Okay so I can go vegan but how to reconcile the pet dilemma? Surely my dog or cat cannot live on cauliflower and broccoli.
I think as far as vegan cat food, I'm not sure it will be healthy or feasible at scale until/unless there's something like Wild Earth's mouse-meat kibble based on cultured cells (under development, but no time frame given for expected completion).
I'd love to hear the opposing perspective, though.
Cats are picky eaters, and they can refuse foods even when starving.
It may be technically true that animals like dogs and humans with meat-optimized digestive systems can survive off plant material alone, but that doesn’t mean it’s advisable. Neither of us can metabolize cellulose, both of us run into metabolic diseases with excessive carbohydrate consumption (e.g. diabetes), etc.
But a vegan diet has been approved for humans at all stages of life, and the vegan dog food I'm aware of meets all AAFCO standards (nutrients, digestibility, protein:carb:fat ratio) as well as passing tests for dog interest/palatability.
There's a big difference between a well-rounded plant-based diet, and living off sugar or cellulose-heavy raw plants.
Almost every plant is nondigestible.
> But a vegan diet has been approved for humans at all stages of life
Well if it’s been “approved” then no need to worry! Who exactly “approved” it and why do I care what they say?
> There's a big difference between a well-rounded plant-based diet, and living off sugar or cellulose-heavy raw plants.
There are like 4 edible plants that don’t provide 90% of their calories in the form of sugars (starches are a kind of sugar). There are also very few plants that don’t have a huge cellulose content.
But this is only a critique of your statement. I feed my animals farmed pet food.
Technically, if we weren't blocking dogs from leaving the house, they would be out there and eating anything they could get their paws on; they would be enacting their will, on other pets, rodents, etc.
Being a vegan owner who has a carnivore dog is still better than being a carnivore owner with a carnivore dog. It’s better to be inconsistently ethical than it is to be consistently unethical.
I think we can get into logic traps here on HN that ignore the realities (and benefits!) of the messiness of human behavior.
Nobody is perfect, and it isn't hypocritical to be imperfect.
TL;DL: Feeding pets the animal byproducts of our own food production is not only a good symbiotic relationship, but also contains more of the nutrients the pets need (as opposed to grain-free or other specialty diets). But, the specifics for your pet will vary based on their own needs and allergies.
The vegan perspective is less "meat is bad" and closer to "compassion for a creature and its rights to exist freely within its own context". A killer whale should be able to nom as many seals as it wants, a dog can have some raw meat to chew on.
However, paying for animals to be killed to feed your dog instead of buying vegan dog food seems like it falls under the same umbrella as buying meat for yourself.
[Not really sure how to address obligate carnivores, like cats. Could see a vegan feeding their cat they had meat foods until they died naturally, but getting a cat with the intention of buying meat for it over its lifetime seems non-vegan.]
Would welcome correction if I'm misguided, though.
I can't ethically feed my pet, therefore owning a pet is unethical.
I love dogs, clumsy waggy little fuckers, but I won't subject another being to my fuckery just because I can.
edit: And yes, I teeter-totter on the ol' "you should adopt an abandoned pet" vs "feeding it for the rest of its life means other animals will die" vs "but you eat meat too you sanctimonious fuck" every time I think about the subject. At the end of the day, easier just to say "no pets" and move on with life for me.
...though I also understand the "no pets" and moving on attitude from a more personal angle. I've accidentally killed enough houseplants to scare me away from the "caring for a dependent living being" plan for now
Edit: just wanted to note that "people who got the memo but didn't read it" is now one of my favorite phrases. I've never heard it before, but something about it delights me
Having said that, I do find myself always playing devil's advocate with myself: "But how can your conscience be clear when millions of abandoned pets are being put to sleep in animal shelters? So it's everyone else's job to deal with that is it? You would deny your children the joy of owning a cute little doggo woggo?" and to that nascent neurofractal I say, get in line, the CBT will get to you eventually.
So I dunno, I don't want to come across as being down on people who've made a decision to own pets, it's possible to overthink things and underthink things. I know many pet owners and the vast majority are kind and caring. I think it comes with the territory. Some have been more domineering and lord over their creatures like a ruthless dictator and I think that says a lot about a person, but I digress...
