Plant-based dog food cuts environmental impact by over 90% vs. red meat

[Judi Lynn]

By Dr. Liji Thomas, MD
Reviewed by Lauren Hardaker
Sep 29 2025

New research reveals just how much greener plant-based kibble is compared to meat-based dog food, from saving football fields of farmland to the carbon cost of long-haul flights.

Dry dog foods in the United Kingdom may be classified as plant-based or animal-based. Each has a different environmental impact. A recent paper in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems breaks down, for the first time, the environmental costs of each type of dog food.

Introduction
Plant-based foods have multiple health and environmental benefits when used as a main or sole part of the diet. Compared with animal-based foods, they generate far fewer greenhouse gases, cause less deforestation, and put less strain on soil fertility and biodiversity. They also reduce pressure on freshwater supplies and contribute less to soil and air pollution.

In 2018, the global dog population was about 471 million. While dogs are natural omnivores, meat-heavy diets drive significant greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, making up an estimated 2.5% to 8% of China's total emissions. In Brazil, dog food was estimated to produce 3% to 25% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. Commercial dog food production produces threefold higher emissions than feeding dogs on human leftover food.

Prior research suggests that pet food production uses up 41 to 58 million hectares of farmland, or twice as much land as the entire area of the UK. Most of this comes from animal-based pet food manufacturing. According to human food supply chain statistics, plant protein production requires much less resource than animal meat production, but direct comparisons for pet food in the UK are lacking.

More:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250929/Plant-based-dog-food-cuts-environmental-impact-by-over-9025-vs-red-meat.aspx

[Bayard]

1. Dogs are carnivores

We all know they will eat darn near anything, but roughly half of their diet should be some kind of meat to stay healthy.

I can see where kibble/dry food could cause trouble, not only from a resources standpoint, but also the process of extrusion and manufacturing itself.

Any vets or animal scientists in the house?

Thanks Judy.

[hunter]

2. Here, I'll say it: There are too many dogs and cats.

My wife and I are dog people and our dogs are shelter dogs, usually less-adoptable or non-adoptable misfits my wife has brought home from the shelter.

Dogs and cats ought to be scarce. The "breeding" of dogs, especially types of dogs with known health issues, ought to be severely curtailed.

Dogs started out as wolves. Wolves have a lot of depth to their gene pool and modern dogs were created by a mostly subtractive process -- we killed off or drove off wolves that were incompatible with our human communities and we ended up with dogs. These dogs, with increasingly shallow genetic diversity compared to wolves, were further culled to create the modern dog breeds we know today. It was an ugly process, and it's only recently we can pretend otherwise.

I grew up in a home where the dogs often outnumbered the people and this has often been the case in my life as an adult. And it's the same with my siblings.

We've had dogs who were the surplus of fads -- dalmatians, huskies, etc.

My wife's family tend to be cat people, and their story is similar.

These animals have a large environmental footprint just as people have a large environmental footprint.

If we want to protect what little is left of the earth's natural environment as it once was we need to halt the population growth of humans, our domestic animals, and our pets.

My wife is vegetarian approaching vegan and I'm mostly vegetarian. I'm not sure I can expect the same of our dogs, especially the "ancestral" breeds like huskies that don't really recognize grains as food.

The dogs we live with now would be happy to kill their own food and might be even happier in a family that hunted or butchered livestock. It's been a long time since I've hunted or butchered livestock. Their base diet is kibble I buy at Costco.

Vegetarian dog food is something I'd have to buy from internet sellers. Of all the ways I might reduce our household's environmental footprint I haven't gone there yet.