Ask the Appeal: How Do Vegans Justify Keeping Carnivorous Pe

[Vegan Joe]

Ask the Appeal: How Do Vegans Justify Keeping Carnivorous Pets (AKA, Cats)?

 

http://sfappeal.com/news/2010/01/ask-the-appeal-how-do-vegans-justify-keeping-carnivorous-pets-aka-cats.php

 

So a question has been bedeviling me for a couple of weeks, but since I don't want to alienate or offend my veggie friends, I figured you might be able to get some answers on my behalf. The question: How do herbivorous humans concerned about animal cruelty and industrial farm practices justify keeping carnivorous pets (erm, "companion animals") like cats? After all, even a "premium" brand like Iams is owned by an evil multinational (Proctor and Gamble) that grinds up waste from meat processing plants. And if you're more of an environmentalist veg than an animal rights or anti-corporate veg, apparently a housecat's carbon footprint is larger than that of a small car. Are people forcing their cats to go vegan? Are they spending massive amounts of money on ...

[Fallen_Horse]

Good article, but the debate seems easy enough to clear up. Don't have cats.

[Duncan_Idaho]

Interesting topic, thanx for the article, Vegan Joe:)

Here's my experience:

 

1. On carnivorous pets - nature itself made them such and carnivores are part of the world. Humans are not carnivorous, cats and dogs are. Ideally, a carnivore should be able to provide food for itself, keeping the balance in nature intact. However, in our corrupted society this is not possible, so until it exists in this current state, I will compromise buying non vegan food for my dog.

 

2. The lesser evil: Until a month ago we bought whatever food our dog ate and liked best. However, then we came across an article about pet food companies and as "conscious consumers" (an oxymoron) we decided to check out which is which.

We found out that Pro Plan, which our dog loved and felt great with, was actually produced by a subsidiary of Nestle, who use slave labour, sell contaminated food and abuse animals and humans - no Pro Plan anymore. A couple of years ago we had fallen for some Eukanuba ads and it came down as the next choice. When we researched a bit (thank the Allmighty Internet), it turned out it was owned by Procter and Gamble - again slave labour, animal testing, animal abuse. Royal Canin is owned by Mars (and apart from the PETA's dislike which is for a good reason, I think it's evil to sell candies to living creatures). Hill's Science Plan is owned by Palmolive, who at least claim to have abandoned their animal testing program. However, our dog doesn't feel quite good with that food and I still distrust corporations (corporation = big masses = many working for the few). I haven't researched enough into the matter but the concept of cosmetics companies who own pet food brands kind of makes me think that they have found a profitable way to dispose of the corpses of the test animals.

The "moral" (as much as possible) choice was to find a brand, produced by a company (preferably a small one), whose only business is pet food. This should mean that the company's goal is to produce good pet food and not to help corporations make profit out of things we don't want to exist at all (animal testing, slave labour, etc). People in the US and Germany (maybe the UK too) are lucky to have a plenty of small companies to chose from. The best we could find to be sold in Bulgaria so far was Virbac. I don't know enough about this food but our dog loves it, it looks to have quality, it was founded by a vet and they only produce things for pets. You guys have more choice

[chrisjs]

I have two cats and feed them vegan cat food I get from VE. I don't buy the argument that I should be able to buy and give them meat solely because they are carnivores.

 

The reality is that there are very good vegan cat foods out there. Are they as good as the latest mainstream cat food? I don't know, there are definitely concerns, particularly about the taurine quality and acidity. This isn't enough to justify my being directly responsible for killing hundreds of animals over these cats lifetime to feed them something that might be slightly better.

 

That said, this is all contingent of the food being sufficient for them. I had a cat that got sick and eventually passed away for reasons other than the food (she swallowed a toy, had it removed and got a feeding tube, then got went septic from the tube removal). When she had the feeding tube, I was feeding her a special blenderized meat diet. I felt it was more than justified then, but under normal conditions there's no reason not to feed them a vegan diet.

 

I call double-bullshit on buying meat for dogs. They're naturally omnivores so feeding them a vegan diet is even easier. There's even a few mainstream veg kibbles out there.

[Wobbly Lifter]

Well it's pretty simple to me. Humans are both physically and intellectually capable of choosing a vegan diet. If you have a pet that is physically capable of living as a healthy herbivore, great, feed it just plants. However if you have an obligate carnivore then feeding it only plants is simply abuse, and one is left with the difficult choice of euthanizing the pet, letting it go(which is usually a death sentence for domestic animals, especially in Edmonton where I live), feeding it other animals or slowly starving it by not feeding it animals. Now I'd ask anyone not to buy or otherwise purposely acquire an obligate carnivore as a pet, and the number of vegans who buy cats annoys me, but it's not always that simple, many carnivores exist that are bought or breed by irresponsible or abusive people. Should an animal rescue(many run by vegans) simply turn away carnivores, kill them, release them, abuse them or care for them?

 

Personally I don't have pets and I'm not interested in getting any but I wouldn't be getting a carnivore if I did.

Edited January 30, 2010 by Wobbly Lifter

[CollegeB]

I adopted a german shepherd and he's been doing very well on a vegan diet since I've had him. The clerk at the local pet store told me I should feed him animal fat, but I told him my dog is doing very well as is. He does this to any customer buying vegetarian food, and does it without being prompted. I'm not going to be so tolerant of him next time we have a similar interaction.

[HawaiiDolphin]

Not all cats can be vegan due to the high solute concentrations, so bloodwork is always a good idea beforehand.

My cat is on a 50/50 vegan food and duck based food diet.

Cats are obligate carnivores naturally, but technology is catching up. In the meantime, I try to make it as "natural" as possible, so I don't feed her things like beef or tuna that she would never see anything like in the "wild".

For now, I justify it because she doesn't have a choice. Soon I believe they will make an option that is suitable for cats with kidney issues, which is very common.

[medman]

I don't have a cat at the moment, but am a huge pet person and will probably have one sooner than later.

 

Even if you're feeding a cat a carnivorous diet, there are a few moral justifications I can see. One is that they are obligate carnivores (though I'm interested in this vegan cat food people are talking about). Another is that they only eat a couple hundred calories a day. Yet another is that their food is pretty much waste by-product, so in the world of supply and demand, a can of catfood will not drive the meat market the way buying a steak would. To my knowledge, nobody is grinding up more cows because of demand for (regular) cat food.

[CollegeB]

Using less meat than most but still purchasing meat is not a moral position for a vegan. But I think the general public would probably find it less weird if the cat ate a normal cat diet while the owner ate a vegan one. I mean who can imagine a vegan cat!?! Seriously I have friends that don't understand how a dog can be vegan..."it's just not done" or something like that. I wouldn't feed my dog regular dog food if it was necessary for him to eat meat, not to say I'd let him starve. Either I'd go kill and process animals or maybe let him catch some since he seems intent on doing so. I think that the things that go into pet food are abominable and not any more natural for a pet and is probably more unhealthy than even a poor vegan diet. The ingredient lists mainly read "scrap" and then they have some vague language referring to animal parts and some vitamins.

[VeganEssentials]

I'd get in on this now, but I've spent so much time talking about it in the past, I'll just search my old posts for cut-and-paste time in the next day or two