There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that’s not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn’t for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn’t something you can arbitrarily do.
Cats have dietary needs that would require them to eat meat in nature. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
I don’t understand why people upvote summaries that don’t even try to be objective. I honestly think the mods there do notably abuse their power to remove comments, but let people decide that for themselves. This commenter is telling you who to support while being confidently incorrect on the original issue.
The reason cats can’t be vegan is that they cannot produce an amino acid called taurine, which is something dogs and humans can produce (but which we also get sometimes from dietary sources).
Most dietary sources of taurine are meat. This is why dogs and humans “can be vegan” but cats “can’t”. However, vegan taurine is made and can be bought as a supplement, both for humans (if you want to ensure you get some taurine in your diet), but also in properly made vegan cat food.
It seems to me then that cats can be vegan, just not without intentional effort to ensure proper supplementation of taurine. That is, they couldn’t be vegan in the wild (where the only source of taurine is meat) and you can’t just start to feed them a vegan diet without taurine and expect the cat to be healthy and survive.
In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/
I think the question is really what you are feeding your “vegan” cat: if you have managed to find (or make) a properly fortified vegan cat food it is theoretically possible to feed your cat a vegan diet.
This all feels a bit like the “controversy” around feeding young children and babies a vegan diet: done poorly it can be catastrophic (pun not intended), but it’s entirely possible to have a healthy vegan diet when enough effort is put into ensuring nutritional needs are actually satisfied.
That said, I also know of two other vegan responses:
- for some vegans, having pets is not vegan to begin with, so a “vegan cat” is a contradiction in terms even if you fed them a vegan diet, you still wouldn’t be an ethical vegan by owning a cat. This is admittedly a less commonly held view which centers ethical veganism on the rights of animals to have autonomy, which if plausible in some ways seems at least impractical in the case of domesticated animals. There are questions of the harm that might be caused by choosing to treat cats not as pets but as autonomy-rights-bearing “wild” animals, but those ethical vegans might rightly point out this doesn’t undo the cat’s rights and the practical questions should be handled separately.
- most vegans I know IRL just feed cats a non-vegan diet, acknowledging it is safer and more reasonable for their cat than trying to figure out a way to feed them a vegan diet. Good vegan cat food isn’t that common or easy to find as far as I know, and I assume it would be outrageously expensive.
In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/
It actually never definitively says that in any of the studies mentioned… This particular study relies entirely on self reported results, with less than 10% of the sample sizes being fed a vegan diet, with no actual controls in place. It’s a meaningless study. It honestly reads like a fluff piece where they collected some surveys from an already pro-vegan community. As we’ve seen from the rhetoric surrounding this situation some vegans will absolutely feed their pets inadequate food and feel good about themselves while doing it.
And the final nail in the coffin:
This research and its publication open access was funded by food awareness organisation ProVeg International (https://proveg.com).
Ahhh… there it is.
This research and its publication open access was funded by food awareness organisation ProVeg International (https://proveg.com).
FUCKING LMAO
making cats vegan
For a second (or maybe longer, until I read the wlhole thing) I thought they wanted to consider eating cats as being vegan.
can you tell.me if you know more than this guy, and where he is wrong:
Link peer reviewed literature, not youtube media
Jointly considering seven general indicators of health and 22 specific health disorders, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than those fed meat-based diets.
Small study.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132
Does this work?
This study was essentially them asking cat owners information, no direct observation. This may be a surprise but people lie, especially when they really want something to work.
No one is going to admit they hurt their cat by pushing a diet they believe is right.
Hey that’s a really good point lets see what scientific literature says about that:
4.1. Evidence Considerations-To date, only sixteen studies have looked at actual health-related outcomes in dogs and cats fed vegan diets, as opposed to performing nutrient evaluations of diets. However, the majority of these studies utilized small sample sizes (ranging from 2–34 animals) for the direct investigation of outcomes. Whilst survey studies evaluating guardian-reported outcomes generally encompassed larger numbers of animals, these are subject to inherent biases due to participant selection, as well as the reliability of lay people making judgements around somewhat subjective concepts, such as health and body condition.
It then goes on to say:
The risk of bias assessment performed on the experimental trials suggests, at best, an unclear risk of bias across the studies. There were some particular aspects of poor performance (or reporting), especially around randomization and blinding. This has been reported previously in animal studies [42], where researchers have probably not taken on board some of these important facets of experimental design and reporting to the extent that human clinical researchers have [43,44]. This remains a major concern impeding reproducibility, and where internal validity of the study is impacted, also leads to wastage of animal and financial resources [42].
Seems like the science backs your claim up partially. I would call it bias instead of lying though.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
Exactly. it’s not perfect. it’s a new area of study.
Which is exactly why pet owners shouldn’t be fucking with it, maybe down the road but as it stands right now the average pet owner shouldn’t be experimenting on their poor kitties.
Oh fuck. And here I was willing to side with the vegan mods because I assumed people were just shitting on vegans again.
For the record, science disagrees with you. According to an analysis of all current research, there is no statistically significant difference of cat heath when fed a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet. Of there is a similarly high quality study that finds that a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet is worse for cats I would love to see it.
The vegan diet we are talking about isn’t a bunch of vegetables, it’s a manufactured dry food specifically designed to have all the nutrients a cat needs.
People often use the obligate carnivore excuse, but use it in an unscientific way. Obligate carnivores have nutritional needs that can only be meet through meat in the wild, but humans are perfectly capable of manufacturing these nutrients. We are so good at it that we supplement these synthetic nutrients in meat based cat food already.
This is a contentious issue for most people, and it can be hard when you are very passionate about something to look at the evidence and change your opinion. I’ve looked at a decent number of studies on the topic recently, and they all seen to point to the conclusion that a diet without meat can be healthy for cats, so long as it contains all the nutrients they need.
A vet friend in a very trendy city encounters a lot of cats with significant health problems that stem from their owner’s attempt at a vegan diet, so whether or not it’s possible, too many people harm the health of their pets through attempting a vegan diet for it to be a safe thing to recommend trying
Yea that’s the thing.
I’m sure a team of scientists could eventually design an ethically sourced vegan cat food with synthetic versions of whatever is missing that could work fine for some cats.
The odds of a random lemming doing it right after reading one comment about it online is next to none.
Discussing it is one thing, recommending it and deleting anything that simply advises caution is weird.
First of all, that analysis you posted is not particularly scientific, and there’s an abundance of evidence that vegan diets hurt cats.
Second, once you’re getting into arguments about “synthetic nutrients”, it’s pretty clear that you don’t actually know how animals nutrition works, and probably shouldn’t have a pet at all if you don’t know how to keep one without making it suffer due to malnutrition.
Not sure why you’re vegan, but it certainly isn’t because you care about the well-being of animals…
heavy sigh
Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of its big points is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.
Some great lines:
Cats on a high-protein vegetarian diet exhibited hypokalemia which accompanied recurrent polymyopathy. There was also increased creatinine kinase activity, likely reflecting the muscle damage caused by the myopathy, and reduced urinary potassium concentrations.
To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.
showed that plasma taurine concentrations decreased by approximately 87% after only 2 weeks on a vegetarian diet (from 122 μmol/L to 16μmol/L). By the end of the 6-week study, there was no detectable taurine in plasma. Taurine concentrations were not different between the potassium-supplemented and non-supplemented groups, with both groups showing this substantial drop in taurine.
To simplify: Taurine supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried
In cats fed vegetarian diets that were supplemented with potassium, a myopathy was seen within 2 weeks of the dietary change this was characterized by ventroflexion of the head and the neck. The cats also showed lateral head resting, a stiff gait, muscular weakness, unsteadiness, and the occasional tremor of the head and pinnae.
To simplify: your car feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit
Weight loss and poor coat condition have also been observed in cats fed vegetarian diets. However, most cats in another study had a normal coat condition and no obviously diet-related clinical abnormalities picked up by clinical examination [27]. Clinical signs of lethargy with altered mentation, dysorexia, and muscle wasting, along with gut signs of bloating and increased borborygmi have also been observed [30].
Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad
I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.
A lot of vegans will hate this, but YOU’RE NOT A FUCKING SCIENTIST! Drop all the journals and research you want, but your pet is not a lab-controlled experiment. Besides, something being in a journal doesn’t make it true. If it is regularly cited as true, and has swept into general understanding of how to feed a pet, then it’s factual…
I’m all for vegans living their best lives. Don’t force it on a pet that doesn’t know better. Vegans harming animals through their own food choices isn’t a new thing, ask most vets and they’ll have seen the effects of malnutrition from someone that thought that they knew better.
