Intro
We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we’ve gleaned from the threads linked here.
Links
Actions in question
Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.
The comments have been restored.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.
Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.
Removing some moderators of the vegan community
Removed moderators have been reinstated.
This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).
The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.
We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.
Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict
Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility
Moderators’ and admins’ comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.
These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.
In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.
Community Responses
The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.
Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.
That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.
The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.
That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.
Rooki’s actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.
Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.
Conclusions
Regarding moderator actions
We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.
Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100’s of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don’t immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.
While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.
We’ve also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we’ve provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin’s report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.
TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.
Regarding censorship claims
Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we’ve ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we’ve set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.
Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of “do no harm”.
We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.
While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement “do no harm”.
To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT: Added org operations contact info
IDK it seems like pretty clear animal abuse to me
Cats are obligate carnivores. It is 100% animal abuse.
Can we not restart the argument please.
To me, it’s a lot more important in this post to look at the response from mods and admins to a disagreement (and infighting, and mistakes made).
Personally it seems like it was handled well, at least eventually (here). Do you feel one way or the other?
It is relevant though, since the issue of it being animal abuse or not is central to the whole thing.
Is it not animal abuse? Then what has happened in this post is correct.
Is it animal abuse? Then this post shows that the admins will roll over if they get enough push back from a group of users.
The response of mods and admins is that they removed content that promotes animal abuse and that got people mad enough so they went and restored the content promoting animal abuse.
Sometimes I feel like people would like to restart this argument every time it is mentioned, even after 2 threads with hundreds of comments on the topic
Who is arguing? One is factual and the other is willfully ignorant to the point of harming their animal. It’s like giving flat earth any credibility, it’s objectively against science.
Because what you consider a fact is based on studies that don’t provide as compelling evidence as you want to believe they do.
Generally speaking, it’s probably best to not do it, but calling it outright abuse requires evidence that it is causing actual harm, and the scientific consensus on it is not as solid as you think it is.
Recent academic review of many past studies have found that it’s inconclusive.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
Basically, we need more studies before we can start deleting shit on accusations of animal abuse.
People like drama.
Carnivores like to call vegans animal abusers.
*Carnists. Carnivores have no choice in consuming meat. Carnists delibrately choose to do so even when it’s not required.
but if the cat enjoyed the vegan food and the food provided all the nutrients, would you have an issue with it?
People like to virtue signal about things they don’t know anything about.
To me it just indicates how much of the Lemmy population hasn’t studied any bio past maybe first year HS level, or any advanced chemistry either for that matter. And how much people on the internet like fighting with vegans. The two influences together are very powerful.
Or maybe people just don’t like animal abuse? It’s okay to sometimes just go with the straightforward explanation. Don’t abuse cattle et all for human diets, don’t abuse your cat via its diet, and so on.
Sure, understandable. But their scientific arguments for it being animal abuse are very distinctly first year bio-tier.
If it’s a tricky line between keeping your cat healthy and unhealthy, just get a different pet.
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about. You can have understandings, misunderstandings, or the scientific understanding itself could change. Anything attempting to hone that is fine.
To frame something like that as a disagreement is fundamentally dishonest. The question is what’s nutritionally best for cats. We and our stupid feelings are secondary. I don’t even have any familiarity with the subject myself, I only know it’s not the realm of opinions. Cats need meat or they don’t, in certain amounts, types, at certain intervals, etc.
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about.
To be fair, I have a pretty strong opinion on pets getting the food they need. My opinion is that not feeding an animal appropriately is, at best, neglectful.
The great thing is that it’s easy to find out what is an appropriate diet for any pet, clever scientists figured it out and wrote up guidelines for us to follow. Here in the UK for example we would follow the European FEDIAF;
Pet food nutritional guidelines for manufacturers in the UK are produced by FEDIAF (the European Pet Food Industry). These guidelines (also known as Codes) detail the nutritional needs of cats and dogs at varying life stages. They are regularly updated to include the latest nutritional research.
