here Sauté. Come on Cold Cuts. Whose’ a good boy Snags. Come on, feeding time.”
I think too I’d quite like owning a racehorse called “Whiskas”.
“Lamb! Now there’s a good compromise between cuteness and tastiness.”
What compromise? Both are running at 100%
Nabakov, you are a totally bad egg.
Think of the effect on their personalities.
I hope you are going to get a horse whisperer/pet psychologist for poor “Whiskas”?
Speaking of dogs: I wonder if the mythical Smoking dog actually exists?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Le-Chien-qui-Fume/288013600460
LOL @ 134. Any dog named Thai Mango Salad with Snapper at Spice I Am would get my vote. Bit of mouthful at obedience training though.
Hmmmm, i know that Rogan Josh won a cup a few years ago, but is he in trouble now? i have friends at Nelson Lakes in NZed, they have/had lambs called; Roast, Curry and BBQ.
I honestly thought Eat The Rich would have commented by now.
Rum rebelious, why would you, they are full of sh!t?
I honestly thought you would have twigged that by now!
Sorry, I meant nutritionally speaking, of course, as say compared to a vegetarian farmer.
Fuck Eat The Rich.
Eat the poor instead. They’re low in fat and high in fibre.