Should Cats and Dogs go Vegan? - Professor Andrew Knight, University of Winchester
Should Cats and Dogs go Vegan? - Professor Andrew Knight, University of Winchester
16 comments
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No
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Explain why. Dogs and cats need nutrients, not meat. There are vegan pet food brands that can supply them with all they need. Simply saying "A cat/dog is a carnivore, therefore it should eat meat" makes no sense, especially if you harm other animals in the process. That leaves us with taste - the same thing that doesn't justify murder for humans.
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Cats are obligate carnivores.
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cats (family Felidae), are obligate carnivores, meaning they cannot obtain all the nutrients that they need from the plant kingdom and bacteria.
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16 comments
All omnivores can be vegans. That means dogs can. Cats are not omnivores. They are carnivores
Cats can, actually. You just have to add enzymes to the food to help it break down so they can absorb it.
And other additives, of course, which are already added to most store bought cat foods already.
Thanks for the info @librarynapper, I didn't know that. Are those enzymes present in plant-based cat food or is it given separately. I knew people who tried feeding plant-based dry cat food to their cats and they still ended up with nutritional deficiencies. I wonder if those enzymes would have made a difference
I believe it is taurine that cats need supplemented if fed a diet without meat.
I wish this was true. I have some pet lizards I got before I went vegan, two of them are omnivores (blue tongue skink and Argentine black and white tegu). They can't be vegan. I mean, honestly, if there was a large scale effort to research it, I bet we could come up with a suitable vegan diet for them, but I don't think anyone will put a bunch of resources into that.