Day 87: Petfood

I had a pretty tough week involving late nights, early mornings and lots of back and forth between Brittany and Paris.  The client I am working for is a maker of petfood ingredients.  They sell their ingredients to petfood manufacturers and its their product that gives the right taste to the food.  I was at their main site today and they have 300 humans doing the work and over 600 cats and dogs whose job is to taste the food.   The animals are constantly monitored to see how often they eat the food at what time and what they do before and after.  While I was in the cafeteria I came across an informal survey they were carrying out which had 5 questions (of which I only remember 4):

1. Would you give a Xmas present to your pet (after all he/she is part of your family)?
2. Do you have an ethical problem with making petfood to human standards of health and safety?
3. Should we stop using any kind of meat in all petfood?
4. Should we make kosher and halal petfood ?
5. ?

Aside from the fact that I find most of these questions completely absurd I am amazed at the effort, ingenuity and research that goes into creating the ideal petfood.  The company is highly successful and profitable.  The global pet food industry has over 100 billion $ in annual sales and yet we spend less than 2% of that world wide on protecting wild animals and endangered species.  I'm not a big advocate of taxes, but I would be find it fitting if governments implemented a 20% tax on petfood which would go towards preserving wildlife around the world.