I wrote a book about anuses through the ages and still don’t know if it should be anuses or anusi.

These articles say that cat nutrition must be strictly carnivore.

I also belive that. But I have to add that those were press articles written by journalists who, most likely, have no veterinary nor scientific training.

Only reputable peer reviewed articles are to be trusted. If the opinion of vegan-cats must be proven this way, it has to be done the other way around.

the issue is not intent. i believe you have good intentions. i do not believe that average people, even vegans, have enough knowledge on cat dietary needs and health to do it safely.

even professional plant-based cat food makers can’t reliably make food that meets AAFCO standards for cat nutrients. that’s why the FDA advises against it.

Believe it or not a lot of people here (including me) had no knowledge about that issue before this announcement was posted.

And my comment is referring to one very specific “thread” from your comment. Yes, you’re discussing other issues in your comment, but they’re at best only vaguely related to that first sentence.

That first link is giving off strong vibes of trying to satisfy stubborn ass vegans who are going to do it anyways and trying to save a few cats lives.

The entire thing can be summed up as “Please don’t fucking do this, but if you insist consult a vet nutritionist because if you get anything wrong your cat will die”

If someone is a vegan, then they just shouldn’t have a cat as imposing dietary choices that the cat (or other animal) wouldn’t make goes against their own morals by being vegan in the first place.

Even for dogs, yes they are omnivores, but they won’t choose to not eat meat See: That one years old clip from a talk show with a vegan guest who said “Their dog is a total vegan and won’t even want to eat meat” and when tested on the show the dog went straight for the meat dish instead of the vegan one

The website says:

The cat is an obligate carnivore and has highly exacting nutritional needs, for this reason we advise owners to think very carefully before providing a vegetarian diet for their cats, and to ensure they get advice from a veterinary nutritionist.

There is some commercial ‘complete’ vegetarian cat food available on the market. If a cat owner is intending to feed one of these products, we would recommend the owner discusses this option with their vet in the context of the individual needs of their cat.

And then explains why it’s a bad idea…

And you’re using this as a source for feeding cats a vegan diet?

(and even what I just posted would likely be hard to understand for most),

You’re drastically underestimating people if you think they couldn’t understand that, but then again you did, and I didn’t expect that

I refuse to write more than a paragraph in response to this because it isn’t worth the effort, but you’re wrong, your own sources say you’re wrong, and if you’re truly concerned about animals well being make super sure you never own one.

Serinus

Who the fuck is “European Pet Food.org”? You want us to believe pet food manufacturers when they say manufactured pet food is good?

I don’t actually have a firm belief in either side in this. I haven’t seen valid sources saying either thing. One side keeps linking very obviously vegan-biased bullshit, and the other side posts ChatGPT made up studies bullshit.

Obviously but you can’t claim absolute moral superiority when you’re taking choice away from another living being. The argument is more about bursting the self-satisfied bubble than it is about any real issue.

I think that’s the point, the ethically vegan argument is not to own a pet that eats meat, and it’s odd these particular vegans in the channel couldn’t see it, and all the non vegans were pointing it out.

Pet ownership in general is not vegan, even if you gaslight yourself into calling them companions.

Radical veganism is extremism. Extremism is about a sense of absolute superiority and the ability to self-absolve. Vegan extremists are the same as every other type of extremist in that sense.

…but it really cracks me up when people get up in arms about this subject they barely understand and arrive at…

Pot: meet kettle.

Drinking bleach to kill a disease is technically alternative information. It’s even backed indirectly by science: bleach kills bacteria. The difference here is the information is harmful, incorrect, and being presented as science backed.

Simply put- just because an echo chamber wants to drink the Kool aid - doesn’t mean we should allow them to share it with unwitting passerbys.

Not everyone is going to do the due diligence and assume that the group is wrong: so it is potentially damaging to allow that misinformation to be spread. Multiple examples exist of why moderation is needed.

