If a cat or dog is eating vegan meals, they’re doing it out of their own free will, just saying. Give a dog a piece of Tofu turkey and they eat it, i didn’t force them to eat it, so.
Give a dog anti freeze and they’ll eat it. Feed a dog rat poison and they’ll eat it. Give a dog grapes, nuts, chocolate, beer, etc. They’ll eat it. They don’t know that it’s dangerous for them. As their caretaker you are responsible for knowing better, not them. If you deprive your cats or dogs of meat, especially cats, you are actively killing your companion in the slowest way.
HOKAY. And I say this as someone who is getting her PhD in animal nutrition, and who has taken specific cat/dog nutrition classes: their bodies aren’t built for it, especially in cats. Dogs will be malnourished and unhappy on vegan diets, but cats will outright die of malnutrition.
In the wild, while dogs are more omnivorous than cats, the majority of the canine diet came from meat (fun fact: in dogs, the molars are shaped to allow for crushing and grinding, primarily of not plant material like ours, but of bone/cartilage/viscera. When a dog chews a bone, it’s the molars it chews with). Cats? Plant matter comes in the form of whatever their prey had in its belly. Cats and dogs will self-medicate with plants, but that’s mainly to induce vomiting/calm upset stomachs.
Cats and dogs also have much more concentrated acids in their stomach, and a higher amount of proteases (enzymes designed to cleave proteins apart so that they can be absorbed) and a lot less of the amylases needed to break down carbohydrates. Because of the short intestines relative to body length, cats and dogs have a higher passage rate (ie, food stays in the gut a lot shorter) – this means that their diets favor highly digestible foodstuffs like proteins, as opposed to complex carbohydrates, which take longer to digest and absorb. Many plant proteins are also bound up in complexes that require specific enzymes that cats and dogs don’t have. (Look up phytate/phytase sometimes and why that’s a big problem for high-soy diets). So high-carbohydrate diets pass through the intestines too quickly for the carbohydrates to be properly broken down and absorbed, and basically result in a lot of poop, but not much nutrition.
Now let’s look at where we get energy – everything has the same basic requirements for protein, glucose, water, minerals, vitamins, etc etc etc, just in varying amounts. But every species is different in its preferred form – some animals preferably use carbohydrates for glucose (horses/rabbits/guinea pigs). Most carnivores, however, prefer protein, and their bodies are optimized for it. In carnivores like cats and ferrets, their main source of energy (glucose) is gluconeogenesis, that is, making new glucose from non-glucose substrates. Obligate carnivores like cats and ferrets are VERY efficient at this, and their ability to digest carbohydrates and get glucose that way is really quite limited (cats aren’t eating much carbohydrates in the wild, so cats that couldn’t digest carbohydrates well but did digest protein well and had good gluconeogenesis survived to reproduce).
In humans, the gluconeogenic cycle can be turned on and off in the liver, depending on energy levels and our diet – in cats, it’s always on. Because of this, their body preferentially burns protein for fuel – and it needs to be easily digestible protein (like in meat). If they don’t get enough easily digestible protein, the body will start burning its own muscle protein for energy. Dogs are not quite as bad as this, but they still have incredibly high levels of gluconeogenic activity compared to humans.
There’s also the problem of essential nutrients – essential nutrients are nutrients the body cannot synthesize from other substrates. For example, humans (and guinea pigs!) have vitamin C as an essential nutrient – we lack the L-gulonolactone oxidase enzyme needed to synthesize it. While humans only have 10 essential amino acids that we must get from our diet, cats require an eleventh: taurine. Taurine in cats is needed for proper heart/eye/digestive function. Without it, cats will die (in a very painful manner), and it is found only in animal proteins. If a vegan cat food has taurine, it’s not vegan – that taurine was isolated from animal protein.
Cats also need arachidonic acid, which is only found in animal products. Most animals can synthesize it from linoleic acid, but because cats in the wild get such high dietary levels of arachidonic acid, cats that couldn’t synthesize it were still able to survive and reproduce successfully. Without arachidonic acid, cats suffer from painful skin/gastrointestinal/blood diseases, and will die.
Dogs and cats also have an absolute vitamin D requirement – they cannot synthesize it in their skin like humans. The most bioavailable form, D3, only comes from animal sources. Dogs can use D2, but it’s very inefficient and can lead to vitamin D deficiencies. Cats cannot use D2 and have an absolute requirement for D3.
A dog on a vegan diet will most likely suffer from a lack of protein and essential vitamins. A cat on a vegan diet will die. For the best health outcomes, you should feed your cats and dogs a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. Taste of the Wild, Blue Buffalo, Nature’s Variety Instinct, and Back to Basics (dog food only) are brands I personally recommend (as did my professors at ISU)
I have no problem with humans being vegans, as long as they’re making sure to get a good balance of nutrients. It’s not for me (violent soy allergy, for one), but if it makes you happy, that’s fine. Humans are omnivores – we can do fine on plant-based diets. Dogs and cats can’t. Don’t adopt a carnivore and try to force it to be a herbivore – do your pet a favor and get one of the many cute herbivores (rabbits, guinea pigs, a lot of birds, most rodents) that do just fine on a vegan diet.