I pretty much agree with everything you just said, and I pretty much kill every plant I touch as well. Brown thumb gang!
If eating meat is wrong, why does it matter whether it's a human or a dog doing it?
In your example of me personally, this is kind of the tradeoff most small humans (including myself) made for the first ten years of life. Supervision, lack of freedom, etc. in exchange for food, shelter, and hopefully companionship.
As it's not ideal, I could agree with you on reducing breeding so we don't have to make this choice in the future. But currently, for domesticated animals who can't be released into the wild without high chance of extreme pain to themselves (dogs) or major ecological damage (cats), it seems like our kindest option is to put as many of them in loving & protective situations as possible.
That has nothing to do with me wanting to own a pet, and everything to do with there being plenty of pets available who I would rather get loved by someone than, well, die on the street.
This kind of personifying glib is what gives vegan/vegetarian ethics a bad name. It completely ignores domestication and how dogs evolved as human-following scavenger animals. Most dog breeds are not adapted to living without humans. Dogs in the wild live much shorter lives and get parasites.
Yes, I am a sentient dog with an internet connection.
>Dogs in the wild live much shorter lives and get parasites.
This is true of humans as well. Honestly, I think a dog would outlast many of us in the wild. Your point is moot.
You aren't a dog, so your preference for not living under the care of a human owner is not relevant. Dogs do not outlast us in the wild, because "the wild" is the real world we live in today. Stray dogs are invasive in most ecosystems, and are usually not well adapted to their environments.
Dogs are intelligent enough to show preferences, and thanks to tens of thousands of years of selective breeding, they generally prefer people. Strays are a tragedy.
But somehow you, who are not a dog as well (I presume), just happen to know that dogs prefer domestic life.
Nice dissonance there, pal.
I posit that dogs on average prefer domestic life because they were selectively bred to prefer it for thousands of years. I am honestly surprised this is controversial. We know for a fact that many dog breeds are not compatible with living in nature without human help, and would not survive.
What is the ethical thing to do now, that we cannot change the past, and domesticated animals exist? I don't think breeding dogs is ethical. I also don't think lettings dogs out into nature is ethical, at all.
Pets offer an extremely potent form of emotional therapy, and that is a very personal connection that has nothing at all to do with vanity or entertainment. Both of the latter are typically secondary effects, not primary.
Well, of course, I didn't type my comment by accident!
Regarding your point:
Number of service dogs in the US: ~500,000 [1]
Number of dogs kept as pets in the US: ~76 million [2]
It's not even 1%. I understand the argument you bring but in practice is literally a rounding error. The overwhelming majority of pets serve a function of vanity and/or entertainment.
1: https://share.america.gov/service-dogs-save-lives/ 2: https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-p...
Service dogs do save lives, and are immensely important, but that is explicitly not my point.
I am talking about the fact that many pet-owners do gain emotional value and support from animals. Emotional animal support can be extremely effective therapy for humans, but would not count as a service animal. However, I don't think that anyone in their right mind would argue that situation is a function of vanity and/or entertainment.
And before you go try and find data: no, there aren't a lot of registered 'therapy animals,' because that is a hot-topic political issue, and people don't differentiate them well from service animals. Not to mention that society continues to think 'mental health problems' are mostly either made-up or to be looked down upon.
There not being a lot of registered ones does not mean that the emotional support and stability gained by having a pet does not do absolute wonders from a therapeutic perspective.
It has been formalized a bit[1], but has been going on informally for centuries, since animals and humans do form close emotional bonds.
You do not derive the same emotional value from eating meat. One is sustenance, and the other has been bred for centuries to have an extreme emotional connection with humans.
Because, ...
>you are making assumptions here that are invalid
... I would really like to know which side of the story is the most plausible one.
Or we let them breed, but we pick their partners and then take their babies. If we did this to humans there would be outrage right?
Just letting them free would be cruel, because the domesticated animals and surrounding ecosystem have not adapted to eachother. They will probably either hurt the ecosystem (cats and pigs) or die out after losing human care (cattle).
It doesn't seem ethical at all to just pretend that domesticated animals are people and so need human rights. They need animal rights, which depending on the species may be completely different.
To put it lightly, I don't think this idea holds water in the general case.