Knowledge

Can You Make Money Selling Cheap Human Food As (Expensive?) Pet Food?

When I was a kid, my family used to have a lot of pets which were dogs, cats, birds and fishes. Nowadays, our family pets composed only of almost a dozen hamsters. We pampered our pets especially our dogs. And we feed them human food.

We would feed our dogs home cooked and takeaway meals that we eat ourselves. Our dogs don’t only have meals three times a day, but they also have snacks. We did the same for our cats.

There are articles online that warn pet owners not to feed their pets human food especially junk foods and processed foods. According to these so-called pet experts, these kinds of foods are bad for the health of pets and other animals. You may also be spoiling your pets if you do.

Nevertheless, this got me thinking. If pets eat human food, can we sell cheap human food and pass them off as (expensive?) pet food? It is a well known fact that there are gourmet pet foods out there that are more expensive than human food.

But why am I so interested in knowing this? This is because the pet products industry is one of the biggest industries around. It even beat out the more capital intensive robotics industry and similar industries.

Let’s look at the figures. The market size of the global pet products industry is estimated to be $261 billion as of 2022 with CAGR of 6.1% until 2027. Compare this again with the robotics industry whose estimated global size is $32.32 billion with a CAGR of 17.45 until 2026.

The financial figures above indicate that there is more profits to be made from the pet products industry. The global pet food industry alone is worth $115.5 billion in 2022 and have a CAGR of 5.11% until 2029.

As you can see, there is no contest. It is even more important to note that the global pet food market can always count on regular repeat sales from their customers. Robotics and other machine purchases are only done once by factories.

Another thing you need to consider is that pet foods can be manufactured cheaply. Industrial machines, electronics, automobiles and other things need a lot of capital to be made. This is the appeal of a pet food business as compared to other products.

I found an article from the online UK newspaper Mirror which answers this question. The article is dated August 2015 so its old news. This just means that it has been happening for a long time already and maybe even much longer.

Their article is titled: EXCLUSIVE: Pet food costs FIFTY per cent more than similar meals humans eat. I suggest you read this article to know the extent of how much pet food can be a lot more expensive that a comparable human food.

Here is a small snippet from the article: “An 80 pence (British Cent) tin of salmon from cat food company Gourmet works out at the equivalent of £ (British Pound) 9.43 a kilo. It contains 70 per cent fish flakes and four per cent salmon.”

“A bigger £1.44 tin of Tesco Wild Pacific Pink Salmon for human ­consumption costs the equivalent of only £6.80 a kilo, and it is 99 per cent salmon.” If we were to convert the difference between the two in US dollar terms:

The UK pet food is almost $3.00 more expensive than its comparable human food and has a much, much lesser quality. This is one of the realities of the pet food market where sometimes its more cheaper to feed pets human food.

But let’s not forget that many pet foods are much cheaper than human food. So we come to another question: “Can humans eat pet food?” Apparently the answer is yes. There are pet food products in the market with the “Human Grade” labelling in them.

This basically means that the particular pet food product with this kind of label can be safely eaten by humans as well. And for the most part this is true, but it’s a murky issue. For example in the USA, there is no clear cut law regarding the labelling of human grade pet food.

There are issues which are hard for the American law to regulate at least. For example in the issue of meats in human grade pet food. Compared to other people in the world, many Americans are more finicky eaters.

Many people from other countries will eat almost all kinds of meat including internal organs. In many pet foods, such meat exists. A finicky American might be grossed out if they ever learn that they are buying human grade pet food with internal organs as meat ingredients.

There are doctors that advise that although some pet foods are human grade, you shouldn’t eat them because the ingredients were made specifically for animals and not for humans, although eating small amounts is considered safe.

From our family’s personal experience, we can definitely say that pets eat human food. But the question is this: “Can pets eat human food?” This is not a new question and numerous articles abound online that answer this.

The usual answer from these articles is: “Yes, pets can eat human food but…” They would say that feeding pets human food is perfectly okay if you follow a few guidelines like not giving too rich foods which can cause your pets to have digestion problems.

I would suggest that you do a little research using such Google keywords as: “can pets eat human food” to know the pros and cons of giving your pets human food as well as pointers on how to prepare human food for pet consumption.

