Food: Four-Legged Epicures

Americans traditionally treat their four-legged household pets like members of the family. And they feed them accordingly. Today, even table scraps are not good enough—which means that the nation's 3,000 dog-and cat-food makers and marketers contemplate 1968 sales of over $900 million, up $300 million since 1965. At that price, the doggy dish runs all the way from chicken croquettes to chunks of pure beef.

Pet-food makers insist that there is a little of the gourmand in every dog and cat, and last year they spent $52.5 million to advertise their argument more than 80% of it on television. Accounting for some 75% of the advertising dollars were: General Foods (Gaines and Top Choice—$11.5 million), Ralston Purina (Chow—$11 1 million), Quaker Oats (Puss 'n Boots Ken-L Ration—$9,000,000), Carnation (Friskies—$4.2 million), and Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. (Alpo—$4,000,000). Ten years ago, the entire industry spent only $21.2 million on advertising.

The basic pitch is always to an owner's heart, not to his pocketbook. "People always feel they have neglected their pet," says Morris Levinson, president of Associated Products, which sells Rival. "To help solve the guilt feelings, they want to feed their pet better—like themselves." "Who knows what greatness lives in the heart of a dog? We do," runs the TV commercial for General Foods' Gaines Gravy Train. Purina notes in its advertising: "All you add is love."

The industry has pushed hard to learn as much as possible about its fourlegged customers and their masters. Attempts to persuade the Census Bureau to include the pet population in its statistics have so far failed, but by industry estimates the U.S. has 25 million dogs, 20 million cats and 30 million pet-owning families. Surveys reveal that a family owning a dog or cat has an income of $8,000 or more and is itself consuming increasing amounts of prepared food—which means fewer scraps to feed pet appetites.

The food makers have found, moreover, that women shoppers are as finicky as pussycats about buying pet food; supermarkets now offer her some 124 canned, dry or semi-moist varieties from which to choose. Most companies test their products on their own cats and dogs. At its pet-care center near St. Louis, for example, some 450 dogs and 250 cats slurp and chew Purina pet foods. Sniffing a trend toward "gourmet" dishes for discriminating dogs, Voila Foods for Pets, Inc., was founded this year to market burgundy beef in gravy and beef-kidney stew.

With all the concern over care and feeding, today's cat and dog have a better balanced diet than most humans. And, like most humans, they live longer than their ancestors. When the family pet dies, more often than not it dies of old age.