https://europeanpetfood.org/self-regulation/safety
So long as you’re following the guidelines and giving your pet all the nutrients it needs - regardless of how they’re produced (vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊👍
I know it’s silly to have to point that out, I’m not sure why people argued over it (I didn’t see the original discourse). But yes, just to reiterate, it doesn’t matter how you prefer to source the food - vegan, halal, whatever fits your beliefs - just so long as it is a nutritionally complete diet for the animal <3
On the subject of admin/moderation, it is wonderful to see the team trying to be thoughtful, transparent, and kind even in the face of high tempers and heated beliefs. I wish we had more of this calibre of person out in the world :-)
(vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊
Vegan food is the opposite of replicating the full dietary needs of anything
Oh god, oh fuck, we need to get the word out to these highly educated nutritional scientists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, pulmonologists, oncologists, bariatricians, and nephrologists that “it’s the opposite, actually” as soon as possible. I’ll bet they’ll feel like idiots when they need to retract the dozens of meta-analyses and systemic reviews they’ve meticulously authored both showing that plant-based diets tend to be healthier than omnivorous ones and giving explanations for why.
A lot of these studies are funded by vegan grifters so no yeah no
https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/
Benevo Cat foods contain all the nutrients an adult cat needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for slaughterhouse meat. Although obligate carnivores in the wild, domestic cats still need nutrients they would normally source from prey. Thankfully Benevo Cat contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable kibble.
Benevo Cat is a professional cat food, created by Benevo in 2005, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of vegan cat food for 20 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Your argument is very weak, you are just citing a company that sells vegan food for animals, a very clear conflict of interest.
For instance, I can also cite some Google PR page on how much they care about privacy.
Farm feedstock.contain all the nutrients an adult cow needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for grass. Although obligate herbivores in the wild, domestic cows still need nutrients they would normally source from vegetation. Thankfully farm feedstock contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable grain.
grain is a professional cow food, created by grain manufacturers in 50,000BC, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of cow food for 52,000 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Eta - modifying the diet of a domesticated animal for your convenience seems to run contrary to the premise of minimising animal cruelty.
You might be surprised at how much corn, grains, and other non-meat stuff there is in cat food. Particularly in cheap dry kibble that nobody typically bats an eye at someone feeding to their cat.
This conversation just seems so weird to me. The number of people who feed their cats anything similar to what they’d be eating in the wild is minuscule.
Meat isn’t some magic substance, biological chemical reactions turns grass into cows. That you think you can’t take those nutrients and make them bioavailable to an obligate carnivore is absurd. Ever seen an impossible burger?
And if you think the cruelty stems from the idea that cats wouldn’t like it, I gotta say. I have my cat on an expensive grain free meat heavy diet. And I know for a fact that he goes crazy for the cheap shitty corn based purina kibble. He has busted into other people’s homes to steal kibble from their cats.
So is it cruel for me to feed him a more nature based diet when it’s clear he prefers corn based trash?
I don’t see any reason why a functional vegan cat food couldn’t exist.
“Our vegan cat food is totally safe and normal”, says the vegan cat food manufacturers.
You have to be a vegan to believe that bullshit lmao
So, by your logic, shouldn’t there be a bunch of malnourished and dying cats as a result of people buying this food and only letting their cats subsist on it?
Where are the outraged customers? Where are the lawsuits?
People who are dumb enough to spend extra money on vegan food for their carnivorous pets aren’t usually smart enough to realize it was the problem.
And as for the few that eventually figure it out, they’re smart enough to realize saying “I fed my carnivorous pets a vegan diet” does not reflect well on them.
So you have no evidence at all and are purely speculating. Gotcha
My evidence is vegans of Lemmy going up in arms against moderation because they deleted content about feeding a carnivorous animals a vegan diet.
That isn’t evidence that the aforementioned cat food will cause cats to become malnourished. That’s just you speculating to confirm your existing biases.
I appreciate your comments here, even if the people you’re trying to educate completely ignore you and downvote you because they have no response to the fact that vegan cat food exists.
I’m not vegan, but the hysterical ignorance espoused in this comment section is bewildering.
Cut and paste blurb from a marketing website from a manufacturer. That you cut and pasted from your top level comment which currently is at -30 due to it’s lack of actual sources or anything of value.
This is not helpful to anyone and you may be out of your depth if you think it is.
I am not taking a position on feeding cats vegan food. I am just pointing out you are arguing so weakly you’re actually doing your position a disservice.
