Page 10 THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1978
focus
Food for thought.
A&M researchers attack the world’s food problems
Stray dogs proposed for
chow in future pet foods
By LIZ NEWLIN
Battalion Staff
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Unowned dogs and world hunger,
two apparently unrelated problems,
caught the reading eyes of a univer
sity marketing professor about five
years ago. Dr. James U. McNeal
wants to know if his modest proposal
— using dog flesh as an ingredient
in pet and zoo animal foods — is a
solution at all.
“I put together enough facts and
figures to ask for funds to bring
some authorities to campus to see if
it’s plausible,” McNeal says. His re
quest for $10,000 from a private
foundation, a relatively small
amount, received an “iffy answer,
so he decided to research and pub
lish an “exploratory study” on the
subject.
He and graduate marketing stu
dent Bill Griffin found dog flesh is
comparable to pork in nutrition and
that people are not as opposed to it
as they expected.
“We ought to see if we could
gather up these unowned dogs and
use them for a processed raw mate
rial in the diets of other meat-eating
animals — house pets and zoo ani
mals,” McNeal says. He emphasizes
the process would use unowned
dogs, not strays.
Estimates place about 18 million
unclaimed dogs in America, mostly
living off the land and travelling in
packs. These unowned dogs and un
claimed dogs in pounds facing ex
termination are the subject of
McNeal’s study, not Fido who
jumped the fence for a day.
“The stray is your dog and mine
that we lost.” McNeal owns a dog,
cat, a hermit crab and goldfish.
The other part of the study, inter
viewing pet owners in a local
supermarkets, surprised him.
“We found less aversion than we
expected — for younger persons
and college-educated,” he says.
The study, printed in the Sep
tember 1977 issue of “The Texas
Journal of Science,” says:
“Aversion to dog flesh as a pet
food is not extreme among pet own-
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ers. In fact, the aversion to dog flesh
among young people holding pro
fessional and managerial positions is
only slightly higher than the aver
sion to pork as a pet food.
“Middle-aged women in lower
middle class families had higher av
ersion to dog meat as pet food. In
general, the research results...do
not indicate that attempting to
utilize dogs as a food resource for
household pets is a futile task,” it
says.
If state laws were changed and
unowned dogs were used as pet
food, McNeal suggests livestock and
pet owners would find a safer atmo
sphere for their animals. Wild dogs
occasionally terrorize homes and
ranches and injure people. Mayors
report unowned dogs are the largest
source of complaints in cities. These
problems would be reduced by the
plan, he says.
The major benefit of the scheme
would be to help lessen the world
food problem. Grains and meats
currently used in pet foods could he
contributed to human diets,
McNeal says.
By exposing the problems to the
scientific community, he says he
hopes to encourage a seminar on the
topic. So far, the large response to
the article has been evenly divided
for and against the idea.
Dr. Eugene McNeal’s theory
animals has become national
on feeding stray dogs as ineatto|
news.
Other scientists, though, have
been almost universally favorable to
the seminar if not the plan itself.
“It’s been everywhere,” McNeal
says, naming the Boston Globe, Los
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new members.
There will be a meeting
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6:30 p.m. in Rooms L & M
of the Student Programs Office
Share your ideas with us!
Angeles Times, Philadeplhiak
quirer, Washington Post and Hob
ton newspapers. He’s been inlei
viewed on a Washington, Si
television news show and locaUy
Publicity, he hopes will encm
age the foundation to host a sei
nar.
Tm so worried the negate I
journalism could cause that oiB
negative vote” to veto a seminar,®
says.
But he’s not entirely displeas®
with the public’s reaction. “I belie®
the university community shoal [
generate new ideas for society I
consider, gcxxl or bad.
“I don’t have a solution, McN«
says and grins, "but let’s find it,
Battalion
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