Food - Bee Wilson worries about what we feed our domestic animals
"The world spends $9 billion a year on pet food and cannot find less than one-tenth of that for the most dispossessed people of the world." This statistic, recently produced by a disheartened aid official, is scary enough in itself. But it's even scarier if you stop to wonder what they're spending the $9 billion on. It isn't the pets who are being spoiled with that money, but the pet fanciers. Most pet food seeks to please the master, not the beast. It is one of the clearest examples of food as displaced love.
The junk on sale in pet shops is almost entirely designed to make the owner feel adored. Buy a multi-coloured Krazy Krunch millet stick (only £3.25) and watch your canary twitter with glee. Or open a special sachet of expensive foil-wrapped chunks and let your cat know she's special too. Animal chocolates come in packets daubed with quasi-pornographic pictures of smiling pets. The urge to pamper one's pet with little titbits is irresistible - and selfish. And 'twas ever thus. Chaucer's Prioress indulgently fed hounds "With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed". Dr Johnson so adored his cat, Hodge, that he fed him oysters, which he insisted on buying with his own fat hands, lest the servants resent the task and take it out on the "poor creature". Samuel Butler's cat drank mulled port and rum punch. In this century, the rich dowager feeding foie gras to her Pekinese has become a cliche. Phil Spector ordered his cook to feed Grishka, his Russian wolfhound, with dainty steak. Phil's wife Ronnie was understandably envious.
Pet foods are highly anthropomorphised: they reflect the full range of human diets and desires. As with feeding children, you can take either the homespun, economical route (cabbage trimmings, mutton fat and boiled coley) or the junky, kiss-me-quick route. When I kept guinea pigs, I would try to give them wholesome, cheap bran mixes, which I bought loose, and for which they showed limited enthusiasm. But before long, I succumbed to alluring pre-wrapped packets of Feast, which they gobbled down as quickly as hamburgers. It looked as unhealthy as sugar-coated cereal, but, boy, did those guineas love it. So relentless is the marketing, it's almost impossible to take a utilitarian approach and feed one's pets on scraps. In an ideal world, rabbits would feed themselves by mowing the lawn and dogs would help their owners diet by gnawing on half-eaten chops. But there's always another smiling pet product that gets in the way.
The current trend is for animal health food. You can buy "nutritionally complete" canisters of dry food for cats and dogs, stuffed with vitamins, which are remarkably like those drums of "complete" diet mixes for athletes. Some people even try to make their cats vegetarian, which only makes the poor pussies more bloodthirsty than ever: the result is a carpet strewn with pigeons and half-eaten sparrows. Then there are the owners who treat their animals like invalids. Pet manuals recommend feeding canines with scrambled eggs or porridge, hamsters with bio yoghurt and guinea pigs with toast. (In South America they eat the guineas on toast, but that's another story.)
Pets eat like humans. So perhaps, behind closed doors, more humans eat like their pets than one imagines. There's the old urban myth about the poor eating Pedigree Chum because it's cheaper than steak and kidney. In my own (limited) experience, kitty chocolates are no more unpalatable than Hershey bars. And as a child I was once reduced to gnawing on Bonios while my family was staying with some frugal Scottish friends whose catering was rather sparse. They were pleasantly crunchy, as I recall.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by using the 'report this comment' facility or by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