And humans weren’t made to eat tablets and get injected with mixtures from syringes.
IDK it seems like pretty clear human abuse to me
If medical drugs can be made to be safe and compatible with humans there’s nothing stopping it for the same happening for vegan food for cats
I think people are misunderstanding your comment as anti-science :(
No, people are down voting it for being a bad argument, because humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections.
But these cats that are forced a vegan diet can’t.
Oh sure, they could choose to not eat, and die a bit faster than they would on the vegan food, but no animal will choose to ignore food when they are hungry.
humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections
My infant child has less agency over what he eats than my pet dog. They both get vaccinated over vocal objection.
Humans do not, in fact, get to make these choices. Other, older, wiser humans routinely make these decisions on their behalf.
Not that I think Rooki was wrong with what they did. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how fast such stuff can get out of control.
Thing happened. Admins reflected on thing. Came up with solution. Communicated solution with community in an understandable and transparent manner. Perfect.
If that lazy fucks over at Reddit would have been half as good as you with theirs jobs, we probably wouldn’t be here to begin with.
This is all PR, lemmy.world didnt make good with their vegan community, they just want everyone else to think they are fair and level headed. Reddit has the exact same PR, except they were trying to make money openly, while most assume lemmy.world admins are losing or breaking even (whether thats true or not).
Put simply, reddit was trying to collect more profit from their users one way, and lemmy.world is trying to collect its donations in another, but PR servers both cases.
Doesnt really matter theres plenty of space elsewhere for the vegan community, which is the beauty of the fediverse.
Wow. I have no involvement in the original issue and I’m definitely not as familiar with the circumstances and details as others. There may be a lot missing here.
But this feels like a very mature, logical, empathetic, well-intentioned response and the kind of thing I like to see.
The mods at the lemmy world vegan community don’t see things the same way. From this post:
“Today the lemmy.world admins made a follow up post about the incident where the admin Rooki interfered with moderation of this community in a way which was determined to be against lemmy.world TOS and factually incorrect. Throughout this incident there has been no communication with me, nor to my knowledge any of of the other moderators of this community. Rooki quitely undid his actions and edited his post to admit fault however there was no public acknowledgement of this from him. In fact I wasn’t even told I was reinstated as a mod which is quite funny.”
“The lemmy.world admins’ response appears more focused on managing their own reputations and justifying similar actions in the future than providing a good environment for vegans, and other similarly maligned groups. Their statements about wanting to handle misinformation and overreach better in the future ring a bit hollow when they won’t take actions to address the anti-vegan circlejerks under their update posts which abound with misinformation and disinformation.”
“The legalese written basically allows for the same thing to happen, and that if it does the admin decision is to stand while moderators have to quietly resolve the conflict at the admins’ leisure. Presumably with a similarly weak public apology and barely visible record correction after the fact.”
Codified anti-vegan bias based on reactionary views? That’s unfortunate. Glad I’m not on that instance.
The comments in here are unbelievable. This post was about the systemic moderation issues that lead to the incident, the team’s response to it, and how to deal with such a problems in the future.
Half the comments: CATS CAN’T EAT VEGAN
The other half: CATS CAN TOO EAT VEGAN
There are people here who need to go back to fucking reddit.
Vegans win this time.
I have a bunch of cats I feed vegan diets to, but to anyone concerned that I’m doing animal abuse, don’t worry - occasionally, I wring one of their necks and chop it up to feed to the others, so clearly I’m not abusing them.
Seriously though, I do not understand how non-vegans are all getting on their high horse about “animal abuse” when their preferred course of action is just abusing different animals. Cats do not hold a higher moral standing than other animals just because they look cute. You know they feed cows literal shit? Do you think that’s part of their “natural diet?”
I don’t have any cats or other pets, but even if the worst claims are true, the people doing it would be no worse than what carnists do every day. It’s simply that abuse against certain categories of sentient beings is so normalized that people don’t even recognize it as abuse, no matter how bad it is.
We’re not talking about cows - don’t change topic please. I never heard of such thing even though I used to live countryside and have farmers in family
We’re not talking about cows - don’t change topic please.