For example, in Asia and perhaps in many developing countries where rice is a food staple, a simple dog food meal can comprise of a small amount of minced meat mixed in with a larger portion of rice. Even cats and birds eat rice.

In fact, rice is one of the ingredients in many commercially available pet foods. If a pet owner adopted this diet to their pets instead of just commercial pet food they are likely to save money and have healthier pets. Maybe there are already businesses marketing such products.

In case you didn’t know already, the meat in many pet foods usually compose of meat that many people wouldn’t eat. For example, a pig’s internal organs might be okay for human consumption as far as people from many developing countries are concerned.

But many people from many poor and developing countries are less finicky eaters as compared to many people from many developed countries. Pet owners from developed countries may try to pass on their eating habits to their pet and not feed them internal organs.

But the Mirror article I discussed before proves that if you study the pet food market, you can actually pull it off. What if the manufacturers of the human grade tuna altered their ingredients to make them also edible to pets and pass them off as gourmet pet foods?

This way, they make more money per unit by being able to sell them as expensive pet food. Let’s take another case: Animal blood which is also an ingredient in pet food. In the Philippines, the blood of slaughtered animals are made into cakes and sold in the street as cheap snacks.

Imagine if these cheap blood cakes are adopted in developed countries, manufactured and commercially sold. A quick scan online revealed to me that this is not popular at the moment, but who knows? It might just take off.

Our family’s hamsters love fresh fruit and vegetable as well as processed ones especially if they’re just preserved. My mother would sometimes feed them the leftover vegetables whenever she cooks a meal.

I just wonder if businesses who use or sell fresh vegetables and fruits have noticed this in their pets. Imagine if a restaurant owner has pet hamsters too, he/she can feed the restaurant’s leftover fruits and vegetables and even meat. A good way to save money on pets.

I also noticed that vegetables stalls would often remove the outer layer of cabbages because they’re either damaged or too dry for human consumption. These outer skin of cabbages are usually disposed, but what if they were resold as pet food?

I also hear about fruits being left to rot in the ground at many fruit orchards because they are misshapen or are partially damaged. These fruits might not pass the fruit buyer’s approval seal for human consumption but they can be resold as pet food.

These are just some examples how fruits and vegetables which are rejected for human consumption and considered of no value can be repackaged as nutritious pet food.

Oh, how my family’s hamsters love cookies and biscuits. This is what we discovered after a long time of owning nearly a dozen hamsters. But contrary to what you might think, these are not cookies and biscuits specifically made for hamsters.

They’re cheap biscuits and cookies which are so cheap that they are sold by the plastic bucket. Sometimes, we run out of actual pet food bought from a pet shop. We temporarily feed them these cheap cookies and biscuits intended for humans.

If the manufacturer of these cheap cookies and biscuits also target the pet food market, I seriously predict that their customer base would grow by a wide margin. When I was a kid, I used to feed peanuts to my dogs as a treat and they love them.

Imagine if peanut manufacturers and sellers also target the pet food market? When I researched online for companies that sell actual peanuts as dog treat, I found none but peanut butter flavored pet cookies are already being sold. Actual peanuts as dog treat can be next.

According to the statistics website Statista, the global food industry is worth $8.66 trillion in 2022 with a CAGR of 6.72% until 2027. Although the pet food industry pales in comparison, global pet food revenues are in the hundred billion dollars which is not small.

One thing that we can think about is that with the $8.66 trillion in market value, how much of that food is wasted? I have already stated that leftover food from food preparation and selling is already a potentially big source of pet food.

Just imagine if these food companies who exclusively sell to the human market also expand into the pet food market using the leftovers from their food production processes. Their byproduct food or leftovers might not be fit for human consumption but might be for pets.

You may not be a big food company but as can be seen from previous talks, it could be a matter of altering a few ingredients in your food for humans to make them also perfect for pet food.

Or you may simply rebrand your food products if they are safe for both humans and pets and corner both of these markets. For example, I can sell my peanut products both to supermarkets and pet shops.

There are many ways that cheap human food or human food that is discarded can be turned into pet food. You might even become successful at marketing these pet foods as expensive gourmet pet food.

But of course there is a caveat, and experts at this subject matter like nutritionists and animal experts would tell you to do you own due diligence. That is, you must study first which human food a pet can safely eat and in what quantities before you embark in this business.

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