The pet food gold mine
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pet food industry is a multi billion dollar business but are premium brands - with premium ingredients - worth spending more money on? And could insect protein be the key to a more sustainable way of feeding our animal companions? Elizabeth Hotson gets the facts and figures from Kate Vlietstra, a global food and drink analyst at Mintel. We also hear from Tom Neish, founder of insect-based cat and dog food company, Yora. Plus, Rachel Grant from premium pet food brand, Laughing Dog, tells us why she believes her product is worth splashing out on. A trio of dog owners tell us what's on their pets' menu and Sean Wensley, senior vet at the pet charity, PDSA explains how to make sure your animal companion eats a balanced diet. Plus, Natalia Santis, manager at the Java Whiskers cat cafe, describes the eating habits of their eleven fussy felines. (Picture of treat time at Java Whiskers cat cafe. Picture by Elizabeth Hotson).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Elizabeth Hotson and in today's Business Daily, I'll be looking at some of the ingredients |
| 0:08.0 | which make up the multi-billion dollar pet food industry. |
| 0:11.9 | We actually use the larvae of the black soldier fly. I saw cricket flour to be made into |
| 0:18.1 | protein bars for people and I was like, why aren't we feeding this form of protein to pets? |
| 0:23.7 | And we'll hear what happens at treat time in a cat cafe. |
| 0:30.9 | The cat has literally just got up on its hind legs and grabbed it out your hand. |
| 0:37.4 | This is Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:45.4 | Here in the UK, we're a nation of animal lovers. |
| 0:48.7 | It's often said that we feed our dogs, cats and guinea pigs better than we feed ourselves. |
| 0:53.4 | And thanks both to the internet and |
| 0:55.1 | supermarkets, the range of specialist foods available from vegan treats to futuristic insect-based |
| 1:01.1 | options is mind-boggling. The global pet food market is worth tens of billions of dollars |
| 1:06.7 | and it's set to grow even more in the coming years, which makes sense if you look at a figure appropriately |
| 1:12.3 | from the Pet Food Manufacturers Association, |
| 1:15.1 | which says that in the 12 months from the start of the pandemic, |
| 1:18.4 | so March 2020, a total of 3.2 million households in the UK got a new pet. |
| 1:25.5 | Kate Fleesstra is a global food and drink analyst at Mintel |
| 1:28.7 | and she specialises in the pet food industry. |
| 1:31.6 | Many young people are waiting until they're older to become parents. |
| 1:35.9 | So they're actually sort of substituting pets for children. |
| 1:40.5 | So they're having little fur babies. |
| 1:42.5 | Are they feeding their pets anything different to older or more traditional pet owners? |
... |
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