Are we not? Because beef goes into cat food. If people are calling others animal abusers, and their solution involves abusing different animals, then I think that’s relevant to the discussion. But if you want to keep it just about cats, ok, we can take cat food off the table and discuss the ethics of killing some cats to feed others.
I never heard of such thing even though I used to live countryside and have farmers in family
Then you’ve learned something new today, and you’re welcome.
Your logic is impeccable. There are always some unscrupulous farmers but you say they are all of them. That indeed ends this conversation
Unscrupulous? It’s totally legal, at least in the US. Actually, looking it up, it seems to be illegal in Canada, which might be why you haven’t heard of the practice, it’s quite common here in the states. As the article states, the FDA estimates 1 to 2 million tons of “poultry litter” are fed to cows annually. If you want to call US cattle ranchers unscrupulous, well, I certainly wouldn’t disagree with you, but it’s not like they’re hiding it or anything.
Americans still belive that USA is everywhere. Greetings from Europe and luckily lots of your food is banned. And besides I’m wondering how american farmers feed cows with the feces. Cows after all are not that stupid and they would rather graze the grass
Hi, Europe! Four years ago, Denmark systematically killed 2.84 minks for every one person living in Denmark.
Oh, and how’s that whole banning live exports thing going? Not at all? Cool!
How is it connected with vegan diet for cats or let’s be laxed - feces in cows feed. I wish to know
I have a bunch of cats I feed vegan diets to, but to anyone concerned that I’m doing animal abuse, don’t worry - occasionally, I wring one of their necks and chop it up to feed to the others, so clearly I’m not abusing them.
Thats canibalism if you would do that. And already reading that gives me some worries how you would treat your cats.
I don’t have any cats or other pets
Huh didnt you beginn the whole comment by telling you “have bunch of cats”?
And this comment is just a “Not my opinion = Bad” vibe. I think you are just here to rant about how bad other (non-vegan) people are and make everyone feel like they are lower than you.
I am not a vegan, but I do try to make food choices that are as ethical and healthy as I can… or at least as far as I can afford.
Cats are carnivores. Fact. This is not debatable. But I think you could also meet or exceed a cats nutritional needs from other sources. Whether those sources are readily available and whether a person is sufficiently meeting those needs… that’s another can of worms.
Generally, I’d argue that if you are hell-bent on a vegan diet, then you should not own carnivorous pets. No matter how well meaning you are, there is a significant chance that you will inflict harm on your pet, and that is unacceptable.
You might be surprised at how much corn, grains, and other non-meat stuff there is in cat food. Particularly in cheap dry kibble that nobody typically bats an eye at someone feeding to their cat.
This conversation just seems so weird to me. The number of people who feed their cats anything similar to what they’d be eating in the wild is minuscule.
Meat isn’t some magic substance, biological chemical reactions turns grass into cows. That you think you can’t take those nutrients and make them bioavailable to an obligate carnivore is absurd. Ever seen an impossible burger?
And if you think the cruelty stems from the idea that cats wouldn’t like it, I gotta say. I have my cat on an expensive grain free meat heavy diet. And I know for a fact that he goes crazy for the cheap shitty corn based purina kibble. He has busted into other people’s homes to steal kibble from their cats.
So is it cruel for me to feed him a more nature based diet when it’s clear he prefers corn based trash?
I don’t see any reason why a functional vegan cat food couldn’t exist.
You’re forgetting some people are idiots, especially those “better than others” who do crap like this.
The integrity in this post is off the charts.
Love to see it.
The only person with integrity I see here is the admin that initially removed the comments promoting animal abuse. Those that backed down and restored the comments caved to the pressure of an extreme, insular community and sided against *defenseless animals. I see no integrity in their actions no matter how they try to spin it.
Firstly, as said repeatedly, scientific research is inconclusive. Secondly, removing an entire mod team should still need consensus among other admins consulted.
Bull fucking shit on the scientific research being inconclusive.
show me a conclusive review on replacing meat with vegan amino acid & stuff supplements
Here are the studies you’re asking for:
-https://sustainablepetfood.info/
-https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-021-02754-8
-https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/vetn.2022.13.6.252
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253292
-https://www.mdpi.com/2306-7381/10/1/52
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0284132
-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402411609X
Nice, are there non-MDPI review articles? MDPI is a bit controversial.
