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.

With the development of modern society, pets have become increasingly important as new family members in people's hearts, and the "pet economy" has also developed from "heating up" to "booming". The Chinese pet industry has ushered in a wave of rapid development, and the core growth driving force of the industry has shifted from raising to upgrading consumption.

The TOPS Pet Expo, held from May 5th to 7th, was the first national pet industry exhibition held in Shanghai after the epidemic. 800 exhibitors and over 4000 participating brands made their appearance on site, bringing together 47628 professional visitors from all over the country and 132436 public consumers. It also brought the pet industry's long-awaited human fireworks to the city of Shanghai.

Despite the significant impact of the epidemic on fast-moving consumer goods last year, the pet race track still achieved high single digit growth. According to the 2022 China Pet Consumption Report, the size of the urban pet (dog and cat) consumption market in China in 2022 was 2706 billion yuan, an increase of 8.7% compared to 2021. Among them, staple foods, snacks, nutritional supplements and other food products are still the main consumer market for pets, with a market share of 50.7%.

The pressure from feed costs has once again brought attention to the raw milk industry. Since 2021, domestic feed prices have been continuously rising, and this year, the rise in prices of soybean meal, corn, and other products has further increased the breeding costs of upstream pastures. Even the occurrence of harvesting green wheat for feed, although on a small scale, reflects to some extent the problems in the breeding sector.