I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
I don’t. Veganism is about the fact that humans can live without animal products, which is true. Not accepting that actual carnivores exist, even being unhappy with this means you’re well in extremist nutjob territory.
There are plenty of vegan friendly pets to choose from too. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, chinchillas, pygmy goats ect. If they are willing to accept insectivorous animals that list gets longer.
Why choose a pet like a cat if their diet is a philosophical problem for them? Choose a different animal.
A lot of vegans seem to view even owning a pet, of any kind, as evil.
I’m aware of some vegans stances being against having pets, but if people are feeding their cats and dogs a vegan diet at least some portion of vegans aren’t against it.
For folks who want pets who are also vegan they should choose a species compatible with that instead of forcing it on an animal who’s biology isn’t going to thrive under those conditions.
Well put. Cats are OBLIGATE carnivores. They do not have anatomy to support extracting necessary nutrition from vegan sources that are available. It IS hypothetically possibly for them to survive and thrive on an engineered food source but, such a thing does not currently exist and the chemical complexity makes it unlikely in the near future.
I’m pretty sure energy drinks might use synthetic taurine on a large scale, have we tried feeding cats Monster Energy? /s
Disclaimer that I’m not even a vegan but you’re spreading disinfo here to make vegans seem completely unreasonable. I suggest anyone check out the actual discussions instead of trusting this summary.
Cats are obligate carnivores, sparky. That means they can’t be vegan.
Cats are obligate carnivores in the wild. This just means they have dietary needs that would normally require meat. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
they can’t be vegan as that is an ethical choice. they can be plant based and live a perfectly normal life.
tell me where you disagree with this guy:
This asshole is a propagandist
a guy who is a professor of animal welfare?
Show me a scientific study that proves this. If you can say it with confidence, it should be no trouble at all for you to prove it. I, on the other hand, am lazy and don’t care all that much, so I want the people confidently stating opinions to share their research to save me effort.
A quick search reveals quite a few sources and articles to read. I hope this helps. Not an exhaustive list.
Those aren’t scientific studies. The vegans have scientific studies. You expect me to believe you know better than them, but you can’t show me sources of equal quality?
One of those is a Wikipedia link which gives you primary sources. 🤔
Cat food is food specifically formulated and designed for consumption by cats. As obligate carnivores, cats have specific requirements for their dietary nutrients, namely nutrients found only in meat or synthesised, such as taurine and Vitamin A.
Hey look, your Wikipedia link says the nutrients cats need from meat can be synthesised in literally the second sentence.
Vegetarian or vegan cat food has been available for many years, and is targeted primarily at vegan and vegetarian pet owners. While a small percentage of owners choose such a diet based on its perceived health benefits, the majority do so due to ethical concerns, such as about the large environmental impacts of animal agriculture.
I’m vegan and I don’t know why these “vegans” are towing the line to to include non-human species. It’s just as gross for vegan humans to apply their values to values in a dominant manner as it is for non-vegans to. Literally vegans doing this is antithesis to the entire cause.
I’m glad they got slapped. You’ll always have idiots in a movement I guess…
I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don’t realise that it’s a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is “as much as you are able” so I guess there is extremism everywhere.
And veganism is about living a lifestyle that causes the least amount of suffering. And not solely about not eating animal products. (Cultivated meat can be considered vegan, if it has been produced ethically and no animals or humans suffered) Not giving your cat meat causes suffering so is by definition not vegan.
Side note: Veganism is also about reducing human suffering so cocaine is not vegan. Just a reminder to vegans who use cocaine. Met a bunch of those last week.
The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet.
Pets eat pre-processed food, and we’ve had vegetarian protein supplements for a while. How does this work for cats? Idk, ask a vet. But these foods have been around for a while and I’m not hearing about a mass die-off of indoor cats as a result, so I’m willing to give vegan cat owners the benefit of the doubt.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind.
The expected lifespan of feral cats in the wild runs around 2-5 years. House cats routinely live into their teenage years and can hit north of 20. The ideal lifestyle for a cat is indoors, regardless of the precise composition of their diets.
I think the bug take away is to talk to and listen to a expert. Especially don’t start making huge changes to your cats diet
Vegan owners get new cats all the time. I don’t think it’s a question of changing the diet, but starting them on it.
Was this the article that started it? Do you have the thread or would an archived link be required to see it?
Vegan versus meat-based cat food: Guardian-reported health outcomes in 1,369 cats, after controlling for feline demographic factors [Andrew Knight, Alexander Bauer, Hazel Brown | Published: September 13, 2023][1]
Abstract
Increasing concerns about environmental sustainability, farmed animal welfare and competition for traditional protein sources, are driving considerable development of alternative pet foods. These include raw meat diets, in vitro meat products, and diets based on novel protein sources including terrestrial plants, insects, yeast, fungi and potentially seaweed. To study health outcomes in cats fed vegan diets compared to those fed meat, we surveyed 1,418 cat guardians, asking about one cat living with them, for at least one year. Among 1,380 respondents involved in cat diet decision-making, health and nutrition was the factor considered most important. 1,369 respondents provided information relating to a single cat fed a meat-based (1,242–91%) or vegan (127–9%) diet for at least a year. We examined seven general indicators of illness. After controlling for age, sex, neutering status and primary location via regression models, the following risk reductions were associated with a vegan diet for average cats: increased veterinary visits– 7.3% reduction, medication use– 14.9% reduction, progression onto therapeutic diet– 54.7% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of being unwell– 3.6% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of more severe illness– 7.6% reduction, guardian opinion of more severe illness– 22.8% reduction. Additionally, the number of health disorders per unwell cat decreased by 15.5%. No reductions were statistically significant. We also examined the prevalence of 22 specific health disorders, using reported veterinary assessments. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one disorder. Of these 22 disorders, 15 were most common in cats fed meat, and seven in cats fed vegan diets. Only one difference was statistically significant. Considering these results overall, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets. This trend was clear and consistent. These results largely concur with previous, similar studies.
Abstract states vegan cats are healthier, but fig. 4 would suggest that they live shorter (or are at least younger)
Is this your first time reading a vegan propaganda study?
Thank you for the summary! I found myself in OP. I am eating mostly vegan, and I have a cat, and I believe people who force a vegan (or even vegetarian) diet on their cats need mental help.
this is hilarious, and 100% on brand for a vegan community.
It really isn’t funny as there are real animals being harmed. There pet will die a slow and agonizing death.
Maybe whataboutism here but there are beagles in the UK right now waiting to be experimented on them (possibly for a new dog food brand) and eventually killed. There are billions of animals all around the world dying a slow and agonizing death, trapped in CAFO facilities right now, of whom 20% alone are getting fed to dogs in the US.
I think some cat getting fed a well formulated vegan cat food containing taurine, vitamin A & D3, omega 3 & 6, magnesium, copper, iodine, selenium, manganese, zink & calcium is astronomically better off than any aforementioned animals.
I fed a cat I had to take in for some time the AMI brand. She was wild for it.
That’s half the point. These people are destroying what they love through their own malice and stupidity. I’d rather they didn’t, but since they’re not stopping any time soon I might as well laugh at them for it.
Making dogs vegan still doesn’t sound like a good idea to me tho
Yeah, it’s ridiculous to feed a dog vegetables. My dog gets a diet of pure meat. I drive around my city with a net gun and capture outdoor cats, and then butcher them for Fido. It’s a win-win-win. Win: Fido gets meat. Win: I don’t contribute to factory farming cruelty. Win: the native birds aren’t driven extinct by predation. This is the only ethical way to feed a dog, since this way every living creature that ends up in Fido’s hungry jaws lived a rich and fulfilling life.
Leave the internet
Oh great, another annoying vegan here to tell me that killing animals for food is wrong
If you even bothered to check my post history you will see my last 20 comments boil down to ‘fuck vegans’
I told you to GTFO not because you are a carnist, because I am an unapologetic carnist who hates vegans almost as much as I hate fascism.
I told you to GTFO because you are being hyperreactionary for clout, and that’s literally what is ruining discussion on the internet
My research said that it can work if you do it right. It is very hard and requires constant monitoring of the dog. I wouldn’t recommend it but it will work better than cats. The problem I can forsee is a vegan owner moving there dog to a vegan diet and then refusing to accept that that there dog is having health issues because of it. They would need to be willing to start giving there dog regular food again but I don’t see the extreme vegans doing that. They will likely just shove there head in the sand or blame something else like the vet.