We don’t know if it’s bad for them therefore we shall feed our carnivorous animals tofu and beans.
Average vegan IQ moment
No vegan suggested feeding cats only tofu and beans. Weird strawman.
Only weirdos who feed their cats tofu and beans would bother replying to a 3 month old comment on a drama that has washed over.
I’m not a vegan. I’m saying that the topic is inconclusive, and we should not treat removing the comments as a clear-cut good action. From what I can see, the debate is quite heated and not isolated, so it probably has validity.
If you think it’s inconclusive that cats are carnivorous, please never own a pet
When is science ever “conclusive”?
That very concept is anti-science.
Nowadays “the science is inconclusive” is used to weasel out of corners that grifters paint themselves into.
Scientific consensus now there’s a concept worth understanding and putting forth in arguments such as this one.
I’m reminded of an article talking about an outage at Yahoo! back when they were huge. It turned out the whole outage came down to one person messing up. The manager was asked how they let the person go and they said “Whatever the cost of that outage we just spent it on training, that person will never make that mistake again, nor will they allow someone else to make it”.
If you have mods trying to manage things and they make a mistake you don’t axe them, you discuss the situation and work in good policy for going forward. This one case is costly to the community, but nowhere near as costly as losing someone with this experience.
As for the vegan diet for cats issue, in general people who do vegan diets for kids and animals run a high risk of causing harm. Is it possible to do correctly? Maybe. Is it likely that an individual who is not trained in that field will manage it? No. But should it be investigated? Sure, but o my with experiments that actually do teach us something, no wasted studies of 3 weeks on a diet and checking blood tests, or comparing vegan kibble to omnivore kibble. Still, the same issues plague human dietetics and we don’t have the answers there either, so yeah, maybe we should all chill a little and work together rather than identifying with one side of the argument and vilifying the other.
The idea that it’s dangerous to raise children on a vegan diet is unequivocally false, and misinformation. Every major health authority has made statements affirming that a properly implemented plant-based diet is entirely nutritionally adequate for all stages of life. Literally the only supplement that’s strictly necessary in the majority of cases is b12 - which is something that everyone should be supplementing with anyway. Aside from that it’s easier to get adequate nutrition from plant-based diets than it is on the Standard American Diet.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
https://bitesizevegan.org/the-crime-of-raising-vegan-kids-when-diet-is-deadly/
There’s a very simple solution to all of this. Just require the user upload a form showing that their dog or cat consented to being converted to veganism in defiance of their very nature 👍
This thread is not about your vegan vs antivegan-take but how to approach disagreements. In this regard you failed, and luckily, you are not an admin
What do you mean? All I suggested was that disagreements could be settled with an online consent form.
Id say the vegan person talking about how hard it is to make proper and healthy vegan food for cats understand cats better than a person who want to require consent forms from cats
But ye, what do I know. Im not a cat, nor am I a vegan
While we’re at it why not look for a way to force horses to only eat rare steak? I’m sure we can find a healthy way to do it if we try hard enough!
Why on earth would you do that?
I don’t know, same reason you’d force a cat to eat a vegan diet, I suppose.
Some form of mental illness that either makes you incapable of understanding the damage you’re causing to the animal, or that makes you enjoy its suffering. 🤷♂️
you realise that vegans are not force-feeding cats cucumbers and lettuce right?.
It’s scientifically formulated biscuits. That cats enjoy.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse
The comments have been restored
What… So the rules don’t matter if enough people get angry, I see
cats can live on a vegan diet. so it’s hardly animal abuse.
But are they actually healthy and happy?
if the food is palatable and nutritious one would image that they are.
Is the food palatable and nutritious?
there are ways to measure both.
Let’s see it.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253292
here is one study.
let me know what you think
What are the results of those measurements?
that the food is enjoyable.
regular.biscuits given to cats contain a lot of artificial flavours and vegetable matter already.