Freedom of speech is not absolute. If it limits others freedom, it must be checked. If it can harm others, it must be checked.

Why are you so quick to move people into the bad vegan category? Sounds like a lot of people are just using this to confirm their belief that vegans are crazy and they should continue eating meat without a care.

I think I get it. If its possible a cat could be healthy and vegan, then humans have no excuse left do they.

Self preservation at its finest.

Facultative means optionally in response to circumstance.

Regular cat food is food made in the lab combined with such low grade meat that humans can’t eat it.

That’s literally false, stop spreading easily debunkable misinformation. The meat in cat food is completely safe to eat for humans, it is just not recommended to eat cat food regularly because the nutrients are formulated for, go figure, cats.

It’s true that pet food can be made from animal sources and cuts of meat that humans usually don’t want, because humans (especially those of us in western nations like the US) are spoiled and picky. But that’s actually a good thing; it means we are using the meat we get from slaughtered animals efficiently.

It turns out that pet diets all around are poorly understood by average people, who regularly shorten their cats lives or cause illnesses.

because animal diets are really well understood by people who make the food. in fact we understand pet/livestock diet even better than human diet because it’s easier to test diets on animals. if you simply buy food your vet recommends your pets will have an excellent diet. average people just don’t need to know any more than that.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34438805/

Nutrients most commonly found insufficient were: sulfur amino acids, taurine, arachidonic acid, EPA and DHA, calcium phosphorus and vitamin D. There were no nutrients unable to be provided from non-animal sources. Compliance with labelling guidelines was also poor, similar to other findings with commercial animal-based pet products. The results from this study indicate areas where producers of plant-based pet foods must improve to meet the industry recommended nutrient profiles and labelling requirements.

so plant based pet foods are actually less reliable than meat based ones, because it’s much harder to account for all the nutrients missing that usually come from meat. It may be theoretically possible to do, but it hasn’t been put into practice and proven yet, which is why no one should be recommending it.

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Vegans are only considering the food for their cats in an effort to make them healthier and happier.

Yeah no. But it takes a big mental effort to push yourself into that belief, so cheers. 🥂

It must be really difficult to admit that there are, surprisingly, asshole vegans, too. Like those who push their human choice of diet onto their pets without thinking about it, glorifying their superiority complex to a degree that hurts another living being, the very thing they say they want to avoid.

Contrary to the common post here, this topic is not settled science.

Except, well, it is. But hey, don’t let reality stop you from your funny stories.

I work towards better health for my pets by feeding them human grade meat. Happy?

Separately, I checked this one and it doesn’t exist.

This study, published in the Journal of Animal Science, evaluated the nutritional adequacy of a commercial vegan cat food. The authors found that the food was deficient in taurine, arachidonic acid, and vitamin A, and recommended that cats should not be fed this diet.

Source: Biourge, V., et al. “Nutritional evaluation of a commercial vegan cat food.” Journal of Animal Science 96.12 (2018): 4441-4451.

So then this comment is literally misinformation but it’s almost guaranteed to stay up because it’s pro-carnism.

🤭

You were right. I attempted to verify one. It looks good, and it’s close, but it doesn’t exist.

This study, published in the Journal of Animal Science, evaluated the nutritional adequacy of a commercial vegan cat food. The authors found that the food was deficient in taurine, arachidonic acid, and vitamin A, and recommended that cats should not be fed this diet.

Source: Biourge, V., et al. “Nutritional evaluation of a commercial vegan cat food.” Journal of Animal Science 96.12 (2018): 4441-4451.

The author exists. The journal exists. In fact, the author did something similar, I think for dogs. But those page numbers don’t line up, and the article title doesn’t exist.

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As someone who has worked in science, this passes the sniff test.

That is, science isn’t perfect, at all and is a constant process. Trying to win an argument by “citing the science” is often unscientific, however problematic it is that this can be leveraged by unscientific folks pushing an agenda.

But this is not a company.

I think we’re still have language issues

Which all comes back to my original point … what is moderation to bring to such a conversation and situation and what are its aims?

