Americans Can’t Afford To Feed Their Pets Anymore

Kamala Harris says she can’t think of anything she would have done differently than Joe over the last four years. Really? Because Americans have reached the point where they can’t afford to feed their pets anymore lady.

Nationwide pet shelters are vastly over capacity. We have never seen anything like the number of animals being dumped in shelters by Americans.

The 2024 Hill’s State of Shelter Pet Adoption Report found that shelters nationwide were awash in animals. Most reached crisis stage in 2021 and those levels have been climbing ever since.

“It’s been four consecutive years that we’ve seen shelters at or above capacity,” says Dr. Karen Shenoy, U.S. chief veterinary officer for Hill’s Pet Nutrition. “Adoption rates, especially for dogs, are lower, and animals are staying in the shelter longer.”

To better understand the shelter crisis Hill’s Pet Nutrition surveyed 2,500 Americans. It found that for Americans making less than $75,000 a year pets were simply no longer affordable in this economy. Economic and housing costs have so burdened Americans that they can literally no longer afford the cost of pet food.

“There was a lot of turmoil for people post-pandemic,” Dr. Levy says. “People lost their housing. They lost their jobs. Their families changed. So there were more relinquishments of pets to shelters. And there were more stray animals and a marked reduction in adoptions.”

Dia DuVernet president and chief executive of Pasadena Humane, which serves the city of Padadena and nearly a dozen surrounding communities puts it succinctly, “With inflation, we’ve seen a huge increase in people needing our pet food pantry.”

Increasingly, to get people to adopt animals shelters are having to agree to provide food for the animals. A network of “foster parents” for dogs and cats has even emerged in a desperate attempt to get animals out of shelters that are not being adopted permanently. Many shelters are now turning into food banks, supporting animals that still have homes in an effort to keep them out of shelters in the first place.

“We’re proud to support shelters, many of which focus on making pet ownership more accessible by providing affordable care and distributing food we donate via shelter-community food pantries.”

“Fostering frees up space in the shelter, and many shelters cover the costs, including food. Hill’s has provided $300 million in pet nutrition for pets in shelter and foster care.”

Dr. Karen Shenoy, U.S. chief veterinary officer, Hill’s Pet Nutrition

Seventy-two percent of pet owners responding to an exclusive Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey conducted on behalf of Newsweek said that the cost of looking after their pets had increased in the past year. The survey was conducted among a sample population of 1,500 eligible voters in the U.S. between March 23 and 24, 2024. Rising costs are a source of concern for many pet owners. Some 43 percent of respondents to the poll said they were very (21 percent) or fairly (22 percent) concerned about their ability to financially support their pet while an additional 22 percent were slightly concerned.

Americans aren’t beginning to feel the impact of the Biden-Harris demolition of our economy. They are down to their last pennies and running out of options.

The company that stocks McDonald’s with its french fries is cutting jobs. Why? Because Americans can’t afford fast food anymore and sales at McDonalds and other fast food chains are tanking.

Lamb Weston, a major supplier of french fries to fast food chains, will lay off about 400 people. The company’s share prices have fallen 25 percent this year.

Lamb Weston says that over the past quarter, its net income has dropped 34 percent.

Fast food prices have soared during the Biden-Harris administration. As of May, the price of a medium order of french fries at McDonald’s was up 167.6 percent. The price of a Big Mac meal has risen 103.5 percent since Joe and Kamala took office. The price of a Hamburger Happy Meal has risen 140.6 percent.

The self-appointed elitists who think they run this country don’t care and probably don’t even know that any of this is happening. They are circulating around the punch bowl at some $ 10,000-a-plate fundraiser and exchanging anecdotes about their latest vacation in the south of France. Meanwhile, the average American is trying to figure out if he or she can buy the kids Happy Meals this Saturday and wondering how cat food got so expensive.

Kamala can’t think of anything she would have changed in the last four years. I suspect that’s true. The guy who just had to drop the family dog off at the shelter because he can’t afford pet food can probably think of quite a few things that should have been done a whole lot differently.