The Spring Festival is approaching, and many "poop shovelers" are preparing to go home to celebrate the New Year, but they are faced with a problem: who will feed their pets if they are gone? On the WeChat mini program, bookings for door-to-door feeding services during the Spring Festival are very popular. As pets penetrate into people's lives, the public is paying more and more attention to the emotional appeal of pets. Many brand merchants use pets as a gimmick to attract consumers.

As the Chinese New Year approaches, the market growth rate of pet rabbits and related products is also increasing. According to public data, the prices of living pet rabbits in multiple regions have gradually increased since New Year's Day. Currently, the prices of different breeds and colors of pet rabbits have increased by an average of 50%, while the prices of imported varieties have doubled. At the same time, the market for pet rabbit related products such as rabbit food and rabbit pens has also experienced a peak sales period.

Industry insiders point out that in the coming years, the number of pets in China is expected to resume growth, while offline stores and pet hospitals will also experience rapid development. According to data, the growth rate of China's pet healthcare industry decreased from 17.8% in 2019 to 5.7% in 2020, but there was a strong rebound in 2021, with a growth rate of 27.6%.

In China, food consumption is mainly divided into four categories: rations, feed, industry, and seeds. Among them, feed, as an important breeding material for producing meat, eggs, and milk, will consume approximately 380 million tons of feed in China in 2022, accounting for approximately 48% of the total grain consumption, and will reach more than half in the future. Feed safety has become an important issue facing current food security.

The first China Pet Food Conference, hosted by the China Feed Industry Association, was held in Beijing from February 21st to 22nd.

With the joint efforts of the demand and supply sides of the pet industry, the scale of the pet industry has grown rapidly, and it is expected that the market size will reach 800 billion yuan by 2025. At present, there is a significant gap in the standards for pet feed in China, which seriously lags behind the development needs of the industry, especially the standards for pet food additives. Out of over 400 additives, only over 100 standards have been formulated

The pet economy has risen by over 8% since the beginning of the year. As an important branch of the big consumer market, the market performance of the pet related industry is closely related to the rebound in consumption.

Pet food is a rigid demand for pet ownership, which runs through the life cycle of pets. It has the characteristics of high repurchase, low price sensitivity, and strong stickiness, and is also the largest expenditure category for pet consumption in China. According to data from Debang Securities Research Report and the "2021 China Pet Industry White Paper", in recent years, with the upgrading of consumption, the food market share of pet consumption has decreased, but it still accounted for over 51% in 2021. From the perspective of consumption amount, the size of China's urban pet (dog and cat) food market has expanded from 15.7 billion yuan in 2012 to 128.2 billion yuan in 2021, with a compound growth rate of 26%.

According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), the total sales of the US pet market industry in 2022 exceeded $136.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.8%. Among them, pet food and snack sales: the category with the highest expenditure in 2022, with a total amount of 58.1 billion US dollars, accounting for 42.5% of the industry's total sales, a year-on-year increase of 16.2%. Showing strong consumption capacity and development resilience. Looking back at the past decade, the size of the US pet industry has increased from $53.33 billion in 2012 to $123.6 billion in 2021, with a GAGR of 8.8%. Even during the 2008 financial crisis, the size increased by 4.9% year-on-year, showing a clear anti cyclical characteristic.