Yeah, to be clear, you should not feed your cat a Vegan diet. Cats are obligate carnivores. Synthetic Taurine has made vegan catfood somewhat more viable, but cats don’t just need Taurine from prey. They need several vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids from animal protein to survive. Beyond that, their digestive tract isn’t very efficient at digesting plant matter, so even if these foods have the nutritional value they need, they might not be absorbing it. Also, a lot of these products seem to be made from grains and other carb heavy products, and cats need a very low carb, high protein diet. If you want to completely divest from the meat industry, you simply shouldn’t own a cat.
That being said, Vegan catfood products are on the market, so whether or not they are good for cats, they have been approved by several regulating bodies. You can claim that they’re unsafe (I certainly do), but having an admin nuke a comment section for claiming otherwise is a huge overreaction. It would be like going into a vape community and banning accounts that claimed vaping is safer than smoking; it probably isn’t, but I don’t need admins deciding who gets to have discourse about that.
Finally, I’m also not a fan of dead cats, but if you’re dumb enough to take veterinary advice from an internet vegan group, you’re probably too dumb to keep a cat alive anyway.
Vegan catfood products are on the market, so whether or not they are good for cats, they have been approved by several regulating bodies
Yeah, that’s not how it works. Especially in countries with extreme regulatory capture like the US.
Unless a product has text that says in a very specifically worded way that it’s been tested and approved by a relevant regulatory body, it hasn’t.
The fact that something hasn’t been taken off the market YET does not necessarily mean that it’s been approved. Especially not when you’re dealing with politically volatile stuff that could lead to lengthy public lawsuits sapping the resources of the already chronically underfunded and understaffed agencies.
If it’s vegan food for obligate carnivores, it MIGHT technically be “safe” (as in won’t be outright lethal), but for the reasons you yourself mentioned, it’s likely to significantly decrease the animal’s enjoyment of life at best and more likely to be downright torturous.
It would be like going into a vape community and banning accounts that claimed vaping is safer than smoking
Except for the fact that those accounts would be absolutely right and have reams of scientific evidence from the world’s foremost experts in related fields to back up their claims. Unlike the people abusing cats in the name of not abusing animals.
it probably isn’t
It is. It’s not even anywhere near the next city over from the neighborhood of close.
but I don’t need admins deciding who gets to have discourse about that
Except limiting the spread of dangerous misinformation, such as common myths that are keeping smokers away from one of if not THE most effective smoking cessation tool, is a big part of what admins are FOR.
if you’re dumb enough to take veterinary advice from an internet vegan group, you’re probably too dumb to keep a cat alive anyway
Yeah…that’s not a valid argument either. A lot of vegans avoid getting a cat because they’re too overzealous in their veganism to even want carnivorous animals to eat meat.
The Venn diagram of people vegan enough to love carnivores but refuse to give them meat and people who would trust a vegan online echo chamber more than competent veterinarians is a circle within a bigger circle.
Well, various vegan catfoods have been approved for use in not only the U.S. but also the E.U., but your point about regulatory capture is fair. Unfortunately, it’s undercut by your support for vaping, a nicotine product brought to market with an insane lack of oversight. Ironically, most of what you’re complaining about with the cat food is exactly what makes vaping so dangerous. We don’t have as much research or long-term studies on the effects of vaping to say it’s as dangerous as smoking, but we know that they contain propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which are toxic to cells, aldehydes, which are associated with lung disease and heart disease, acrolein, which can cause COPD, asthma and lung cancer, as well as various heavy metals. I’m pretty sure that a lot more people will die of vaping than cats will die of veganism. That being said, I don’t think people who support vaping should be removed from lemmy for using a product that’s probably unsafe, and and it’s not the job of admins or moderators to stop people from taking bad health advice from strangers on the internet.
I feel like nobody is approaching this from a consent aspect either. If someone offers their cat an array of cat food options and makes an actual honest attempt to determine a long term preference and the cat legitimately prefers the vegan cat food, then that’s way less problematic than saying “you will eat this weird food or you will starve.”