It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
No, they’re hypocrites. These are practices that vegans should not be ok with, and said actions certain don’t constitute a harmonious world view and philosophy. They should be ashamed of themselves. The real actions and ideas they should be putting forward is to not have pets, and to try to reduce invasive species impacts on local ecosystems (in which case cats are neutered to stop reproduction).
I knew a hardcore vegan girl like a decade ago when it was rather rare to see someone to that extreme, or at least to me. She said she feeds her cat only vegan food, and i was pretty sure that that’s not a thing, but i didn’t really know. Her roommate then told me that she goes through quite a lot of cats, because they either die or run away.
Why do people even try to keep cats on vegan diet? It was your fucking choice, not the cats.
Im vegetarian, my cat eats meat. Im not gonna force anything on him unless he comes to me and tells me he wants to try it.
I think it’s great that you don’t eat meat, that’s a step many people refuse to take. If you have recognized the horror of the animal industry, then try to avoid udder milk as well. The dairy industry is the meat industry, they go hand in hand. Dairy cows are sold as food for humans and animals after they are no longer profitable, after just a few years. Don’t force a life of misery on dairy cows.
Don’t downvote this guy, he is right.
Don’t downvote this guy who says that guy’s right, they’re right.
Don’t downvote this guy either.
if the cat enjoys the vegan food and it is nutritious then there is really not an issue.
obviously you can’t stop a cat killing things.
This guy has done studies into the very thing:
You left your SI in the link
Thanks. first I have ever heard of that. changed it. not sure why.
You NEVER fucking learn do you?
cats CANNOT survive on a vegan diet, they will go blind and die years earlier.
So fucking tired of wikipedia scholars liking some fucking rando on youtube to justify their ideological animal abuse.
wait, are you suggesting the learned professor in the video above is a Wikipedia scholar?
One meow for meat, two for vegan
Often people watch something like Dominion, get shocked, and decide to go vegan. It’s a purely emotional decision. Don’t expect any rational choices here.
When I made the change, I found that there are three major points that tip people to go vegan. They are: sustainability, health, and morality. And really the former two points boil down to the third if you think of it.
Eating animal products is terrible for the habitat which we call Planet Earth. Cows are one of the leading contributors of methane to the atmosphere, a gas that is 30-90 times more potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. The IPCC is just now, as in the past few years, turning the corner on getting a handle on how to model CH4 as well as its contributing factors to global warming. Then you have to consider the other aspects of animal agriculture like resource demand and waste. Animal agriculture uses a disproportionate amount of water, not only for keeping the animals alive but also for growing the crops to feed the animals. Many times vegans actually raise the point that all the water we use to grow the soy and alfalfa for cows could be diverted to growing crops directly for human consumption. It’s much less water intensive to do so, and we know that some areas of the world are already experiencing climate change in the form of less snow pact accumulating on mountains, countributing to less snow melt and less river water from which we draw for animal agriculture and lots of other uses. If we want to truly grapple with our changing climate, we really ought to change our behaviors about how we use Earth’s natural resources. Ok, what about waste. I’ll talk about this in two ways. First, since more plant agriculture is dedicated to animal consumption and raising than for human consumption, there is a disproportionate amount of fertilizers and pesticides used on that portion of crops. And for farmers, one of the cheapest and most convenient ways to fertilize/innoculate their crops is to be super inefficient in using way more chemicals than what they need to to get the job done. These chemicals don’t holdfast in the soils (since our agricultural practices are also diminishing that too), so they wash off into canals, rivers, and eventually the ocean and aggregate just enough to accelerate local algal growths and deplete oxygen in the sea. This leads to dead zones where aquatic wildlife can’t breath and end up dying. Ok, that’s one aspect of waste. The other essentially follows the same casual relation, where manure if not captured by farmers drains off into waterways, carrying the same chemicals as were applied to the crops initially. Then you have other instances where farmers will manage animal waste and pump it into open pits where innate bacteria will try to reduce the toxicity of that substance over time. The other effect of these open pits is the stench they can originate and send for miles on end. Humans who live in areas nearby these farms have incredible distaste as they feel their quality of life, their clean air is polluted. Then we have to talk about animal agriculture and land use in general. Animal agriculture represents the largest biome on the entire planet. We as humans have domesticated the planet such that wild habitats are the minority today. There is less of the wild today than there has ever been in the history of the human species. These shrinking wild lands means that wild animals have less land to roam and exist in, leading to overcrowding, higher rates of disease contraction, higher rates of competition, and in general extinction. Many scientists attribute parts of the current extinction we’re experiencing, the Sixth Great Extinction, to the habitat lost to animal agriculture. A lot of essential, environmental services that ecosystems provide to help make this planet livable for humans are deteriorating, and who knows if and when we’ll reach tipping points that we can’t return from. Land use can also affect global weather patterns. The Amazon rainforest is one of the largest, single biomes on the planet, and much of it has been deforested to make way for animal agriculture. That rainforest contributes to global geography and meteorology as a sink for tropical storms from the Sahara desert. If the Amazon fundamentally becomes a different biome, then its function may destabilize weather patterns that might make weather worse for other areas in the same region. I haven’t even scratched the surface of environmental effects here.
Ok, then we turn to health. Consuming some animal products contributes to a greater chance of developing cancer, as the WHO classifies red meat for instance as a carcinogen. Another prominent disease that can develop on an animal/carnist diet is cardiovascular disease. People have heart attacks younger and younger as a result of this, which might be a contributing factor to countries like the US experiencing lifetimes decreasing as opposed to lifetimes increasing in other countries around the world. Let’s talk about the contamination issue. Animal products like milk, cheese, and meat all tend to be recalled more than plant products because of the associated risk of disease within the products themselves. And when plant products are recalled, it’s likely because there was cross contamination from animal products somewhere along the supply chain. Animal products also introduce more cholesterol to the human body than plant products. Cholesterol is one of the leading factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease, like I mentioned before, but in this sense animal products promote Low Density Lipoprotein (LDLs) production as opposed to High Density Lipoproteins (HDLs) in the blood. When you have more of the former and less of the latter, less cholesterol is swept up from the blood stream and taken to cells, meaning more free cholesterol floats in your veins. This free cholesterol is what contributes to plaques and blockages. There are more heavy metals concentrated in animal products too. It is often thought of by biologists that the more you ascend the food chain/web, the more heavy metals like mercury and lead build up. The is especially true with fish. So, if you eat animal products, there is a greater chance you introduce these poisons to your body that your body has to work harder to filter out and remove. People often say that vegans don’t get enough nutrients on their diet compared to omnivores/carnists. B12 is really the only nutrient that’s an issue there, with all other vitamins being supplied in abundance on a whole foods diet. Many omnivores/carnists are actually deficient in vitamins and minerals themselves, like in magnesium, zinc, and K2. A lack of magnesium, for instance, can lead to detrimental impacts on the brain over time (just as B12, mind you). Those are readily available from plant foods, but not so in animal foods. A lot of people suffer from allergies that develop from consuming animal products, and plant foods offer that escape to have good food without the downsides.
Lastly, we have morality. Animal agriculture existing is a form of genocide and oppression on a specific group for no other reason than to extract their resources for human pleasure/gain. This is no different than how humans treat other humans, especially so in the 3rd world. If anyone in this comments section believes in the emancipation of the Palestinian people, for instance, or of the countless others forced as slaves in the fishing industry (an added bonus against animal agriculture), sex work industry, agriculture, textiles, mining, etc., then your argument must also apply to animals. Humans are biologically capable of surviving and thriving on whole food plant based diets, and our choice to continue our damnation of animals is immoral and unethical. The leading practice for meat processors to turn live, emotion, morally worthy beings like cows, pigs, and sheep into commodity products is by first using gas chambers on them to asphyxiate and kill. The last time humans used gas chambers on other humans was during WWII when the Nazis mass slaughtered people of a common creed: the Jewish people. Nazis were and still are considered the absolute worst moral offenders in the entire history of the human species. The fact that we’ve continued their practices, this time only applying them to a group that has no voice to speak out against or warn others about is cruel, unusual, reprehensible, and condemnable. If you support animal agriculture today, you support Nazism. If you don’t, think about changing the foods you buy at the supermarket and order at the restaurant. And yes, animals have no voice. We slaughter them for consumption without their consent. We have them as pets without their consent. We take them away from their natural habitats, and use them as emotional support devices without considering what impacts doing so has on THEIR wellbeing. Humans breed animals like this so others might adopt them as pets later for profit, without considering how that impacts the animals themselves. Mothers and children are separated, often at birth, and fanned off to pet owners before those crucial, biological, sociological, psychological bonds develop between offspring and parent. This happens too when calves and piglets and chicks are separated from their mothers, causing distress for both individuals that can emotionally scar them for life. Again, if you were against what Donald Trump during his presidency did to Hispanic families trying to cross the southern border of the US, with border agents ripping children away from their mothers and fathers with no prospects of the two ever returning, then you MUST be against the same actions that happen to animals. Again, animals can’t communicate as effectively to us what they’re feeling or going through, so it’s even worse for them, and we have an even greater obligation to stop and do something about it. Animal agriculture also involves rape. Farmers often have to artificially impregnate cows such that they’ll produce calves, and the more coveted item, milk. I could go on and on and on but I’m out of text.
