Do Vegans Compromise Pet Health for Ethics?

[deltapapazulu]

I am genuinely curious about the position of PETA advocates and hard-line vegetarians towards the cat/dog food industry. Is there some alternative 'more ethical' way of feeding your pets than by indiscriminately purchasing popular animal foods.

I read in wiki article on cat food that vegan cat food can be harmful to their health. I have often said that any emotional attachment we develop towards one organism is always at the expense of another. How do vegans incorporate the proper care of pets into their ethical scheme?

 

[tribdog]

Snakes too. It'd be tough to get a snake to eat a tomato.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I've heard that some of the super radical animal rights folks don't believe in owning pets.

 

[tribdog]

what do they do then? hire pets?

 

[scorpa]

I've always wondered if vegans will get blood tests, throat swabs...ect done if their doctor requests them. Do they know about the use of animal antibodies, blood agar plates ect? I've never seen them raise that as an issue. I think its kind of funny because I'll bet they all do get the tests done and think nothing of it.Anyway that was a bit off topic but I agree with MIH, I think the hardcore ones don't believe in having pets.

 

[tribdog]

Vegans don't get sick. why would they need tests done?

 

[K.J.Healey]

I think a smart vegan would feed their cat whatever it needed to survive. They would recognize that his/her own beliefs shouldn't be forced onto another species; since it can mainly be argued that humans do not require animal products to survive. The same argument cannot be made for a cat (or so i was lead to believe. Something about taurine and they need it to live.

 

[GCT]

Anyone here heard of animal cruelty charges for improperly fed animals? A cat would not eat veggies and would probably search for new owners, cats always shop for better owners, my cat has been missing for a year and I suspect that he has found greener pasteurs.

 

[russ_watters]

what do they do then? hire pets?

Sure - you can always pay a cat with food.

 

[offtheleft]

its okay for cats and dogs to eat meat. theyre 'animals' and its in their nature and their instincts. because apparently humans are excluded from being 'animals' and don't have instincts. survival of the fittest, i say!
oh and here is what i think about loud mouth vegans

hope i didnt offend anyone haha

 

[NeoDevin]

If god didn't want us to eat animals, they wouldn't be made of meat!

 

[Defennder]

I have witnessed pet dogs of some my relatives eat vegetables and fruits. And I don't mean veggies/fruits mixed with meat, just veggies/fruits alone. And no, I don't think the dogs were starving.

 

[Evo]

Vegetarian diets do not work for cats, vegan should be completely avoided. Please, if you have a cat, do not put it on a vegetarian diet.

Cats Need Animal-Based Protein


Cats are obligate (strict) carnivores and are very different from dogs in their nutritional needs. What does it mean to be an ‘obligate carnivore’? It means that your cat was built by Mother Nature to get her nutritional needs met by the consumption of a large amount of animal-based proteins (meat) and derives much less nutritional support from plant-based proteins (grains). It means that cats lack specific metabolic (enzymatic) pathways and cannot utilize plant proteins as efficiently as animal proteins.


It is very important to remember that not all proteins are created equal.


Proteins derived from animal tissues have a complete amino acid profile. (Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Think of them as pieces of a puzzle.) Plant-based proteins do not contain the full compliment (puzzle pieces) of the critical amino acids required by an obligate carnivore. The quality and composition of a protein (how many puzzle pieces it has) is also referred to as its biological value.


Humans and dogs can take the pieces of the puzzle in the plant protein and, from those, make the missing pieces. Cats cannot do this. This is why humans and dogs can live on a vegetarian diet but cats cannot. (Note that I do not recommend vegetarian diets for dogs.)


Taurine is one of the most important amino acids that is present in meat but is missing from plants. Taurine deficiency will cause blindness and heart problems in cats.


The protein in dry food, which is often heavily plant-based, is not equal in quality to the protein in canned food, which is meat-based. The protein in dry food, therefore, earns a lower biological value score.


Because plant proteins are cheaper than meat proteins, pet food companies will have a higher profit margin when using corn, wheat, soy, rice, etc.


