Feels like tractability is the key point here. It doesn’t matter a huge amount if 7 billion is or isn’t the total amount of animals that would counterfactually be saved if all pets were fed vegan diets[1]
What matters is what change can feasibly be achieved by a marginal campaign or food innovation, given that vegan pet food is already a thing which I suspect most vegans are aware of, and most pet owners are not vegans. Also, many vegans are comfortable feeding their pets (or in the case of one person I know, an entire zoo) with omnivorous or carnivorous diets.
I suspect the returns to campaigning would look like marginal returns to vegan advocacy and meat alternatives research for humans, but it feels like this is where the evidence would be most interesting.
Feels like tractability is the key point here. It doesn’t matter a huge amount if 7 billion is or isn’t the total amount of animals that would counterfactually be saved if all pets were fed vegan diets[1]
Agreed on your point on scale Ben. And also curious to hear whether Andrew has a response to this.
But I still think that most people here are dismissing the case for tractability too quickly here.
Firstly, I’d agree with Andrew that the findings of his survey are a decent initial justification for tractability (even with the limitations of the survey data granted).
Secondly, I think most people aren’t recognising that there’s no rule saying we have to market vegan pet diets as vegan or plant-based. Indeed, the successful brands in the space right now (e.g. Omni) are deliberately not doing this, branding instead around hypoallergenic, healthy, clean label, and sustainability qualities. Omni is now achieving mainstream support—e.g. Dragons’ Den investment from celebrity investors, steady growth YoY, incl beyond a vegan consumer base.
This is a learning from the human alt protein space—we don’t need to market our products as vegan in order to sell them, and actually avoiding vegan branding is probably better for mainstream adoption (e.g. Huel is quietly vegan, and I expect is displacing more animal-based meals to plant-based than some leading outwardly vegan brands).
The pet industry is facing multiple pressures/incentives to diversify its ingredient choice, including sustainability pressures, supply chain volatility, ABP diversion towards other uses (e.g. sustainable jet fuel). This could encourage companies to formulate well branded plant-based options, or to increase the proportion of non-animal based ingredients in their formulations (something most consumers wouldn’t even notice, but could have a large impact). E.g. check out FeedKind Pet from Calysta, that offers an animal-free protein derived from microbial fermentation that they’re selling as new pet food protein with improved health, sustainability, and supply chain security profiles.
There’s actually a case to be made that pet food diet change could be more tractable than human dietary change, which I discussed briefly on Alistair’s post on this topic.
I recognise that I’m mostly providing theories/anecdotes rather than hard data here (if people have hard data on tractability that they’d like to see, lmk!), but I think most people aren’t recognising these theories, and are being too quick to dismiss tractability based on the idea that consumers won’t accept vegan pet diets. This view doesn’t acknowledge the various other strategies available to the alt protein pet food sector beyond selling 100% vegan formulated and vegan branded diets.
I am glad that you think this issue is tractable and I’ve been following your work with great interest since I saw your RECAP talk in July (Side note to anyone following this—the RECAP talks are great!). I am not sure what my own threshold for “tractable” is but I appreciate that you are cracking on it and I would be glad to be proven wrong. Tractability is inherently based on unknowns and I’m glad we’re a big tent where people can prove something possible by doing it.
Feels like tractability is the key point here. It doesn’t matter a huge amount if 7 billion is or isn’t the total amount of animals that would counterfactually be saved if all pets were fed vegan diets[1]
What matters is what change can feasibly be achieved by a marginal campaign or food innovation, given that vegan pet food is already a thing which I suspect most vegans are aware of, and most pet owners are not vegans. Also, many vegans are comfortable feeding their pets (or in the case of one person I know, an entire zoo) with omnivorous or carnivorous diets.
I suspect the returns to campaigning would look like marginal returns to vegan advocacy and meat alternatives research for humans, but it feels like this is where the evidence would be most interesting.
the order of magnitude seems plausible when considering how many more animals free ranging domestic cats alone are estimated to kill...
Yeah, I think this is true
Agreed on your point on scale Ben. And also curious to hear whether Andrew has a response to this.
But I still think that most people here are dismissing the case for tractability too quickly here.
Firstly, I’d agree with Andrew that the findings of his survey are a decent initial justification for tractability (even with the limitations of the survey data granted).
Secondly, I think most people aren’t recognising that there’s no rule saying we have to market vegan pet diets as vegan or plant-based. Indeed, the successful brands in the space right now (e.g. Omni) are deliberately not doing this, branding instead around hypoallergenic, healthy, clean label, and sustainability qualities. Omni is now achieving mainstream support—e.g. Dragons’ Den investment from celebrity investors, steady growth YoY, incl beyond a vegan consumer base.
This is a learning from the human alt protein space—we don’t need to market our products as vegan in order to sell them, and actually avoiding vegan branding is probably better for mainstream adoption (e.g. Huel is quietly vegan, and I expect is displacing more animal-based meals to plant-based than some leading outwardly vegan brands).
The pet industry is facing multiple pressures/incentives to diversify its ingredient choice, including sustainability pressures, supply chain volatility, ABP diversion towards other uses (e.g. sustainable jet fuel). This could encourage companies to formulate well branded plant-based options, or to increase the proportion of non-animal based ingredients in their formulations (something most consumers wouldn’t even notice, but could have a large impact). E.g. check out FeedKind Pet from Calysta, that offers an animal-free protein derived from microbial fermentation that they’re selling as new pet food protein with improved health, sustainability, and supply chain security profiles.
There’s actually a case to be made that pet food diet change could be more tractable than human dietary change, which I discussed briefly on Alistair’s post on this topic.
I recognise that I’m mostly providing theories/anecdotes rather than hard data here (if people have hard data on tractability that they’d like to see, lmk!), but I think most people aren’t recognising these theories, and are being too quick to dismiss tractability based on the idea that consumers won’t accept vegan pet diets. This view doesn’t acknowledge the various other strategies available to the alt protein pet food sector beyond selling 100% vegan formulated and vegan branded diets.
I am glad that you think this issue is tractable and I’ve been following your work with great interest since I saw your RECAP talk in July (Side note to anyone following this—the RECAP talks are great!). I am not sure what my own threshold for “tractable” is but I appreciate that you are cracking on it and I would be glad to be proven wrong. Tractability is inherently based on unknowns and I’m glad we’re a big tent where people can prove something possible by doing it.
Makes sense, fair point Seth! Appreciate your interest, and work in this space.