Well in germany you would get up to 3 years prison time for trying that bullshit. because it absolutely is animal abuse. quote the The German Veterinary Association for Animal Welfare
"A strictly vegan cat diet [would] be tantamount to an unauthorized, uncontrolled animal experiment and violates § 3 No. 10 of the Animal Welfare Act "
“Force-feeding for the purpose of an ideologically justified change of diet to vegetarian rations is a violation of § 3 No. of the Animal Welfare Act”
cheery picking laws aside, if the food provides all the necessary nutrition and the cat enjoys it, then I see no issue.
Do you have proof of that being the case or are you just throwing stuff out there?
Ima throw your own words back at you.
You are cherry picking the few favorable studies over the heaps of unfavorable studies.
You asked for peer reviewed studies into the palatability and nutrition of vegan cat food.
I provided.
show me some unfavourable ones then
To be totally honest you have nothing to apologize for. Dogs and cats are metabolically different to humans and cannot survive on a vegan diet unlike us. Forcing obligate carnivore pets on vegan diets is certainly animal abuse.
I remember when there was a growing campaign to ban r/nonewnormal on Reddit due to it being a hub of medical disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and that this led to a blackout much like the later API protests.
Rather than read the room and introduce a new rule banning medical disinformation, Reddit’s Tintin-looking moron of a CEO instead threw out tonnes of BS statistics on brigading likely plucked out of his own sphincter, and banned the subreddit because their activity exceeded this arbitrary percentage he made up.
And before you tell me this guy’s figures were legit, aren’t we forgetting that he pathologically lied about his interactions with the Sync developer? Spez is a snake.
Humans can survive on a vegan diet because it’s 2024 and we have scientific research and guidelines/help. I don’t think it would have been possible for most humans throughout history
It’s 2024 and folks with no clue continue to make false claims online. Billions of humans have lived and died, never eating meat in their lifetime. Do you think mass produced meat has always existed?
Animal abuse isn’t an opinion. It’s evil. And malice by ignorance that could be corrected is malice.
Stop apologizing for doing your jobs. We all have opinions and raise them loudly in the Fediverse so I understand your natural reaction and want to communicate well. But IMHO this is troll feeding. If they posted in favor of human genocide, you’d close a ticket, and move on, not write an apology for taking it down.
https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/
Benevo Cat foods contain all the nutrients an adult cat needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for slaughterhouse meat. Although obligate carnivores in the wild, domestic cats still need nutrients they would normally source from prey. Thankfully Benevo Cat contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable kibble.
Benevo Cat is a professional cat food, created by Benevo in 2005, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of vegan cat food for 20 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
It’s still forcing YOUR diet on a helpless animal. They eat meat.
End of story.
Just because the company making money off of purchasers says it’s good for cats. Doesn’t mean it’s good for cats. Other than one study that relied on surveyed answers from vegan pet owners, I haven’t seen any evidence that a vegan diet is safe for cats.
It’s always “the plant-based capitalism profiteers” concern trolling.
They didnt say that, they said its been independently verified to be healthy, exactly thr same way meat based cat food is verified.
If you would give your cat regular canned food then vegan cat food from benevo meets the same requirements.
Also meat based cat food is not the quality you likely think it is.
Yes the same goes for human, you can create manufacture food checking all the marks that you believe is needed. But ignoring the fact that human evolve over thousands of years to eat food that biologically manufacture. The nuance of diet is still studied to this day and suggestion something out of norm for an animal that cannot comprehend what is happening should be consider abuse. You dont own a pet, you take care of one…
Update: this also not limited to forcing cat to eat vegan food. Animal abuse include inhumane slaughter houses, and feeding your pet unhealthy diet, fat cats for example is also abuse.
Do cats normally eat what’s in regular canned cat food?
Show me the herd or cats that hunt cows and pigs. Or how about the ones that swim in the ocean and eat salmon or trout.
How about all of the synthetic additions to the food? Is that what they would normally eat? Vegan taurine is in meat based cat food too.
Sound like we already force our cats to eat whatever we deem appropriate, regardless of what the cat would choose to eat if left alone.
Unless you are arguing noone should have a pet then I dont see the consistency in your argument.
I know this is the internet, so my expectations should be pretty low, but I’m honestly really disheartened and taken aback by all of the comment sections on the posts related to this one. Everyone just spewing opinions, no facts, no research, just hearsay. We are a very disappointing group of people I’d say and we should try and do better.
