Cat Food Around the World

Cat Food in Japan

Despite the horror stories of discarded or neglected animals, the keeping of cats as pets, rather than utilitarian animals, has boomed in Japan since the 1980s. The number of pets and the number of pet-owning households are increasing year by year with an 10 million pet dogs and 7 million pet cats. Approximately 30% of Japanese households (45.06 million) keep a cat or dog. This is due to several factors: an increase in incomes and leisure time, a growing number of older people and the breakdown of the extended family situation, the increasingly solitary nature of modern lifestyles and also falling birth-rate which has resulted in pets being considered family members rather than simply animals around the home. Animals provide a sense of companionship.

Japanese cats were traditionally fed on leftovers such as fish heads or mashed fish and leftover rice, plus of course any food they caught for themselves. The concept of commercial cat food appeared at first to be an extravagance in Japanese eyes. However, as imported pet foods arrived on the market, Japanese owners' fondness for convenience and for their pets combined with the increase in living standards and rising incomes made the use of commercially prepared pet foods more realistic. What began at first as a status symbol (American or European pet food) soon became an established part of the cat owner's life. Some cat foods still have an English-language slogan (sometimes rather mangled) on the label.

The world's first pet food appears to have been a dry biscuit in Britain in around 1860. Canned and dried meat pet foods appeared in the 1930s. In the 1960s, the pet food market in Britain and America expanded greatly. By comparison, Japanese pet cats lagged behind, still eating their traditional fish-and-rice diet. It is unclear when pet food first appeared in Japan, but theory has it that pet food was brought to Japan by the US army serving there. However, in terms of calories, cat food still accounts for a smaller proportion of pets' diets than in Europe or North America reflecting the fact that pet-keeping is a more recent phenomenon in Japan. However, traditional foods for cats are becoming more scarce. Fish heads, once a staple part of cat diets, are less common due to fish being sold filleted rather than being prepared at home from whole fish.

The earliest imports of cat food into Japan was canned cat food, used at first by just a few cat lovers, many of them Europeans or Americans who were living and working in Japan and who demanded home comforts not only for themselves, but for their pets. In the 1970s, domestically produced pet food went on sale in Japan and the use of pet food became more common and more widespread. The pet food market really took off in about 1985. Pet food imports have grown from 28.695 billion Yen in 1989 to a staggering 75.170 billion Yen in 1998 - more than doubling in under a decade. 96.1% (by volume) of the pet food distributed in Japan is cat or dog food, 30% of which is cat food.

Over 90% of imported pet food comes from three countries: the USA, Australia and Thailand. These three countries have plentiful supplies of livestock and seafood. The fourth major supplier is Argentina, accounting for 2.5% of imports. The USA and Australia export mainly dry dog foods to Japan, while Thailand exports mostly canned cat food.

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