If you support animal agriculture today, you support Nazism.
this bombastic pigeon-holing is laughable. there are plenty of anti-fascist people who eat meat and dairy.
Again, if you were against what Donald Trump during his presidency did to Hispanic families trying to cross the southern border of the US, with border agents ripping children away from their mothers and fathers with no prospects of the two ever returning, then you MUST be against the same actions that happen to animals.
why?
Animal agriculture also involves rape. Farmers often have to artificially impregnate cows such that they’ll produce calves,
this isn’t rape. it’s a veterinary procedure.
. First, since more plant agriculture is dedicated to animal consumption and raising than for human consumption, there is a disproportionate amount of fertilizers and pesticides used on that portion of crops
this is simply untrue. globally, about 2/3 of all our crop calories go to humans, and, by and large, what is fed to livestock are parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat.
Eating animal products is terrible for the habitat which we call Planet Earth
eating animal products has no impact at all. the problems that exist arise during production.
Eating animals does have impact. It has impact on your body and the animal.
Eating animals does have impact. It has impact on your body and the animal.
the animal is already dead, and i dont’ see the case that the effects or my own body of me eating food is really a detriment to the environment.
We slaughter them for consumption without their consent
it’s absurd do discuss consent from something that cannot be informed. do you get consent from a door before you jam your keys in its holes? do you get consent before you put your whole body through it?
Animal agriculture uses a disproportionate amount of water, not only for keeping the animals alive but also for growing the crops to feed the animals.
water isn’t destroyed by being used for animals to eat or drink. even if it were (which makes no sense and, again, is not true), using water to make food is a good use for water. additionally, myopically focusing on any single metric really harms our understanding of the system as a whole. for instance, cows are fed cottonseed, but cotton isn’t grown for cottonseed: it’s a waste product. why should the crop weight of cottonseed be calculated as a portion of the water use of cows, when that’s a conservation of resources? it shouldn’t. this metric is a red herring.
Using water to make food is a good use so long as it doesn’t led to waste on the part of us humans throwing that food out. This is a larger issue than just animal agriculture, but animal products have larger water footprints and consequently make up a higher proportion of that waste.
Also, water isn’t destroyed, but it’s extracted and shipped to other parts of the planet. This virtually eliminates the water present in the origin biome. Again, this issue cuts across animal and plant agriculture, but animal products have a higher water footprint and make up a higher proportion of that water displacement.
I think my original comment points to a greater understanding of the system wholistically than any of your one-off comments have. If you want to convince the viewer of this point, do my comment but better.
Cottonseed isn’t the only feedstock for animal agriculture. Soy, grain, and corn are all others. The fact that cottonseed is utilized doesn’t negate the utilization of other crops farmed specifically for animal agriculture, and not as a byproduct of another industry. That byproduct could be used for other purposes, including continuation of cotton farmers’ own biostock for future plantings. But of course most cotton grown around the world is genetically modified to withstand fungicides, and these fungicides don’t just wash off. Many people have allergic reactions to cotton depending on how it’s grown and where it’s sourced. Imagine now that that cottonseed is going into your food supply, where it doesn’t go away.
I think that the circular economy is a virtue and we as a species should aim for it, but you pointing to cottonseed metrics ignores the larger variables associated with soy, corn, grain, and alfalfa. Those crops are all grown directly, not indirectly in the case of cottonseed, for animal agriculture, and do not offset the savings you get from using a byproduct.
Cows are one of the leading contributors of methane to the atmosphere, a gas that is 30-90 times more potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
all of agriculture, including cows, is only about 20% of our ghg emissions. you are using vague and scary language to mislead.
Most agriculture is pursued for feedstock for the animal agriculture industry. This is true all across the planet. Also, CO2 != CH4.
Most agriculture is pursued for feedstock for the animal agriculture industry.
kindly, cite a source.
when plant products are recalled, it’s likely because there was cross contamination from animal products somewhere along the supply chain
broccoli or lettuce covered in e. coli is not due to cross contamination with animal products, it’s due to inhumane working conditions or simply bad farming practices. you’re really stretching on this one
Animal agriculture existing is a form of genocide
it’s not genocide: we don’t want to wipe out cows.
Many times vegans actually raise the point that all the water we use to grow the soy
the vast majority of the global soy crop (about 85%) is pressed for soybean oil for human use. the waste product from that process is called soy cake, and if it were not fed to livestock, it would simply be industrial waste. feeding soy to livestock is a conservation of resources.
https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Global-soy-production-to-end-use.png
If anyone in this comments section believes in the emancipation of the Palestinian people, for instance, or of the countless others forced as slaves in the fishing industry (an added bonus against animal agriculture), sex work industry, agriculture, textiles, mining, etc., then your argument must also apply to animals.
no, it doesn’t.
Humans are biologically capable of surviving and thriving on whole food plant based diets, and our choice to continue our damnation of animals is immoral and unethical.
this might be true for some people, but i think you will find that most people will say they need meat or dairy or eggs.
The last time humans used gas chambers on other humans was during WWII when the Nazis mass slaughtered people of a common creed: the Jewish people
and it was wrong precisely because it treated humans like animals. treating animals like animals is not wrong.
Ummm. It’s pretty rational to go vegan/vegetarian. Humans can be healthy and we are capable to decide for ourselves. Cats on the other hand…
What’s the rationality behind this?
Industrialised meat is a nightmare…?
How’s this rational? That’s an emotional evaluation. I’m not even arguing with that. But that’s not the point of the discussion.
Maybe “nightmare” is too subjective/emotional. But it’s undeniably unsustainable, inhumane, barbaric and outdated. We know better is the biggest issue. We don’t need to treat our food that way.
(P.S. I’m not vegan, I’m just full of cognitive dissonance lol)
Hell yeah! Nobody should force their choices on any living animal. It’s very bad for a cat to force it on a vegan diet, and it’s very bad for a fish to force it to be cat food. Obviously the cat should only eat lab meat.
It’s a microcosm for science denial or misunderstanding of all kinds. Vegan cats and antivax may not seem related but the underlying misinformation is not dissimilar.
I tried following up on the vegan cat research being posted and it was very difficult to get a solid answer. There are multiple brands of vegan cat food marketed and sold, and it isn’t outrageous to believe that our industrial society could find an ethical way to source the necessary nutrients and enrich the cat food.
But also there’s very few studies that test the claims of the vegan cat food. What few meta-analysis exist, and anecdotes online, would suggest that all those foods lack certain critical nutrients for long-term feline health. But the anecdotes are drowned out by well-intentioned people who want to believe it works, and the studies are small, rare, hard to read, and locked behind paywalls.
Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).
EDIT: I want to add I’m very much pro-vegan. They’re literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won’t see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.
It’s like being a non-smoker on a party where everybody smokes. Almost nobody wants to hear that they’re doing something wrong. Toxicity is literally in the non-vegan community, warming up the climate and all, decreasing biodiversity, mistreating and killing animals for pleasure.
Why not just agree and say “hey yeah, great lifestyle”?
This is everyone’s gripe from the outside. You do you, live a healthy life. Make a good case and many of us will even agree with you: it’s an admittedly healthier pick and better for the earth. But for some reason we can’t stop there, can we?
You can’t say, hey I don’t smoke, it’s not good for you, here’s a source. And then I say “Hey thanks!”. Instead, if you want to be on team vegan, we have to all agree that cigarettes are not just bad for the atmosphere and for lung health, but ALSO that smoking is innately capitalist and supports a corrupt economic structure, it’s mean to tobacco leaves, marijuana and tobacco are the same and have equal rights, using hemp is morally outrageous (just as bad as hurting tobacco leaves), and now we have to call all smokers “smokists” as if to imply that the only thing they ever breathe is smoke, that way we can really show our distaste.
