Pampered pets enjoy sustainable seafood

 The recent news that Mars Petcare is embracing seafood sustainability came as no surprise, given the size of the pet-food industry and the potential to market a new message and attract new sales. Current health and nutrition trends in pet food embrace organic ingredients and omega-3 messages, so the sustainability of its seafood ingredients is an easy addition.

According to the UK Pet Food Manufacturers Association, there are around 8 million dogs and 8 million cats in the UK. To feed these and 3 million other small pets, British pet owners spent GBP 2 billion in 2008 on 1.5 million tons of pet food.

In the United States, the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association estimates dog ownership at 77.5 million and cat ownership at 93.6 million, while, globally, an estimated 750 million pets eat 20 million tons of food annually. This necessarily includes a great deal of meat, poultry and fish.

Mars Petcare, one of the world's largest pet-care businesses, said it worked with the World Wildlife Fund to develop a sustainable seafood policy, in response to growing consumer enquiries about its seafood sources.

"The End of the Line documentary has had a big impact on consumers," said Mark Johnson, UK managing director for Mars Petcare. "We are the first pet-care company to make a commitment to sustainable fish, and we hope that will act as a catalyst for the whole industry."

Mars has set a realistic target of 2020 to phase out the use of wild caught whole fish and fish fillets and replace them with sustainable fish byproducts and sustainable farmed seafood products. It is also aiming to use sustainable replacements for other marine ingredients.

More immediately, the company has set an end-of-year deadline for introducing Marine Stewardship Council eco-labeled pet food across Europe in a number of its brands, offering consumers a choice of sustainable pet food products for the first time.

The WWF's Jason Clay welcomed the Mars announcement. "There is no quick fix to this problem," he said. "But when companies as influential as Mars take a leadership role, it is great news for the world's oceans."

The new policy is part of Mars' overall efforts to "green up," which also saw the opening of the world's first sustainable pet food manufacturing facility in the United States last year — "sustainable" in terms of efforts to recycle water, reduce energy use and protect against erosion and light pollution.  However, the company's credentials came under attack earlier this week, when Charles Clover's Fish2fork website pointed out that Mars U.S. was advertising cat food flavoured with bluefin tuna.

The ingredients are listed merely as tuna, rather than bluefin, but it begs the question why is Mars advertising a threatened species, especially given the loud noises it has made about its sustainable seafood policy?

A spokesman for Mars Petcare U.S. explained that it was working quickly to identify a viable and sustainable replacement for the bluefin tuna flavor and will offer cats and cat lovers a more sustainable variety made with Pacific albacore tuna. I do hope they are line-caught. I also hope that the poor cats don't turn up their noses at the substitution — some of these pampered pets can be very fussy.

A straw poll of pet owning friends found a mixed bag of opinions on the subject, but the majority were in favor of helping to maintain healthy fish populations, providing it didn't cost them any more.

For Mars, achieving MSC chain of custody will involve additional outlay, as will the purchase of certified fish. However, the company has said that it will absorb all such costs, which probably won't come as a hardship given the potential for additional sales. At least in the short-term, that is, until all the other companies follow suit.