Remove posts that have a serious potential to seriously harm cats, by making newer vegans believe it’s okay to feed cats a vegan diet?

The issue here is that nowadays these posts become information to others. That’s what the internet has become. People no longer read something like this, and then first talk to 2-3 vets about it before deciding, they read that “Yo totally fine to torture your cats, k” and then do it.

And it’s important to note that pet food is not a well regulated industry with high quality produce. AFAIU, cats mainly (or exclusively) require a single and very simple molecule, taurine, which is easily produced synthetically or artificially. Moreover, I’d wager that a lot of commercial cat food has synthetic taurine added to it rather than getting it from carnivorous sources (cuz it’d be cheaper), which is at least suggested by the linked wikipedia article (genuinely curious about this if anyone knows more).

As someone whose FwB works with pets professionally, it’s difficult to be more wrong, but granted that’s for my central european context. There are absolutely bad cat foods about, but even those are not truly dangerous for the cat involved. They might have a higher percentage of grain added, but you’re right in that to a degree this is doable for a cat.

Note however that many pure-grain or high-grain foods will be explicitly marked as “Not meant as a sole food item” over here, and have to be: They’re not a balanced nutritional diet. Even worse, some add sugar, and now we’re getting into truly shitty territory that sadly isn’t clamped down on hard enough, this gets added to make the food look and smell better to the owner, while being either irrelevant or usually bad for the cat (since they consume too many calories for the amount of nourishment they get). However, again, as a supplementary item it’d not be terminal or something.

And that’s kinda the thing here:

• Can you feed your cat vegan stuff? Absolutely, and in fact a large percentage of what they consume will be vegan, usually mixed into other foods. For example my cat currently has 30% vegetables in her main food (the other 70% is meat). The jelly food she gets for extra fluid intake is even 55% vegan components.
• Should you feed your cat a vegan diet? Absolutely not, because that’s just silly and also intentionally marked as “supplementary food only” whenever you were to buy vegan cat food, at least over here. For a reason!

It’s not a binary choice. Just use high-quality cat food. It’s that simple. Ask someone who works with this professionally for help. And yes, high quality food will be 50%+ meat. That’s supposed to tell you something.

I feel sorry for your cat

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Its absurd that you all think that vegans of all people would tolerate hurting an animal or reducing its quality of life in any way.

What do you all think vegan even means?

Yea … they way some get abusive and accusatory against vegans or pro-vegan people around topics like this is really revealing. Strawman arguments, thin presumptions and generally unfriendly behaviour … all to avoid talking/thinking about a moral issue. You can tell that for some it’s a touchy issue that they’re not comfortable with because for so many other things plenty of people are happy to admit that they’re fallible and shitty, like we all are. But somehow this issue seems to get under people’s skin, which to me only indicates that there’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on.

I know plenty.

The thing is, the ones you meet actively, as in, they make being a vegan a significant portion of their exterior presentation and lifestyle, they’re usually off the deep end, independent of being vegan.

You can see the exact same behaviour - just not about veganism - in modern alt right counterculture, religious fascists, etc. It’s always about pushing a narrative and a believe system, the specific system is almost irrelevant.

But OTOH, veganism without making it a religious cult is almost normal at this point, which is also why you would not actively notice it a lot. There’s nothing to actively notice, really.

It’s just the crazy people that make it weird, and then end up torturing dependent animals and stuff.

Reading the website, the message is pretty clearly “don’t fucking do this but if you do you have to go to a professional.”

And your cat will still feel like shit

Another fun note, the only sources for that article are over 20 years old with the exception of one in like 2013 titled:

‘Homemade dog food recipes can be a risky business, study finds’ (15 July 2013)

…yyyeeeeaaaahhhh

That’s the glory of the fediverse. If you’re going to caterwaul over a service that you don’t pay for and expect you have any sort of right to how the instance run you are probably best served finding an instance that aligns with you.