The Mackay–Roy Morgan Programme
More Than Pet Food: Why the Raw Meaty Bones Campaign Matters
The campaign began with preventable suffering in the mouths of dogs and cats. Its central proposition is larger: the mouth may help regulate the carnivore; where that carnivore is a higher-order ecological regulator, events at the oral interface may influence populations and ecosystems.
The documents below connect the immediate raw meaty bones message with a new way of thinking about life, health, disease, death, scientific method and institutional responsibility. They do not ask for uncritical belief. They ask that the natural comparator be restored, the feedback loops be mapped and the Cybernetic Hypothesis be subjected to organised investigation.
DEFINING CONCEPTS
In biological contexts, cybernetics concerns co-evolved communication, control and feedback within and between living systems and their environments.
Health and disease emerge from those relationships—not from isolated components acting alone.
What Australians Feel About Their Pets
MacCallum Research in association with Hugh Mackay Commissioned by PIAS and published September 1992
The study was based upon twenty non-directive group discussions conducted in private homes across Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo, Tamworth and the New South Wales Central Coast.
The report states that Hugh Mackay played an active consulting role, participated in designing the study and analysing the results, and wrote its prologue.
The research examined:
- anxiety, loneliness and social instability;
- childhood memories and traditional family aspirations;
- the desire for comfort, belonging and control;
- pets as teachers of children;
- pet ownership as a sign of family completeness and normality;
- parents’ fear that children might be deprived without a pet;
- and the tendency for emotional rewards to overwhelm rational objections.
The same report recorded costs, veterinary treatment, biting, dumping, inconvenience and damage to wildlife. But these disadvantages were placed upon a different psychological agenda from love, companionship, family identity and personal virtue.
The study therefore supplied PIAS with something more valuable than an ordinary opinion poll. It provided an emotional map showing how pet acquisition could be associated with good parenting, normal family life and responsible citizenship.
National People and Pets Survey 2006
Socially Responsible Pet Ownership in Australia A Decade of Progress Professor Bruce Headey using Roy Morgan Research surveys
READ THE COMPLETE 2006 REPORT
The 2006 report compared approximately one thousand respondents with a corresponding national survey conducted by Roy Morgan Research in 1994.
It says that both surveys were co-sponsored by PIAS, conducted by the same research company and designed to be as directly comparable as possible.
The report acknowledged that no official rules for socially responsible pet ownership existed. It nevertheless established ten guidelines covering matters such as selection, vaccination, desexing, training, control, veterinary attendance and care. Movement towards those selected behaviours was then measured and described as progress.
The report credited local governments, veterinarians, professional associations, the urban animal-management movement and pressure exerted by pet owners upon one another.
It also argued that pet ownership was threatened by legislation, environmental concerns, urban consolidation and changing lifestyles—and that policy makers should protect the responsible majority.
The Mars-funded organisation was therefore not merely observing social change. PIAS helped define the desired conduct, promoted that conduct through trusted institutions, commissioned national surveys and assessed
whether Australians were conforming.
The missing 1994 report
The complete 1994 National People and Pets Survey has not yet been located in the recovered archive.
The 2006 report identifies it as:
McHarg M Baldock C Headey B and Robinson A 1995 National People and Pets Survey Pets are good for your health Owners typically are responsible and caring Melbourne Urban Animal Management Coalition
The title itself illustrates the affirmative framework within which pet ownership was being investigated.
Mars, PIAS, Roy Morgan Research and the participating organisations should disclose the complete 1994 report, questionnaire, data tables, commissioning brief, contracts, correspondence and funding arrangements.
Why these documents matter
Read together, the documents reveal a powerful sequence:
Research emotional vulnerability
Associate pet ownership with virtue normality and family responsibility
Define the conduct expected of responsible owners
Recruit veterinarians, governments, schools and community organisations
Measure compliance and describe it as progress
Use the results to protect pet ownership from regulatory restriction
That sequence goes far beyond the promotion of individual pet-food brands.
It amounts to a long-term, Mars-funded programme for understanding, shaping and protecting the social conditions upon which the industrial pet-food market depended.