By endearing themselves to humans, dogs became a genetic success story. Piggybacking on man’s ingenuity, they transformed from a hunted species to our best friend. Today, they amount to one billion creatures worldwide, followed by cats (600 million) and other pets, from goldfish and birds to domestic reptiles.

Admittedly, they were more like co-workers than spoilt family members in the beginning, since they helped us hunt and shepherd as well as guard our property. Like other domestic animals raised for utilitarian purposes – that is, to provide transport or to supply human beings with high-protein food – they were not admitted to our houses initially. They were treated like inanimate obsessions. They were maintain­ed, not entertained, eating our leftovers and left to die when their utility came to an end.

Today, domestic animals have emancipated themselves from labourers without rights to pets, and from pets to our best friends. Sometimes they even are our only friends – loyal dependents consoling us in solitude.

This trend is not only irrever­sible; it gathers speed. We have left rural land to move into ever bigger cities. Today, more than half the world’s population lives in an urban environment. Eventually, as we can see in Malta, all of us will be ‘citizens’ with the advantages and disadvantages of concentrated living – dwelling in ever smaller households with a tendency towards single occupancy.

Opportunity, education and policies focusing on individuality lower our birth-rates and fracture collectives. Medical advancements make us survive for longer. Living in post-industrial societies, we can become older than ever before in history, while all forms of remote communication make us lonelier than we can possibly realise.

Giving birth to children is no longer seen as a necessity but as a lifestyle choice. So is immigration. As a result, we humanise animals. We see them as better fami­ly members, sharing our lives as equals. We think of them as us, just friendlier – more loving and caring than Facebook friends. Therefore, we spoil them and treat them with affection never before seen on our anthropological journey. So far, we have no idea what animals think about our change in attitude, though.

The pet business is booming. This is supported not only by the increasing wealth of the super-rich, as we often lament, but also by the increasing wealth of hundreds of millions of people pro­fiting from international trade and global industrial cooperation over the past few decades, most prominently in China.

The business of feeding and medically treating our best friends is growing year by year at rates of six per cent annually, which today is more than the overall growth of the world eco­nomy. Indeed, it was hardly den­ted by the economic crisis. The pet business is growing not only in the US (which, with 40 per cent, has the biggest pet market) or Japan or Germany, but exceedingly in southeast Asia, South America and Africa.

The industriousness of capitalism, offering us ever cheaper goods and more meaningless choices then we ever asked for, outdoes itself when it comes to pets. As our humanised strangers live with increasingly the same lives that we do without much choice on their side, they develop the same lifestyle deceases: obesity, diabetes, kidney failure, cancer. And, as we humanise them, we assume that they need organic, gluten-free or even vegan food like us to cope with ever more exotic food intolerances and allergies.

We suspect foreign suppliers of cheating and fraudulently selling our puppies horse meat instead of duck liver as promised on the label. This is why we wish for our pets to consume locally sourced, honest and nutritious food, feeding them the same useless vitamin and minerals supplements we treasure for ourselves. Veterinary clinics offer surgeries ranging from knee and hip replacements to dental implants, and treatments from kidney dialysis to chemotherapy. The pharmaceutical industry – companies like Merck, Eli Lilly or Novartis – offer ever more specific drugs and medi­cations, knowing that, when it comes to our darlings, nothing will be too expensive. Veterinary care is a $100 billion business worldwide, and the volume of pet food sales is worth another $100 billion.

We think of pets as us, just friendlier – more loving and caring than Facebook friends

Surprisingly, nobody raises the question about the environmental burden our craze for pets is generating. Pet food packaging boosts our rubbish tips, and while we think of going ‘beyond meat’ to save the planet, the menu for cats and dogs consists of hundreds of millions of tons of meat every year, including duck, deer, game birds and shark fins.

The cows slaughtered for our furry friends blurb methane too. Not to mention that these are suffering animals too, but we could hardly care less, while 30 per cent of our own food bypasses our pets unconsumed to go into landfills.

Fressnapf (Feeding Bowl), a German pet food and accessories hypermarket, opened its first shop in 1992 and has since developed into a network of 1,500 outlets covering most European coun­tries under brand names like Maxi Zoo or Jumper. It sells everything from leads and blankets to baskets and feed, and has in the meantime a turnover of €2 billion.

Hotel Bristol in Vienna prides itself with its pet butler service. Michelin-starred chefs concoct multi-course meals for well-pawed guests served on silver plates with linen napkins.

We have a situation where what seems morally inept when compared to our attitude to­wards immigrants is nevertheless a business that we, as retail investors, miss at our financial peril. We find that lipsticks sell well throughout a recession, as we witness in embargoed Iran, for instance, but pigs’ ears for dogs do better.

Completely unnoticed, the be­hemoths of the pet food industry are well-known consumer goods corporations – General Mills (Blue Buffalo), J M Smucker (Big Heart), mainly known for its jams and jellies, Colgate-Palmolive, Nestlé or Mars.

The brands Pedigree, Whiskas and Sheba are a worldwide pet success, even in China, which has, for the sake of pet peace, completely forgotten to punish their US food giant owner with import duties in the trade war being waged, probably to avoid social unrest among Chinese pet owners. Indeed, 73 million of them spend in excess of $2 billion every year for their canine and feline babies. As they distrust the food safety standards of their own authorities, more than half of their pet food is imported. Chinese manufacturers have more success in the US than at home.

I wonder why nobody has told Trump yet. A campaign theme not to be missed, one would think. “The Japs Kill our Kitties” offers itself as a slogan, assuming that very few US voters could tell the difference between the two Asian countries. Fifty per cent of pet food is ordered online in China, which should worry Fressnapf’s franchise partners – housed in ungainly out-of-town hangars – as soon very few people will bother to carry their Whiskas home themselves.

Where does this leave us retail investors? Most successful pet businesses are private, alas. This is much like Mars – a multi-billion-dollar business with a turnover in excess of $35 billion – which is still in the hands of the founding family. They even own a large chunk of the vet business in the US.

Those pet food tsars which are public companies, like General Mills (Cheerios, Häagen-Dazs), Colgate-Palmolive or Nestlé are ungainly conglomerates, not single players, making it difficult to bet on the bright future of pet food. For Nestlé, water and coffee are bigger tickets and, in such multi-strategy firms, many things can go wrong before pet food will carry the day.

Watch out for spin-offs, including perhaps the merger of competing pet businesses. I would also search for start-ups that follow food fashion trends, focusing on locally sourced ingredients, artisan production, branding themselves as diet conscious and wholesome, offering good working conditions and brandishing environmental values. That their products will be expensive does not matter. We will always splash out for our darlings.

YouTube and Instagram ap­pearances will be crucial and are excellent distribution strategies. But beware of insane valuations. Companies valued at more than four times EBITA (gross earnings) are too expensive. Let private equity do the insane bidding and wait for the downfall after a stock market debut. If such succulent businesses will ever come to the market, that is.

Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta. He reports on the economy, politics and finance. The purpose of his column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.

andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com