Veterinary nutritionists and pet food company representatives will argue that they are smart enough to know *exactly* what is missing from a plant in terms of nutrient forms and amounts - nutrients that would otherwise be in a meat-based diet. They will then claim that these missing elements are added to their diets to make it complete and balanced to sustain life in an obligate carnivore.


The problem with this way of thinking is that Man is just not that smart and has made fatal errors in the past when trying to guess how to compensate for such a drastic deviation from nature. Not all that long ago (1980s) cats were going blind and dying from heart problems due to Man's arrogance. It was discovered in the late 1980s that cats are exquisitely sensitive to taurine deficiency and our cats were paying dearly for Man straying so far from nature in order to increase the profit margin of the pet food manufacturers.


There are several situations that can lead to a diet being deficient in taurine but one of them is using a diet that relies heavily on plants as its source of protein. Instead of lowering their profit margin and going back to nature by adding more meat to the diets, the pet food companies simple started supplementing their diets with taurine.


This is all well and good - for this particular problem - but how do we know that Man is not blindly going along unaware of another critical nutrient that is missing from a plant-based diet? Why is Man so arrogant that he thinks he can stray so far from what a cat is designed by nature to eat?


Let's also ask ourselves how many cats become ill or die from these species-inappropriate diets yet the patient's diet is never even questioned as a possible cause of the illness or death? We cannot answer that question definitively but I have no doubt that the answer would be "many".


Do cats survive on these supplemented plant-based diets? Yes, many of them do.


Do cats thrive on these diets? No, they do not.


Please pay special attention to the words *survive* versus *thrive* as there is a very big difference between the two states of health.

http://www.catinfo.org/

I used to have a better source, but lost the link.

 

[Defennder]

How about dogs? Can they survive on veggies?

 

[Evo]

How about dogs? Can they survive on veggies?

Yes, dog's digestive systems are able to digest vegetables better than cats.

 

[LowlyPion]

Grain fed mice.

 

[GCT]

I imagine that dogs desire meat more than humans - meat is an important part of their happiness ; not quite certain about whether the desire to hunt and kill is as innate as simply consuming meat. Quite frankly , most dogs are miserable since they spend their lives confined inside homes ; people need to go out of the house to roam and dogs also need this , so why is it that a lot of people are not able to understand this need? It's simply very akward and an unusual form of cruelty for an animal with primal wirlderness survival instincts to be kept inside a house. My neighbor has two dogs confined outside within a space close to that of a bedroom , they have moved to another location , however the dogs are still there. Every once in a while - once a week - they visit and presumably feed and clean up after the dogs , yet every single day for at least a year now , the dogs live their existence within that small parameter at an obscure corner wall of a subdivision cul de sac. It's isolated from everything , they have nothing but each other.

Happiness is the key word here. If vegans really cared for animals they would be concerned about their overall wellbeing of their dogs. If dogs could communicate with humans , they would state

I NEED MEAT

There was something on an ABC news special which documented several people who were physically perishing over their belief in a vegan diet , it was more specific ... a raw food diet of some sort. If these people are able to influence each other to kill themselves over dogmatic beliefs than I would not be surprised if they were compelled to starve their pets.

 

[LowlyPion]

Snakes too. It'd be tough to get a snake to eat a tomato.

Snakes eat eggs.

But then that raises the whole thing about whether life begins at conception.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I eat meat. PETA takes some extreme positions. It is a shame that the press acts to thwart efforts toward the ethical treatment of animals by focusing on those extremes. Does anyone think that we don't need to treat animals ethically because PETA is extreme? While we must kill them in order to eat them, we do not need to torture them before we kill them.

Here is their position on pets. It doesn't mention diet specifically, but it does imply that they should have the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior.
http://www.peta.org/campaigns/ar-petaonpets.asp"

 

[tribdog]

I let my pets have the run of the house and they can go outside whenever they want. well, they used to. Turns out fish should be kept confined.

 

[Evo]

I let my pets have the run of the house and they can go outside whenever they want. well, they used to. Turns out fish should be kept confined.

You have loose fish?

 

[Moonbear]

You have loose fish?

Not any more.

If vegans believe in animal rights to the extent they claim, they simply shouldn't have pets. If they want to be consistent about their beliefs of other animals having rights equal to humans, then they would have to consider pet ownership to be akin to slavery.