So according to the ethics of veganism it’s about valuing sentient life and animal consent.
So I pose a few questions.
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Is it justified to buy animal based dog and cat food?
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Is it justifiable to force a dog or cat to be vegan?
If 1 is justifiable then the claim that it’s unethical for humans to eat meat is untrue since feeding your pets meat requires more animals to be raised for slaughter.
If 2 is true then it violates animal consent because there are zero dogs or cats that prefer vegan food to meat and infact are naturally omnivorous in the case of dogs or pure carnivores in the case of cats.
So the logical conclusion would be owning meat eating pets in impossible while being vegan.
Then it leads to the ethics of what happened to the breeds of cats and dogs no longer able to be pets.
Cats and dogs can’t survive purely on veggies. It’s not just for their taste buds.
Dogs totally can. They are omnivores like us and evolved alongside us. Obviously they’d eat meat if given the choice so it’s still a restrictive diet that they never got to choose for themselves, and that’s an ethical minefield for vegans, but they can totally live on plants.
Cats are carnivores. I don’t think they can live a full healthy life without at least some meat.
Cats require specific vitamins such as taurine, which in nature would be derived from meat. In 21st century society, it is produced synthetically and easily supplemented.
Good point, it’s not like I don’t take B12 most days!
Pets don’t get to choose what they eat, vegan or otherwise. Most pets thrive just fine on eating more or less the same couple foods all their life. “forcing therm” to eat vegan food is ethically the same as “forging them” to eat regular kibble.
Right, because pets are not free to make their own choices. They’re property.
That’s the ethical minefield I was talking about.
That a dumb take. Small children are also not free to pick the food they eat. Their parent chose their food. Are children property? If that’s a minefield, it’s a pretty weak one.
The difference is children spend 1/5 to 1/4 of their life being “not free” the animals you force to eat vegan spend their whole life stuck in that life style
When parents decide to deprive their children of vaccines, or block them from gender affirming care, or use corporal punishment, or any other things that “parental rights” freaks believe in- what do you think that is?
A huge portion of people consider children to be property, they want the right to control their children and to abuse them however they want.
Those things are actively harming children. Supplemented vegan food is not like being violent to pets.
Sustaining a cat on an entirely vegan diet is actively harming the cat.
Not if it’s nutricionally complete.
You might be misunderstanding what I mean by “minefield”. Controlling someone’s food is a minefield because it is possible to make misteps. You can accidentally veer into abuse without extreme caution i.e. accidentally step on a mine.
That doesn’t mean controlling your pet’s diet is inherently abusive. It’s just a minefield. Don’t mistep.