Vegetarian Pets

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
37,364
I attended a vegan festival a few months ago and whilst I was enjoying the event muchly, there was a store which just left me speachless. Yes thats right, vegan pet food for dogs and cats.

Ok, so a vegetarian / vegan might want to embrace the same ethics he or she has to his or her pet, which is selfish but understandable. I'm by no means a dietician but I remain extremly skeptical whether this diet meets the nutritional requirements of either dogs or cats, although some say otherwise.

Humans have an omnivorous ancestry (early primates), cats and dogs do not .

It just seems to spit in the face to all logic to give an animal a totally "unsuitable" diet by traditional, historical or biological standards. Even if there are many healthy vegetarian pets which exist in the UK, how does this affect the fitness of their offspring? I can't to find any information regarding the fitness of a 10th generation veggie pet compared to a regular pet.

I was going to give the store a good piece of my mind but I didn't want to start an argument with my vegan chums so dropped it and forgot about it, until now.

So what do you think? Is it fair to give pets these diets?

What do the forum's vegetarians think about this?

Some links:

http://www.veggiepets.com/

http://www.vegansociety.com/animals/care/cats/

EDIT - I think its fair to say that the 'vegetarian / vegan' market is one which is exploited due to the good nature of such people. There was a store selling liquidised grass which gave, I quote, 'enzyme goodness' which had a reasonable queue.
 
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I am a vegetarian with two cats.
I think that is completley unfair and wrong to force this onto a cat. I would never to it to mine.
Cant be healthy for them.
 
It is one thing for me to make an informed decision about whether I want to eat meat or not, it is quite another to force an unsuitable diet onto someone/thing that has no choice in the matter.

I can't imagine it is particularly healthy, especially for cats who are definitely carnivorous in nature, dogs might be more amenable to a vegetarian diet but still less than ideal I would have thought.
 
Vegans/veggies who enslave animals for their own entertainment are big enough hypocrites without calling them up on other aspects of their ****ed-up belief system.

*n
 
yup, do what you like, but force it on your animals or kids and it is cruel. It isn't their choice to be viggeis, also don't agree with keeping animals in cages in general also really, if you open the cage and it runs off, are you looking after it or are you keeping it prisoner?

cats are cool because they just come and go as they please. :D
 
I used to work with a guy that had a vegetarian dog, but it was purely for health reasons, the dogs stomache couldnt handle meaty/rich foods or something so they had to feed him veg and pasta :)
 
penski said:
Vegans/veggies who enslave animals for their own entertainment are big enough hypocrites without calling them up on other aspects of their ****ed-up belief system.

*n
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I like it, nice try there.

KittensCake said:
Hahahaha, oh my god. You can't be serious? You really are incredibly ignorant.
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penski is great, if you pick a position he'll probably take the opposite one to liven the day up. If you take him too seriously then I think you'd be missing the point. Along with a couple of other people I always read his posts as an attempt at the wind up, it seems to work out easily that way for me.
 
Tom0 said:
I used to work with a guy that had a vegetarian dog, but it was purely for health reasons, the dogs stomache couldnt handle meaty/rich foods or something so they had to feed him veg and rice :)
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Was it a Terrier? The genetic abuse and inbreeding (aka pedigree breeding) have caused their stomachs to not tolerate fats, almost at all; which is sad, as wolves and dogs are natural scavengers, and live off the hide and fatty parts of animals.
 
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My uncle is a vegan and had a dog which he forced to be a veggie. I learnt that its actually possible for a dog to look "peaky"
 
JimpsEd said:
Was it a Terrier? The genetic abuse and inbreeding (aka pedigree breeding) have caused their stomachs to not tolerate fats, almost at all.
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Yes I'm pretty sure it was, I'm not sure if it was any sort of pedigree though.
 
Tom0 said:
Yes I'm pretty sure it was, I'm not sure if it was any sort of pedigree though.
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Yeah, its the same with ours :( (not that we realised this kind of thing until after buying her as a puppy). People are cruel, as that pedigree program on recently showed.
 
JimpsEd said:
Was it a Terrier? The genetic abuse and inbreeding (aka pedigree breeding) have caused their stomachs to not tolerate fats, almost at all; which is sad, as wolves and dogs are natural scavengers, and live off the hide and fatty parts of animals.
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Inbreeding does not have anything to do with pedigree breeding. You have a major misunderstanding there.
 
Without knowing exactly what's in these products it's hard to say for sure, but I'd imagine such a diet would be inadequate for pets such as cats. Surely the fact that cats hunt small rodents and birds is a clue to what their diet should consist of?
 
Haiku said:
Without knowing exactly what's in these products it's hard to say for sure, but I'd imagine such a diet would be inadequate for pets such as cats. Surely the fact that cats hunt small rodents and birds is a clue to what their diet should consist of?
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So why isn't there a mouse flavoured catfood? ;)


Our 3 cats usually get Tuna, or chicken to eat, as one of them is allergic to the cereals you find in dried cat food.

Occasionally we'll cook up some rice, with some chicken or whatever, with some gravy on it, and they love the stuff :), but it's more of a treat for them then anything.
 
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