The forced veganism thing just feels a lot like saying “studies show that a human can technically survive on roaches and rat feces as long as they get a vitamin C supplement.”
Yeah, to be clear, you should not feed your cat a Vegan diet. Cats are obligate carnivores. Synthetic Taurine has made vegan catfood somewhat more viable, but cats don’t just need Taurine from prey. They need several vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids from animal protein to survive. Beyond that, their digestive tract isn’t very efficient at digesting plant matter, so even if these foods have the nutritional value they need, they might not be absorbing it. Also, a lot of these products seem to be made from grains and other carb heavy products, and cats need a very low carb, high protein diet. If you want to completely divest from the meat industry, you simply shouldn’t own a cat.
That being said, Vegan catfood products are on the market, so whether or not they are good for cats, they have been approved by several regulating bodies. You can claim that they’re unsafe (I certainly do), but having an admin nuke a comment section for claiming otherwise is a huge overreaction. It would be like going into a vape community and banning accounts that claimed vaping is safer than smoking; it probably isn’t, but I don’t need admins deciding who gets to have discourse about that.
Finally, I’m also not a fan of dead cats, but if you’re dumb enough to take veterinary advice from an internet vegan group, you’re probably too dumb to keep a cat alive anyway.
Yeah, that’s not how it works. Especially in countries with extreme regulatory capture like the US.
Unless a product has text that says in a very specifically worded way that it’s been tested and approved by a relevant regulatory body, it hasn’t.
The fact that something hasn’t been taken off the market YET does not necessarily mean that it’s been approved. Especially not when you’re dealing with politically volatile stuff that could lead to lengthy public lawsuits sapping the resources of the already chronically underfunded and understaffed agencies.
If it’s vegan food for obligate carnivores, it MIGHT technically be “safe” (as in won’t be outright lethal), but for the reasons you yourself mentioned, it’s likely to significantly decrease the animal’s enjoyment of life at best and more likely to be downright torturous.
Except for the fact that those accounts would be absolutely right and have reams of scientific evidence from the world’s foremost experts in related fields to back up their claims. Unlike the people abusing cats in the name of not abusing animals.
It is. It’s not even anywhere near the next city over from the neighborhood of close.
Except limiting the spread of dangerous misinformation, such as common myths that are keeping smokers away from one of if not THE most effective smoking cessation tool, is a big part of what admins are FOR.
Yeah…that’s not a valid argument either. A lot of vegans avoid getting a cat because they’re too overzealous in their veganism to even want carnivorous animals to eat meat.
The Venn diagram of people vegan enough to love carnivores but refuse to give them meat and people who would trust a vegan online echo chamber more than competent veterinarians is a circle within a bigger circle.
Well, various vegan catfoods have been approved for use in not only the U.S. but also the E.U., but your point about regulatory capture is fair. Unfortunately, it’s undercut by your support for vaping, a nicotine product brought to market with an insane lack of oversight. Ironically, most of what you’re complaining about with the cat food is exactly what makes vaping so dangerous. We don’t have as much research or long-term studies on the effects of vaping to say it’s as dangerous as smoking, but we know that they contain propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which are toxic to cells, aldehydes, which are associated with lung disease and heart disease, acrolein, which can cause COPD, asthma and lung cancer, as well as various heavy metals. I’m pretty sure that a lot more people will die of vaping than cats will die of veganism. That being said, I don’t think people who support vaping should be removed from lemmy for using a product that’s probably unsafe, and and it’s not the job of admins or moderators to stop people from taking bad health advice from strangers on the internet.
I feel like nobody is approaching this from a consent aspect either. If someone offers their cat an array of cat food options and makes an actual honest attempt to determine a long term preference and the cat legitimately prefers the vegan cat food, then that’s way less problematic than saying “you will eat this weird food or you will starve.”
The forced veganism thing just feels a lot like saying “studies show that a human can technically survive on roaches and rat feces as long as they get a vitamin C supplement.”