There would be so many more vegans and vegetarians if the communities could just take the win of the lifestyle without requiring the morality and politics at the gate. It’s telling to me that the vegan communities that vegans like the most are on hexbear (defederated by everyone for their assholery) and vegan theory club where the mod/instance admin has a ton of comments signed “death to america” and basically requires political adherence in the comment section lest your comment be deleted.
Well, it is still affecting my planet, and that of my children and future grandchildren. So no, I will not leave it be, thank you. Also, somebody needs to step up for animals who cannot defend themselves. Therefore it is not over with ‘you do you’, it stretches further than that.
Of course, there’s no shortage of battles to fight. What I’m saying is take those battles to their own battleground. Climate change? Sure let’s get after it. Animal rights? Also yes, no reason for unnecessary cruelty whether you eat them or not. But if I agree to eat less meat for any reason, even if it’s the wrong reason or an incomplete reason, you WON that battle. Same if I decide I won’t drink milk, but I still want to eat fish. Or if I decide I’m not going to wear clothing made from animal products. Just take the W and keep the possibility of future conversation. You get literally nothing by saying “Aha, you agree with me, but not absolutely / for the wrong reasons, you fucking carnist” except whatever warm fuzzies it brings you. You can’t one-shot win the war with most people, so why poison the water for some narcissistic dopamine hit and prevent earnest discussion in the future?
As a vegan, can confirm.
When I was on reddit, I could not be part of the r/vegan community, it was fucked.
The community here on Lemmy was better (though I wasn’t subbed because these communities are mostly newcomers to the vegan scene coming fresh off the high of being morally superior to the carnists).
The good vegan communities were the ones focused on recipes.
If you want to discus animal liberation, good, go do that, but I don’t want to my feed to be a combination of dinner and animal abuse. I’m trying to move past that…
What is your best breakfast recipe that isn’t oatmeal?
The texture horrifies me, but it seems to be the go-to these days.
I like peanut butter toasts, but my son is allergic to peanuts and coming to that age where he touches everything. So I need to find alternatives.
I highly recommend scrambled tofu.
By the name, I assume that it is similar to scrambled eggs, but with tofu?
I’ll look into that. Thanks
I hate that Vegans are defined by the psychopath edge cases.
I know 3 vegans. Two of them have cats. They aren’t delusional. They know cats are carnivores. They wish people ate more veggies. But live your life, you know?
The other vegan I know choose veganism because of serious life-threatening issues where meat was causing hospital visits. She went cold turkey and will watch you eat a steak and wishing she could do the same.
It’s fucking weird watching people shit on them. All because a psychopath on the internet speaks for all vegans and shoves broccoli into a cats mouth.
I’m not judging vegans. I’m judging vegan communities. Big difference.
I just want to ask for more details on the “they’re litterally right” part. Mostly cause I didn’t think the had an official organized statement to be right about. But I don’t really follow them, so maybe I’m missing something.
Veganism is, in fact:
A. Far more sustainable.
B. Perfectly healthy.
C. Completely possible to adapt to.
Veganism, without a doubt, would be better for the planet, and probably better for humans. I simply don’t like the communities.
Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I’m not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed… I had to block their communities. It didn’t seem likely that I’d be reading any productive discourse there.
Between them and Linux evangelicals, this place can be pretty annoying at times.
Spoken like a meat eating windows user
Do you think that’s an insult?
Oh you must also be a reddit uaer… Here you go: /s
Lol pretty sure /s has been around LONG before Reddit
I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn’t talk to anyone about it other than to say, “I don’t eat that.”
I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still ‘more vegan’ and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.
I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.
"Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
I’m a level 5 vegan. I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
As you might have experienced, it’s pretty hard to be vegan in a carnist world. People talk about animal abuse all the time, they confront you all the time, make fun of you. Most don’t want to talk about it, they want to shut you up. The hate and ignorance is strong and different people react diffrently to that situation. Some stay quiet, like yourself, some get vocal. Some debate, some get angry. Calling vegans insufferable is like calling gays insufferable, or feminists. Some might be. We have recognized a major injustice and we want to change it.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
That’s rage bait and you made it up. Why would anyone say that?
he is confused with figs. which are pollinated by wasps. and some vegans choose to eat them and some don’t. it’s really not that controversial.
Hey bud you really need to get off the cross. You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it or being born/transitioning to a woman and wanting the same basic human rights as the other half of our species. Honestly you need to just shut up and think about that for a hot second.
I oppose racism, sexism, trans- and homophobia. And I oppose speciesism as well. It’s the same system: One group considers another group as less valuable and exploits, abuses or fights them.
You just draw the line at you own species.
Animals are innocent, vulnerable and easy to abuse because they don’t have a voice and don’t understand the situation we put them in. If they were human children or mentally disabled humans, we would protect them from harm because of who they are. Instead, we do the most horrible things to them, we take their freedom, their babies, their lifes. In factories, on an industrial scale. Because a pig is just a pig, right?EDIT: Please reply, don’t just silently downvote. What’s your refutation?
What are you talking about? Don’t you also draw a line when you choose to eat plants? I don’t think they would agree to that. Untill humans develop the ability to photosynthesize, we are going to have to eat other species, there’s no way around it.
PLANTS HAVE FEELINGS TOO
is #22 on the Vegan Bullshit Bingo:No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…
You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it
All the animals on factory farms didn’t choose to be born there and don’t want to be killed either.
It’s not about the sensitivities of humans, but the insane suffering of animals in this system of oppression.
If all yall got off the crosses we could donate all the wood and nails to Habitat for Humanity.
Just goes to show how little you care about others suffering. Social justice for me but not for others (those who I consider interior).
Exactly my experience. I often heard stories of vegans being like that, but I never ever saw it so I thought it was just made up to belittle vegans.
Then I joined lemmy and found out that I’m apparently in favour of massacres, slavery and rape because I consume meat/milk/eggs from time to time.
I imagine the vast majority of vegans just go about their lives and resprectfully discuss the ethics of animal consumption when the topic comes up, but these loud militant members really make vegans look bad and they sure as hell make it so that even less people consider going vegan
I’m curious. You eat meat, but you’re not in favour of massacres. Alright, explain it to me.
I’m not in favor of it, but I’m not going to stop eating meat. The second lab grown meat is available to people in my economic tier I’ll switch exclusively to that.
I’m really hoping that lab grown meat will be available soon. I have a weird genetic issue where my body doesn’t like to absorb certain vitamins from food so I get basically nothing from raw veggies, negligible amounts from cooked veggies, and a tiny bit more from meat, eggs and dairy.
I take prescription vitamins, but according to my Dr I need to eat meat/animal products with them or risk going into a deficiency again… the last time I was deficient I had seizures and serious neurological issues.
I hate the meat industry and factory farming, but also want my brain to function and to not have seizures.
Lab grown meat will solve this dilemma for me.
I also have severe malabsorption and can’t process most veg at all. I have been told hundreds of times that I am lying, and that I don’t need to eat meat. To some of these people it is better for us to suffer than to eat meat, while they claim to subscribe to a philosophy of reducing suffering.
Yeah, it’s frustrating to say the least.
If I went vegan I’d probably suffer a very slow, agonizing death from my brain going haywire and seize until I go into psychosis and die. If my body could take it I’d probably be a vegetarian and eat only local eggs and cheese, but it’s a bad idea according to my doctor. It sucks.
Dam, man, that sucks. Hey, quick question, if they made lab grown human meat, would you try it?
Grown from my own cells? Fuck yes.
What about someone else’s? My body sucks I don’t want to eat any part of it
Ah, so you’re saying you don’t like it, but you find it an acceptable sacrifice to make in exchange for yummy food?
100% yes. I am fully aware that being vegan is, in my opinion, the more ethical option but I can and will continue to eat meat because 1 it’s cheap, it’s plentiful, I know how to and can cook with it well and because yes it tastes so fucking good. I don’t mean this as a 3edgy5me thing but fuck me I love a nice ribeye stake with butter and garlic cloves and a baked potato.
Okay, but you have to know about plant-based steaks and vegan butter. And of course you know about vegan garlic and vegan potato, because all garlic and potato is vegan. What’s the extra cost of a vegan steak compared to an animal steak in your area? In mine it’s around 3 dollars.