I hope that answered your question, anon.
Posts often circulate of unhealthy looking vegan or vegetarian fed pets. Normally there’s some info on why it’s bad attached, but here’s a stellar resource on exactly why dogs and cats can’t eat according to our moral codes.
There are more people worried about vegan cats and dogs who may not be 100% healthy than there are people who care about the actualtorture and murder of animals of other species
If that’s not speciesism I don’t know what is
That’s because, as someone who has worked at a veterinary clinic and has seen first hand the physical problems it causes these animals, feeding dogs and cats a vegan diet causes bone deficinecies, early arthritis, bowel blockages, renal and liver failure, and immunity issues. Not to mention many vegan products, fruit and veg are extremely TOXIC to dogs and cats, but simply take longer to kill the animal. I.e, you’re slowly poisoning it. When I was a VA we had a 10 month old puppy brought in who was on an all vegan diet and he had so many consequential health problems the surgeon had to put him to sleep because the owners has essentially caused all kinds of multiple organ failure. All because you decide you want to inflict your eating habits on a defenceless animal – sound familiar?
So if you want to discuss speciesism how about your register the fact that forcing animals who are unable to digest a meat free diet to become vegan is also ‘actual torture’, and you also can’t claim to not want to harm animals whilst turning around and slowly killing your pets. So yes, it is also the torture and often murder of animals, you’re just not eating it afterwards.
Vegan or not vegan, don’t feed your non-vegan pets a meat free diet. Because it IS just as bad as killing any other animal for any other industry.
Thank you for your post! It’s so sad that the vegan community turns a blind eye to this intentional neglect, and their research is guided by confirmation bias. It doesn’t take an expert to know that a carnivore will not thrive and will experience detrimental health problems when fed 100% plants. It’s insane that some people even dispute it!
(pt 2) even exotics such as kangaroo and rabbit. I was very suspicious of this claim. Is it even possible for a carnivore like a dog to be completely allergic to meat?
It is possible, theoretically. If it’s true then the poor thing probably isn’t long for this world, as there’s nothing special that separates meat protein from plant protein, if the dog is already allergic to every meat protein source there is nothing stopping it developing an allergy to plant proteins.
There is a vegetarian hypoallergenic diet (Royal Canin) that is soy based and can be used if meat allergy is suspected. That’s the only one I can recommend because that diet was tested for a year and showed dogs fed it exclusively maintained their health and weight. Diets like veganpet are either untested, or only tested for a month.
As a side note there is a mammalian meat allergy that humans can develop, secondary to tick bites. This causes life threatening anaphylaxis when consuming mammalian meat, similar to a peanut allergy. I don’t think this applies to that dog, however.
carnists: STOP FEEDING YOUR ANIMALS VEGAN IT’S ABUSE!!!!!!
*contributes to the abuse and slaughter of billions of animals daily*
vegans: um….
carnists: IT’S NOT THE SAME. VEGANS ARE ABUSING ANIMALS VEGANS ARE ABUSING ANIMALSDLKAJJGADSGBASDHAGEOIWHNB;BDAH
Classic projection.
Who’s projection are we shaming? Because dogs and cats are carnivores meaning they need meat to survive. While veganism is a choice made up by humans…
Let’s just ignore all those pets who have had to be taken to the vet because idiots don’t realize that they literally need meat to survive. Those are just inconveniences to the vegan echo chambers.
Of course, when representing your opponents’ perspective, you always need to write in ALL CAPS AND !!!11!!
You can’t realistically be a vegan and keep carnivorous pets. End of story. And if you make them vegans too, you’re participating in animal cruelty, regardless of what the slaughter houses do.
You can have pets as a vegan. You have 2 choices. 1.) realize that animals like cats will die if fed a vegan diet due to a missing amino acid that can’t be supplemented from a vegan source or 2.) get a vegan pet like a rabbit
I legitimately do not understand why a vegan who’s dedicated to pursuing a 100% vegan lifestyle, to the point where they want their pets on a vegan diet as well, do not. just. keep. naturally vegan pets.
Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, tortoises, iguanas, a fucking horse, for fucks sake!
Like. My god, you have so many options for pets that literally CAN’T eat meat! Why would you insist on keeping a predator, if you can’t stomach the idea that they’re goddamn predators??
Do you have any idea how goddamn loving a hamster can be? Would you like to know what it feels like when a bunny asks you for cuddles?
Vegan pets are a thing. Animals that literally only eat plant matter are a thing.
You don’t have to torture dogs and cats to live a purely vegan lifestyle. Go buy a fucking guinea pig.
Honestly, I hate to gatekeep pet ownership, but if you hear the words “a dog can survive on a vegan diet, but will probably not thrive on it” and your immediate reaction is “cool, so I can feed my dog vegan!” then you shouldn’t have a dog.
No ifs or buts about it, you just shouldn’t have a dog. Give it to someone else.
ifesbob 