Food and Feeding
Dog food - history
In the days before pet food, most dogs and cats ate leftovers. It wasn't until 1800 that pet food was invented, and a London-based American electrician named James Spratt made the first intended "food" for dogs. He saw dogs eating scraps of cookies thrown from ships, so he created the first edible cookie.
However, pet food didn't gain popularity until the early 1900s. To dispose of dead horses after World War I, US brand Ken-L-Ration used horse meat as pet food. During the 1930s, Gaines Food Company sold 200 million dollars of canned food for cats and dogs. For companies such as Nabisco, Quaker Oats, and General Foods, pet food presented an opportunity to market additional products as a good source of income. After World War II, the economy recovered, and people could afford the luxury of pet food. At first, canned food was the primary type sold, but in 1956 the first extruded pet food hit store shelves (extrusion is when the food is dried into dumplings, then sprayed with synthetic nutrients to compensate for lost nutrients during processing).
In the 1960s and 1970s, companies began diversifying flavors and refining extrusion technology. In the 1980s, disease-specific foods, natural foods, moist foods, vacuum-packed foods, frozen foods, freeze-dried foods, and breed-specific pet foods were introduced. The pet food industry generated 83 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach 90 billion in 2025. These days there is a trend back to homemade raw natural food. Funny, it is very similar to pet food before pet "food" was invented.