In 5+ decades of living I have never once met a sane vegan, not once.
And I’ve met hundreds…
Calling a group of people insane is so cool and good 👍🏻
I’m not vegan. But I find it very shady to talk shit about people like this.
Some seeming innocent ideals breed significantly more fanaticism across all class and culture lines, we should all have learned that by now.
I have met 1 and married her. But yo be fair she is just vegetarian whi developed a dairy allergy knocking out the non veg part of her diet
Makes a dumb good steak too
I have to admit, diet restriction vegans (and not the ones that just think meat is icky and can get a doctor to sign off on it) do not fall into the general stereotype but then only one of them ever had a chance to speak to me and she would sneak chicken occasionally so I don’t really consider her vegan as such. Also she was a work associate and I normally never bring up the subject in the office.
There may be reasonable vegans out there, and I have actively sought them on forums and IRL through school clubs and protests. I have never IRL raised my voice, never used a derogatory label harsher than ‘leafeater’ and that only once. Yet I am so ridiculously burned out by the arguments and harsh words I’ve endured that I’m done holding any hope out any longer.
I call those ideolgical vegans and yes they drive me nuts too
You sound like what I like to call a “debatist.” No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices. You don’t seem to be approaching this concept with an open mind. Can you define what makes anything they say unreasonable? I am not vegan, but I can recognize, definitively, that veganism is better for the environment (by far), healthy (if you make sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need, just like any diet), and less cruel to animals. You can choose to disagree that those conclusions mean you need to cut out animal products, but those aren’t opinions up for debate. Farming meat is far worse for the environment, vegan diets are perfectly healthy, and obviously, killing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
Again, you can disagree with their conclusion that those reasons mean you shouldn’t eat animal products, but denying that they’re true is like denying climate change. I’m not vegan, so clearly I didn’t come to the same conclusion, but I’m not trying to purport that anyone that does is somehow unreasonable.
No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices.
Yet that is what every vegan does to carnists, in many cases very viciously. I am NOT going up to vegans and telling them to stop being vegan, nor am I judging them for their dietary choices. I ask them questions like ‘What would be your plans for all the current living domesticated animals in the hypothetical situation where eating meat is outlawed?’ and they flip their shit on a regular basis. I go out of my way to present everything I ask as neutral as possible but all my effort has never once mattered.
illing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
I think you are attributing human qualities to nonhuman consciousnesses. There’s a lot of evidence that the concept of death doesn’t even exist in most animal minds, as well as the fact that animals in the wild suffer FAR more disease, discomfort, illness and death than domesticated and cared for livestock.
“debatist”
That isn’t even a real word… I’m sorry I can’t take you seriously anymore.
Vegans being annoying was a thing awhile ago, but they really chilled out. This is a smaller band of die-hards.
“Chilling out” is of course a terrible metric when animal abuse is on the line but being good to animals would make you vegetarian, not vegan, and yet that was never where the righteousness was coming from.
Most of y’all need to calm the fuck down.
Vegan cat food has been a thing for a minute
It would be much bigger news if vegans were killing their cats in mass in pursuit of a vegan diet. But it seems most of you are blinded by rage of otherizing people then wanting to have a discussion.
Now bring on the down votes because most of you ornery ones think just because it’s sold on Amazon doesn’t mean it healthy for cat or some shit idk. It looks like Benevo gets 200 orders a month those cats really sound like their starving.
Lemmy.world really is reddit huh?
Don’t… feed cats food they’re not evolved to survive off of. It’s not a hard concept.
deleted by creator
Cats find kibble naturally in their wild environment.
Did you know kibble is harder then the bones cats would generally eat from birds and other small prey?
You ever wonder why humans have to cook their meat?
Why? I mean I know, I just want to hear your explanation.
This post is honestly an excuse for anti-vegan bashing. Even if some vegan mods have bad takes for cat nutrition it shouldn’t excuse the hate circle jerk on display here .
Remember to always be sceptical towards presentations that try to make you angry like this.
This post is honestly an excuse for anti-vegan bashing. Even if some vegan mods have bad takes for cat nutrition it shouldn’t excuse the hate circle jerk on display here .
As anyone reading the comment section would see, there’s far from a ‘hate circle jerk’ on display here.
Remember to always be sceptical towards presentations that try to make you angry like this.
And remember to always be skeptical towards presentations that insinuate that justified anger towards harmful conduct is an overreaction, and you really just need to chill and sit back and let it happen.
Perhaps one should also be skeptical towards presentations that attempt to dismiss criticism as ‘bashing’ and irrational regardless of the context or actual content of the criticisms.
“we taught a lion to eat tofu!”
*coughs weakly
Absolutely, first he lumps dogs and cats together, they have extremely different dietary needs.
Second, I couldn’t find anything specific to cats dietary needs being met by a vegan diet. The video’s sources seem to be based on self reporting surveys. Not science.
Just so you’re aware, you didn’t reply to any comment
People started arguing about whether cats can eat vegan, mods on c!vegan got involved, then an admin got involved. People’s personal feelings about veganism overtook any actual discussion about when it is or isn’t inappropriate for Admins/mods to step in, hence the pinned post on the front page.
Wow. I didn’t miss much… Is this the first drama of this kind?
I think so but only because I think most people didnt think discussing possible healthy vegan diets for pets was a taboo subject.
To be fair though lemmy.world wasnt ever supposed to be some respected scientific resource, its a discussion board.
Ultimately its up to the admin to set their rules, but in my opinion they reacted immaturely, and I think it shows somewhat of an ego problem.
Some vegans decide all cats, like all other animals, should join their club, whether they want to or not. Deemed dubious practice by some but not impossible by others.
Admin loses mind, power trips.
You’re caught up.
We already feed cats what we want them to eat, you realize this, right?
Go look what’s in canned cat food and tell me which of it a cat would be eating if it was a wild cat. You’d have to generalize pretty hard and still all you’d be able to say is “they both would be eating meat”.
This whole issue is about whether its dangerous to have that discussion on a discussion board specifically for that topic.
Its very telling that I can have this discussion in my veterinarians office with the staff there and have a markedly different experience than the average person here accusing vegans of harming cats.
I have lots of friends that are vegan/have been vegan, or are sympathetic to the cause. IRL I have had some wonderful conversations about veganism and the ethics of our diet. But on the Internet it’s the vegans ironically that need to get out and touch grass. It’s like there’s no nuance to any conversation, like sorry I can be Peter Singer, it’s actually kinda difficult to be that moral.
But on the Internet it’s the vegans ironically that need to get out and touch grass.
I keep hearing about these crazy vegans from other folks complaining on the internet. I never actually get to meet them in the wild.
But if I flip over to YouTube Recommended Feed I can find Liver King tier content all the fuck over the front page. Definitely try to steer clear of anything “Recommended” these days, but if I had my ear-holes getting saturated with JBP / Joe Rogan Carnivore Diet insanity 24/7, that might wear down my ability to have a polite conversation.
Maybe that’s what other people are seeing out on the YT comments sections?
Here on Lemmy I’ve been accused of torturing and raping animals as I’m unashamedly an omnivore. I’m a hunter as well.
I worry about animal suffering enough that we’ve bought a small farm and hope to raise all our own meat. I’ve actually worked on factory farms and know firsthand the suffering of animals under that system.
However, there are fanatical vegans on Lemmy that do a fantastic job of driving away those of us sympathetic to vegan ethics and morality.
Here on Lemmy I’ve been accused of torturing and raping animals as I’m unashamedly an omnivore
I’m sorry to hear that. Online discourse does get extremely personal, particularly when people don’t know each other.
I’ve actually worked on factory farms and know firsthand the suffering of animals under that system
Well then… not to be rude but that means you’ve literally been complicit in torturing and raping animals.
There it is.
So, as an ignorant teenager, cleaning chicken houses of rotten corpses and chicken shit for $5/hr: I was actually fucking those chickens? I was kid chicken raper? The steers I raised in elementary school, I suppose I fucked them as well.
See, that’s the thing. I saw how bad it was and have worked and saved for many years so I will no longer have to participate in a system that involves industrial suffering.
But nope, I’m totally such a raper. Fuck you and your sanctimonious bullshit. You don’t know me or my circumstances. I know plenty of Southern Baptists and Church of Christ that spew this same shit. Y’all would get along real well, if you only listened to your tones and didn’t pay attention to the words.
Fucking fanatics can suck my fucking balls, all y’all the same.
