Should cats and dogs go vegan?
Why am I not surprised.....
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Is it morally superior to feed your pet a diet devoid of animal ingredients?
In a new survey out of the University of Guelph, 35 per cent of pet owners indicated an interest in switching their pets to a plant-based or vegan diet.
The study, the first to investigate the prevalence of “meat avoidance” in the pet owner population, comes as more Canadians are reconsidering their own relationship with animal flesh. Nearly 20 per cent of the population is minimizing, or eliminating entirely, meat products from their diets, and, according to a recent survey, Canada is now home to 1.3 million self-identifying vegetarians and 466,000 vegans (no dairy or eggs), the highest surveyed numbers yet.
“People who avoid eating animals tend to share their homes with animal companions, and a moral dilemma may arise when they are faced with feeding animal products to their omnivorous dogs and carnivorous cats,” U of Guelph veterinarian Sarah Dodd and her co-authors wrote in the journal PLOS ONE.
One option to alleviate this “moral conflict,” they said, is to make pets go meat free. However, since neither dogs nor cats are free to choose their lifestyle, is it ethical?
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There’s no published evidence of health benefits of meat avoidance in pet dogs or cats, according to Dodd and her co-authors. And, as with humans, pets fed only plant-based foods could suffer vitamin deficiencies.
In fact, half the omnivores surveyed, and more than half of vegetarians, considered it immoral to make pets go vegan, compared to just over a quarter of vegans, which isn’t that surprising, given vegans were the only ones making their pets go without meat.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/canad...a-eccd1a8a7cb2
