• recklessengagement@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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        21 days ago

        "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.

      • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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        21 days ago

        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?

        • VelvetStorm@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          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.

          • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            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.

              • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
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                20 days ago

                Just goes to show how little you care about others suffering. Social justice for me but not for others (those who I consider interior).

          • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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            20 days ago

            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?

            • LaVacaMariposa@mander.xyz
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              20 days ago

              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.

              • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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                20 days ago

                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…

        • davepleasebehave@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          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.

    • AccountMaker@slrpnk.net
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      21 days ago

      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

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        21 days ago

        I’m curious. You eat meat, but you’re not in favour of massacres. Alright, explain it to me.

        • VelvetStorm@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          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.

          • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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            20 days ago

            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.

            • Bo7a@lemmy.ca
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              20 days ago

              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.

              • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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                20 days ago

                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.

  • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 days ago

    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.

    • Zozano@lemy.lol
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      20 days ago

      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…

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        20 days ago

        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.

  • blindbunny@lemmy.ml
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    20 days ago

    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?

      • Evrala@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        You can feed cats a vegan diet and have them be healthy, but it is a pain in the ass to keep the cats healthy, something that most the owners do not do. They buy the food and feed their cats without doing the tests, and their cats suffer for it

        You need to regularly test their urine ph levels about once every couple weeks in order to adjust their meals so they’re getting the right nutrients. It looks like a hassle to go through because without the tests you don’t know something is wrong until it is VERY wrong. And once you get the right food figured out for your cats, you still need to take them to the vet once a month to get their urine tested because the nutrients they need can change. And yes, if you go through all of this on average your cat may be healthier than one on a typical meat diet, but you’re still dealing with monthly visits to the vet to maintain that diet.

        My solution to all of this as a vegan is to not have a meat earing pet. Parrots are amazing. They’re smart, they don’t constantly think about murder, they’re social and fun and live a long time.

        Or bunnies, they don’t need as much socialization as parrots do to avoid going crazy.

        Dogs don’t need near as much work to live on a vegan diet cause they’re carnivores that adapted to being omnivores to be around humans over a very long period of time.

      • blindbunny@lemmy.ml
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        20 days ago

        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?

  • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    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.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      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?

      • Machinist@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        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.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          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.

          • Machinist@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            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.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              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.

              • cash@lemmy.world
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                20 days ago

                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.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  20 days ago

                  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.

        • Emerald@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          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.

          • Machinist@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            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.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        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.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          21 days ago

          Are you just posting a random comment to me or what? What relevance does this have to the admin retaliations?

          • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            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.

            • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              21 days ago

              That’s not the comment which caused this whole issue. It seems to me you’re cherry picking out of context

              • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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                21 days ago

                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.

                • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  21 days ago

                  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.

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          20 days ago

          Yeah, that’s well and truly off the deep end. This is someone who I’d cross the road to avoid.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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!

    • Chozo@fedia.io
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      21 days ago

      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.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    21 days ago

    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.

    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      20 days ago

      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:

      1. 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.
      2. 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.
    • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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.

    • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      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…

    • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      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.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      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.

    • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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.


      1. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132 ↩︎

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      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.

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      20 days ago

      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.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        19 days ago

        I’m pretty sure energy drinks might use synthetic taurine on a large scale, have we tried feeding cats Monster Energy? /s

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      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.

    • Codex@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      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.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        20 days ago

        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.

    • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        20 days ago

        It really isn’t funny as there are real animals being harmed. There pet will die a slow and agonizing death.

        • boomzilla@programming.dev
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          19 days ago

          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.

        • glitchdx@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          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.

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      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.

      • cheddar@programming.dev
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        21 days ago

        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.

        • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                19 days ago

                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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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?

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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?

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            . 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.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            Animal agriculture existing is a form of genocide

            it’s not genocide: we don’t want to wipe out cows.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

            • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              Most agriculture is pursued for feedstock for the animal agriculture industry. This is true all across the planet. Also, CO2 != CH4.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                19 days ago

                Most agriculture is pursued for feedstock for the animal agriculture industry.

                kindly, cite a source.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 days ago

            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.

            • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              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.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    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.