So, as an ignorant teenager, cleaning chicken houses of rotten corpses and chicken shit for $5/hr: I was actually fucking those chickens? I was kid chicken raper?
I would like to think “I saw the horrors and really learned something” would be the appropriate response, not “I saw the horrors, so now I’m immune to criticism for eating meat.”
But I do begin to see why vegans upset you so much.
If you’re trying to make a point for there not being as many “crazy vegans” on the internet, well, you’re fucking it up.
I don’t eat factory farmed meat so I am not interested in your stupid shit
The zigging and zagging in your story reads like a Just So Ben Shapiro piece.
Next, I’m expecting to hear how you’ve got a condition that makes it ableist to mention veganism in front of you.
Here on Lemmy I’ve been accused of torturing and raping animals
I’ve actually worked on factory farms
Depending on what all you did to the animals at those factory farms, you might have been torturing and raping animals. I did horseback riding for like 7 years of my life. I don’t deny I was an animal abuser. The only thing I can do about it now is never get on a horses back again. Denying I was ever doing abuse won’t help me.
RAPE! RAPE! MURDER!!!1!
This bullshit doesn’t help your cause at all. I’m the rare omnivore that is actually sympathetic to moral issues of factory farmig and animal suffering.
You need to like unfuck your head and try to turn down whatever preaching you’re listening to. That’s some bad religion that’s got ahold of you.
You’re no different than those ‘pro-life’ whack jobs.
This topic touches a very soft spot in my heart as I’ve had to watch a cat die from being forced on a vegan diet. I’ve seen the results, and it is so very sad. Keep your goddamn morals out of other’s lives. Especially an animal that has no say in the matter. Fuck vegans.
Whoah whoah whoah. Let’s chill with the general fuck vegans statement. Most vegans are just people. Now the psycho vegans who try to make their cats eat vegan. Fuck those people. But broad statements like “fuck this group” tend to stick in people’s heads and promote undeserved hate. “Fuck the Nazi’s”? Yeah. “Fuck Germans”? No.
Then “most vegans” need to tell those vegans to shut the fuck up. Just like the Germans did the Nazis.
I’m stuck with a memory I can never get rid of because some piece of shit decided to do that to this poor animal. It couldn’t even hold it’s head up because it was infected so bad and didn’t even have to the energy to live. I got to sit there and watch it’s life slip from it’s body and there was nothing I could do. It was withered to bones.
They never saw jail time or even punished in the slightest amount.
So don’t come in here telling me to play nice.
Fuck.
Vegans.
If a sick cat upsets you so much, then watch out when you learn about the incredible suffering, misery and billions of deaths caused by the global animal industry. I’m vegan because I watched the videos most “animal lovers” refuse to look at. Unspeakable horror, 24/7.
^ THIS FUCKING THIS
So many vegans claim to not understand why literally the entire world hates them, but then they constantly post whataboutism bullshit like this.
How is this whataboutism? We’re talking about animal rights. A sick cat and a billion suffering mammals are the same topic, no?
You know nothing of animal suffering at the hands of humans. “I watched a video once and it made me sad!” Call your local animal control and ask to go for a ride along. Only then will you understand what suffering really is.
I’ve seen the videos, multiple times, and I only wish some of the animals I’ve seen were given such a quick suffer free ending.
So animals living a happy life without humans making them suffer is good? We both want that, right?
So… you had one experience and now you associate that with all people you think are the same?
I dunno, seems a bit extreme.
I’m am only speaking of the worst instance of things I’ve seen. I’ve been working with/around animals all my life.
Dog breeders, dog fighters, people that get too many cats (or any animal in general) that they can’t take care of, horses that have been whipped so much their entire bodies are covered in scars, and many of the other horrid things I’ve seen. Seeing the look on that cat’s face hurt me more than anything I’ve ever experienced. He wanted to live, but couldn’t because he was too weak at that point to fight. If he had been found a week earlier, he could have been saved.
But you dumb fucks always think you’re in the right because of your “morally superior stance” on all thing animals. Pushing your shit ideals on other creatures because you think you’re right even though science will say over and over again that it isn’t possible for a cat to survive properly on a vegan diet.
Keep denying science all you want, but do it at your own cost, no one else’s.
I have had literally hundreds of irl and thousands of online interactions with vegans, every experience was horrible and toxic no matter how conciliatory I approach the discussion.
So, fuck vegans
Every fucking one of them
You, conciliatory? I find that tough to believe. Are you sure you weren’t yelling and screaming or otherwise hurling insults at them as you seem to be so fond of doing?
The me you see now is bitter and disillusioned after 3+ decades of slowly degrading wide eyed optimism.
It was a death by a thousand sneers and slogans, protests and coups and misplaced ideals.
So I pretty much hate everyone now but this wasn’t always the case, and in the course of my life the degree of bitterness I feel towards nearly every living human has barely been around 5 years. I’m also not sure this is the most misanthropic I will become and people like you test that limit with such blithe abandon.
If I had to make a list that reflects my current spectrum of severe dislike:
- Fascists. Fuck fascists with every fiber of my being and hypothetical non-physical extension of my consciousness in whatever ether it originates in.
B) Vegans. Fuck vegans, seriously. III) Nearly every other human that has ever existed.
The people I do not harbor some degree of hate could fill a small college auditorium and I can guarantee there is no one on this site that is in that group at the moment.
I engaged in sincere and respectful conversation with every vegan I could find at my university, and whenever I began to ask sincere questions, they ALWAYS responded with derogatory labels and for YEARS I did not and just figured I hadn’t found the right vegan to ask and kept trying.
When you go to a stone lined well and get poisoned water for 30 years maybe it’s time to not go to any more stone lined wells, understand?
- Fascists. Fuck fascists with every fiber of my being and hypothetical non-physical extension of my consciousness in whatever ether it originates in.
Let’s try to sow unity instead of division.
I’ve gone vegan before. Mostly because I think animals are gross and carry disease as opposed to doing it for ethical reasons. I also love steak and feed my snakes mice. Everyone is different. Stupid people will be stupid and people without empathy will be cruel. I grew up in a rough neighborhood where I knew of not one but two different men who beat their dogs and one, I believe, to death. Neither vegan as far as I know. Ostracizing a certain group will only make them band together more strongly. Empirically speaking. I know personal experience can make a ton of self-righteous hate. I can’t speak to what you’ve seen. But the majority of people in any group are just normal folk unless it’s religion or a cult. The broader the group the more normal people within it. You’re criticizing a diet choice for fucks sake. Everyone is going to have different reasons. I know a very cool person (a practicing vet in fact) that is vegan because her body can’t process fats or oils found in almost every animal product.
If you really feel for animals that this happens to you should try to make change and be involved. Educate people. Fuck, there’s no way you’d ever care to, but you could go to vegan events and educate people on why some animals cannot survive a vegan diet.
Make the problem better.
Or just keep spreading hate and exclusion and making the problem worse.
It’s not fair to assume a member of a population is guilty until they condemn/renounce the problematic members of their population. I remember there being a problem after 9/11 where some people expected individual Muslims to publicly condemn Al Qaeda or else be assumed complicit. If it wasn’t alright there, it’s not alright here.
Every. Single. Interaction. I have EVER had with vegans was a shitshow, and I’ve been doing this for decades, IRL and on the internet.
Out of 100+irl and literally thousands of online interactions, I know only one thing for sure about vegans: They are the second most obnoxious and ill-informed self-identifying group of people I have ever met, and since the first is LITERAL fascists, that’s saying something.
Don’t bother arguing, you won’t like where it goes.
Wow you are angry. But I’m not easily offended and up for a debate, if you’d like.
Have any good recipes?
10+ years vegan here. You should not feed plants to a carnivore. Maybe in the future, but not today. I attended a PETA workshop about a healthy plant-based diet a couple years ago and everybody agreed on that. I met a lot of different vegans and not once have I heard this opinion.
Keep your goddamn morals out of other’s lives. Especially an animal that has no say in the matter.
You are on to something here.
Know how to tell someone is a Vegan?
They’ll tell you. Immediately, and never, ever shut up about it. Ever.
I use Arch BTW
You know how to tell someone isn’t vegan. They always make this comment. Always.
This has the same energy as people who think every queer person is either a butch lesbian or an effeminate gay guy. You can’t know unless they tell/show you, so if you don’t ask, the only people you’ll see are ‘obvious’ already.
It’s just confirmation bias.
