Pet food

Pet food is avoidable, if you aren't willing to provide a natural healthy diet, don't get a pet. simple.

I found out an interesting fact, that commercial pet food companies use synthetic taurine because the meat is so processed only a very small amount remains. So this means health wise vegan pet food is no less healthy then commercial pet food. It also shows just how bad  commerical pet food is, if the animal acids are lost because of processing. Not adding to an argument or anything just thought it was an interesting piece of information.

I also found a study that showed vegan/vegetarian pets had adequate taurine and cobalamin levels along with some improved health benefits and here is a link to the study - http://www.vegepets.info/assets/Vegetarian%20Cat%20Study%20Wakefield%20et%20al%202006%20JAVMA.pdf

Here is an overview of the study:

"Objective—To determine motivation and feeding practices of people who feed their cats vegetarian diets as well as taurine and cobalamin status of cats consuming vegetarian diets.


Design—Cross-sectional study.


Animals—34 cats that had been exclusively fed a commercial or homemade vegetarian diet and 52 cats that had been fed a conventional diet for ≥ 1 year.


Procedures—Participants were recruited through a Web site and from attendees of a national animal welfare conference. Caregivers of cats in both groups answered a telephone questionnaire regarding feeding practices for their cats. Blood was obtained from a subset of cats that had been fed vegetarian diets. Blood and plasma taurine and serum cobalamin concentrations were measured.


Results—People who fed vegetarian diets to their cats did so largely for ethical considerations and were more likely than people who fed conventional diets to believe that there are health benefits associated with a vegetarian diet and that conventional commercial cat foods are unwholesome. Both groups were aware of the potential health problems that could arise from improperly formulated vegetarian diets. All cats evaluated had serum cobalamin concentrations within reference range, and 14 of 17 had blood taurine concentrations within reference range.


Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—Vegetarian diets are fed to cats primarily for ethical considerations. Results of this study should aid practitioners in communicating with and providing advice to such clients.

FYI the cats with taurine below reference range were not low enough to be considered critically deficient." - http://www.vegetariancats.com/study.htm

Great research Yvan.

I think this has a lot to do with human hangups and uncertainty.

I provide my pets with the best food that is available to us and them regardless of cost and difficulty obtaining said food. I do believe that a vegan diet is not inadequate in meeting their nutritional needs. They all eat a combination of vegetables, rice and wet food in addition to their dry kibble.

Having said that, it is not expensive or hard to come by this product. As vegans, I think we should be supporting businesses such as this one rather than so called 'local organic free-range' farmers and whatever else they want to associate with their slaughter to appear more marketable. If noone supported veganpet then there would not be a reputable vegan pet food company in Australia. More support could mean that others see this as an opportunity and in the future may mean more products at a competitive rate. Who would suffer from this?

Everything aside, I want absolutely no part with the slaughter of any animal for any reason. I don't care if the particular animal part is not the reason that they are dying, I don't want a corpse in my house or in any of our bodies. I think people feel uncomfortable with the idea of vegan/vegetarian animals because of possibly the same hangups that carnists have with vegetarianism themselves. Perhaps its too difficult/they think they're already doing 'their part' already/ or its different and therefore 'unhealthy'.

I find it really strange that vegetarians can't 'bring' themselves to feed their pets veganpet but they can give them a corpse? Domesticated animals these days aren't the animals they were decades prior. They automatically don't turn into efficient killing machines with an incredible bloodlust if they were in the wild. Generations have become dependant on commercial canned/dry pet food and that's what our animals have grown to expect.

I know each of my animals are healthy and not deprived of fluids or any nutrient and I encourage anyone to meet them to see just they're not for want of anything. I was in a situation recently with one of our dogs where he actually turned up his little nose at the 'liver treat' he was being offered by the vet. If my pets were unhealthy, I would change their diet. I would not harm my own pets because of sheer ignorance and stubbornness. I have thoroughly researched this.

