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pets latest victims of recession |
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_POSTED_BY admin
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Tuesday, 20 May 2008 |
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A national pet owner survey undertaken in the US by Fleishman Hillard International Communications back in December 2007 involving 665 pet owners appeared to show that if financial issues caused pet owners to curtail their monthly expenses they were far more likely to cut back on luxury items, electronics — and even groceries and household goods — than on care or supplies for their pets.
In the UK though the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presents a very different picture of what pet owners actually do rwhen recession bites as an unprecedented number of household pets were dumped in the middle to latter part of 2007 , a 23% increase in abandonments on the previous year and the percentage was still rising in the first quarter of this year.
The hardest hit regions seem to be those where the economy and/or the real estate market had already been suffering with animal sanctuaries reporting that many people leaving animals with them complaining of mounting debts and repossessions.
The Flieshman Hillard survey was clearly intended to show the $43 billion US pet Food and Product industry in good health but can the reality of how pet owners respond to recession be so different on both sides of the atlantic, particularly when the US is far deeper into recession than the UK although there are clear signs the UK is catching up as high street sales plummet.
Are pets really faring any better in the downturn in the US? According to the Pet Owners Survey for 2007 - 2008 about 63% of U.S. households own a pet, which equates to 71.1 million homes,. This includes about 45 million households with dogs and 39 million with cats. Its estimated that Americans will spend about $17 billion on pet food this year, another $10.3 billion on supplies and about $3.2 billion on pet grooming and boarding. Is this the whole story though? There are people losing their homes and sleeping in their cars are we really supposed to believe that more pets arent ending up on the street?
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 May 2008 )
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