Some of my best friends are vegan. They gladly come over to my BBQs when I’m grilling a brisket or tri-tip, and I’ll always grill extra veggies for them. They don’t always talk about being vegan and don’t shame me for eating meat. Don’t rush to assume the entire group is bad because you’ve had a few bad experiences with them.
That’s because you don’t know about those who don’t
if cats were vegan, they’ll be eating grass like the gazelles in the Serengeti.
you don’t feed lions a vegan diet just like you don’t feed giraffes a meat diet.
not that hard.
Vegans argued that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can eat a vegan diet safely. Lemmy.world admin removed the posts for being misinformation, and the vegan community threw a fit over it.
I really hate how many people are spreading disinfo for no reason here. We should be better than that.
The vegans stated very clearly that current science shows that the cat would need a fuckton of supplements and attention to be on a vegan diet but it’s functional.
The admins then overstepped and removed such comments.
I’m not going to argue the validity of any of those claims as I’m not a vegan and I don’t care to research, but the vegan mods were a lot more reasonable than they’re being painted here.
The pet sector must die, pet ownership isn’t vegan, pet breeders are the enemies;
We’re not doing “optimal nutrition”, sorry. That biohacking shit to create immortal adopted pets isn’t going to work out. It’s hardly even clear for humans what the optimal diet is, and they pretend that they know what it is for cats??? These fools don’t even comprehend that evolution doesn’t give a shit about longevity. It’s a standard imposed by the marketing agencies of pet foods who want to milk pet owner feelings to have their pets die after they do. It’s a false standard that is great for advertising, but otherwise functions as a Nirvana fallacy machine.
This is just a rephrase, but pet ownership is bourgeois. Well, aristocratic, then bourgeois. Detach. This isn’t about you, you don’t get to annex a sentient being just to keep them as an emotional service slave or as a status symbol. This one is especially for Americans where pets live better than poor people.
Uh. Hardly reasonable.
Are you just posting a random comment to me or what? What relevance does this have to the admin retaliations?
That’s one of the Vegan mods on .world expressing their views on vegan diets for cats. That’s not “The vegans stated very clearly that current science shows that the cat would need a fuckton of supplements and attention to be on a vegan diet but it’s functional.”, that’s outright “Science doesn’t know shit” lunacy.
That’s not the comment which caused this whole issue. It seems to me you’re cherry picking out of context
Alright, since “Things the mods have said” isn’t acceptable evidence for whether or not the mods are pushing ridiculous views on vegan diets for cats, and not just “The vegans stated very clearly that current science shows that the cat would need a fuckton of supplements and attention to be on a vegan diet but it’s functional”, I suppose them saying the ASPCA doesn’t know what they’re talking about, while THEIR simple ‘common sense’ allows them to understand a cat’s TRUE dietary needs is also kosher?
This whole thing comes down to aggressively anti-scientific mods pushing misinformation and removing information to the contrary and getting removed by an admin for their troubles. Or was removing the link to the ASPCA for being ‘misinformation’ also a sign of how reasonable the c/Vegan mods were?
I don’t give a single solitary fuck what happens to Rooki. Whether they were too quick to remove or too uncivil or what. But defending misinformation, or defending mods pushing misinformation as just being reasonable? That gets my dander up.
The commentary you’re pointing is way more reasonable than you make it sound. I implore people to read the context themselves and not to trust summaries with rage bait agendas here.
Stop doing the reddit thing. Making people angry at people more radical than them isn’t helping.
Yeah, that’s well and truly off the deep end. This is someone who I’d cross the road to avoid.
As a vegan who spends no time associating with other vegans, because it’s not a large part of my identity (other than watching cooking videos), these people are idiots who are getting high on being righteous.
So much so they overdosed and became animal abusers.
Quite ironic. Funny, if it weren’t causing harm.
Ask your vet what they think about a vegan diet for your pets. They will tell you “no”. That should really be the end to the discussion, but I guess these guys think they know better than actual experts.
It’s so sad, because veganism is a good force in our culture. Look at all of the vegan meat alternatives and more and more restaurants that have to have at least vegetarian options in certain areas. That wasn’t a thing 20 years ago.
Vegan diets help the environment and improve health. But many vegans get this brain rot, probably a consequence of a superiority complex where they have to police everything around them. It happens in a lot of communities.
I’m not a vegan. But the idea has me eating less and less meat every year.
The outrageous vegans make the more moderate ones look reasonable to carnists, which increases the rate of adopting veganism.
Okay, I troll the hell out of vegans online, because it’s easy and always entertaining. So, anyone coming along after this, take that into account.
But, you nailed it. There’s a subsection of vegans that treat it like a religion, and anyone else as infidels. That superiority complex, the smugness is a huge detriment to vegan living and principles.
But (and here’s why I made the disclaimer), they’re a minority overall. I know too many vegans irl that are chill, wonderful people following their beliefs and ideals without being jerks about it. Vegetarians too, though that’s tangential.
It’s really online that the asshole hats get put on the most, and usually only on sites/services that make it easy to be anonymous. Which is a good thing! Anonymous discourse is not just important, it’s vital to part of humans becoming better than what we are. But there will always be people that hide their true selves until they’re anonymous and can feel safe, and that includes people that are smug, arrogant assholes down deep. It also includes people that don’t feel safe being an outsider or dissenter, and people that are awesome down deep, but have to keep up a front irl.
Anyway my point is that we, the non vegans of the world, have to be careful to not forget the human. Vegans are mostly deeply compassionate, kind souls that want the best for anyone and everyone, including animals. We don’t have to agree with them, just remember that the loudest, most obnoxious voices aren’t the sum total of the vegan community.
I have a live and let live attitude to veganism vs carnism. No living being should be forced to be a vegan, no living being should be forced to be a carnist, and no living being should be forced to be a hamburger. Can’t we just end all the aggression and live peacefully?
I think people confuse the Political Based Vegan lifestyle and the Dietary Plant-based Vegan. They are not the same. Most people hate the political wing because they just cannot shut up. I do not want to be subjected to your religion, and you are not helping the animals you claim to. Dietary people just choose healthier options for themselves and don’t evangelize to others.
This checks the Vegan Bullshit Bingo:
Calling veganism a religion sounds like an attempt at discrediting it as unreasonable and irrational, just to not seriously deal with it. As veganism is based on facts, logic and common sense, it is the exact opposite of a religion. Consuming animal products though, mostly means blindly following irrational traditions and ignoring the facts or refusing them by reasoning: “That’s how we’ve always done it”. That sounds more like a religion to me…No one said veganism is a religion, but it IS a political standpoint and philosophical and moral practice.
Just read the first two paragraphs of wikipedia, it makes it clear.
Following a plant based diet is one thing, being a Vegan is different.
You are a carnist. That’s a political standpoint and philosophical and moral practice as well. You might not consider youself a carnist, you think you’re just normal because eating like a handfull of animals and drinking one animals mothers milk was normalised to you from birth. I was raised a carnist too. Yet it’s a decision, not a necessity. We don’t need meat and milk to survive, we choose to kill animals because we are accustumed to the taste. So we keep the system running.
Remember you’re only seeing the very online vegan.
I’ve met over a hundred vegans IRL and they are just as obnoxious and self-sanctified
Jeez that is awful! People: if you want a vegan pet, get a rabbit! They are so sweet! There are tons of them in the shelter system, especially after Easter.
I swear they’re the funniest and most affectionate four legged friends around!
Censorship of dissidence discussions due to “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and only allowing “science.”
Our science institutions and media are just as corrupt as our politicians; that is why critical thinking should be encouraged instead of more censorship to baby the people.
Liar calls scrubbing of misinformation “censorship”. In other news, bear shits in woods. More at 11.
liar
Joining in on the lemmy circle jerk of name calling those that don’t fall in line to your status quo.
Keeping predatory grifters away from health discourse is on a different level than discussions of differing opinions.
This person you’re replying to is basically Lemmy’s Goebbels.
You really like to smear people anywhere you go.
Can’t expect much from Satan, you bring shame to your name.
So slightly right of Stalin? We know how you love to name call people
I don’t understand your comment, can you explain it please?
You like to call people names. I’ve seen you around, you do it a bit more often than most.
I don’t recognize you, what communities do you frequent?
You can just check my post history, it’s public. But I mainly just go around on /all
Cats are obligate carnivores. Forcing them on a vegan diet is animal abuse
I am not disputing that claim.
I am pointing out the “science” that started the whole event.
IIRC, it was a reputable source, not just some random website talking conspiracies.