If you could provide your pets with the best quality food that absolutely no animal had to die to obtain, why wouldn't you? There isn't a thing as sustainable fishing nor ethical/humane slaughter methods.

But, as previously noted, many animals cannot actually live on a vegan diet. Period. No questions asked. If you feed a ferret a vegan diet, it will die.

Another thing to add, is that just picking up pieces of human grade meat isn't enough for cats, you need to be feeding them products with high amounts such as hearts and even then they recommend taurine supplements. The fact of the matter is for a cat to get enough amino acids from meat they need to be eating whole corpses of small animals and nothing else, because the meat you buy from stores will be one part you have to constantly be buying different parts and mixes to attempt to get all the animal amino acids and even then they will probably still recommend a taurine supplement.

Lets also talk about the natural diet, cat and dogs descendent's ate meat in the wild but when we get to domestication for thousands of years they've been living on human scraps and i doubt that had enough of the animal amino acids yet they continued to survive for years. After that came commercial pet foods, which when processed provided little amino acids so cat's were deficient for years until they discovered that they needed animal acids like taurine and cobalamin so they started putting in synthetic and that's where they are at today.  

The fact is vegan pet food gets a bad rap when the exact supplements are used in commercial pet food, which is further backed up by the above study. So a few conclusions can be drawn from all this, a common ancestors natural diet isn't the same as an domesticated animal, vegan pet food contains the same amounts of amino acids as commercial since they both use synthetic sources, to have a cat with those acids from meat would require them to be only eating small animals whole so they can receive all the nutrients from various body parts which would be destructive of natural wildlife and finally we can see from all these facts that there is nothing wrong with vegan pet food since cat's and dog's have lost their natural diets and can live fine on a vegan diet(as seen in the above study).

My point of this post isn't to argue all animals should be on a vegan diet, it's to provide the facts about a non-animal diet for pets after researching the idea with a un-biased approach seeing as i have neither of these animals and wanted to know the facts for myself. On the research against, i mostly found information about the impacts of amino acid deficiently which didn't take into account artificial supplements and the fact that commercial pet foods also use these supplements.

Please try to read this with an open mind and don't take it defensively .

Thank you Yvan for that enlightening research. You're so right about having to keep an open mind...that's what we always hope for when discussing our own veganism with omnis, so we need to be conscious of our own minds too.
I feel bad buying meat for my dogs, but thought they had to have it (possessing canine teeth made me think they need meat). Very interesting though that pet food is so processed that the nutrients they need are added artificially anyway. That makes a very good case for vegan pet food! Like you said, they're not eating their natural diet anyway...
Glad I ordered some  Veganpet when reading this stuff here the other day (just arrived this morning-yay! Only took 2days!)...I think I'll be sticking to that from now on (sorry can't remember now who posted the link, but thank you!). Of course, if there are any meat scraps getting thrown out at a party/dinner/whatever, I'll be happy to bring it home & feed it to my dogs, rather than put it in the bin.
Now I'll feel a little less hypocritical in my efforts to not support the meat industry

Thanks for the info.
Still rather feed my animals fresh vegetables, wholegrains and meat (including offal) than processed veganpet.

Cats do still hunt for food, the stray we took in, despite being well fed, would hunt & eat large skinks, mice, pigeons etc

And plenty of domestic dogs will too for example, dig holes to get to chooks, kill them and eat them. It's in their nature.

Availability of ethical meat is debatable as 'ethics' are based on an individuals beliefs, for me, I understand the life cycle/food chain is not a vegan one and I am ok with supplying organic meat to my companion animals.
It's not a matter of money, buying free range organic meat is not cheap.

I do struggle opening cans upon cans of processed pet food at the local shelter to feed the mouths of hungry cats & dogs, but what other option do we have?

You have to be realistic.

And remember commercial canned 'meat' for dogs contains rendered animals which includes animals killed in shelters and road kill :-/
Steer clear of commercial food!

Do people really need to be told how bad commercial pet food is?
You just have to look at the back of a can and read 'meat and meat by products' and you can guess the rest....