I’m also really disheartened by the actions that took place in /c/vegan that this post is describing that caused policy changes. Another example for me on why anarchy and removing power structures is needed. Honestly, why should /c/vegan or any non-mainstream community want to remain associated with this instance? I am vegan, and didn’t know that community existed, but seeing how hostile non-vegans are in there… Forget about it.
Just terrible all around. What a calamity of a community we’re creating.
If you’re comfortable pivoting to ml, there’s a good vegan community on hexbear. World preemptively defederated from that instance though, so you’d need to make an alt or change servers.
All I’m getting from this entire saga is that vegans on here are lunatics. From forcing this nonsense on pets, to all of the follow-up, this is a very bad look for the community, from somone looking in from the outside.
This is some cultish behavior…
Caring about animal abuse is cultish behavior?
No. Caring about animal welfare and refusing to support the industrial farming complex is noble and admirable.
Trying to force your diet and ideas onto animals that cannot object is fucked up.
If you can’t feed your pet a proper diet do not get a pet.
cats are quite capable of leaving if they are not getting food they enjoy.
absolutely fucking insane - imagine suggesting a pet could “leave if they don’t like it” for any other form of animal abuse.
Insane, unless you have ever had a semi feral cat.
If you haven’t done the smallest iota of research into what vegan pet foods entail, declaring them an improper diet as a knee jerk reaction is, quite frankly, not a good look for you.
So far the only “research” shared on this thread has been a marketing blurb from a manufacturer who makes this stuff.
Not sure the people arguing for this are able to actually conduct research, let alone post about it in an intelligent way.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjGa0MXfAc
Let me know which parts you disagree with.
yeah. downvote a video of a guy presenting work in the field.
Feel free to do some research. I’m sure you’d trust your own eyes better than some random posting here.
I think this is showing that about 70% of the people on here are incapable of reconsidering their positions on something.
To me thats upsetting, but then again lemmy.world is the low hanging fruit of the fediverse. Other servers would never have picked this fight to begin with.
You get that from anywhere with a chamber that echos well enough. There’s the folks who don’t have kids or want them, and then there’s the anti-natalists who call the people who have children breeders and their kids crotchspawn. There’s the Christians and the Religious Right. Jews and Zionists. List goes on.
don’t for get the toxic masculinity style meat eaters!
Not sure how thats relevant to my comment. Are you sure you’re replying to the right person?
some people eat meat. some people make it part of their core identity. it’s funny.
Says the guy who’s entire comment history is identifing by what they eat.
no you!
Very mature
Someone is being quick to make judgements.
Vegan pet diets have historically been controversial, as dogs and cats are biologically omnivores and carnivores respectively. However, due to the demands of consumers concerned about farmed animal welfare and environmental sustainability, increasing numbers of pet food companies are now producing vegan diets excluding any animal products. These aim to supply all nutritional needs using plant-sourced ingredients, and supplements of minerals, vitamins and amino acids, amongst others.
However, a recent study by Daina et al. (1) asserted nutritional inadequacies in vegan pet diets. The study based its conclusions on the analysis of only three specific diets—a sample insufficient to draw conclusions about the nutritional soundness of all vegan pet diets. Nutritional unsoundness is also not uncommon among nonvegan pet diets (2). Although diets in each group may be nutritionally sound or unsound, depending on the quality of diet formulation and manufacturing, systemic differences between vegan and meat-based pet foods appear minimal in this respect. In fact, a recent survey of 29 pet food manufacturers (many more than examined by Daina et al.), which examined steps taken to ensure nutritional soundness and diet quality, found that 10 plant-based pet foods had slightly higher standards overall, than 19 meat-based pet foods (3). The former were more—not less—likely to be nutritionally sound.
Furthermore, the gold standard test for nutritional adequacy is animal health and longevity. Ten studies in dogs (4–13) and three in cats (14–16) have found that vegan diets produce health outcomes as good or better than nonvegan diets. The palatability of vegan pet diets appears comparable to that of meat-based diets (17), and nutritionally-sound vegan diets for dogs and cats offer major benefits for environmental sustainability (18).
The sweeping claims made by Daina et al. concerning the nutritional unsoundness of vegan pet diets are inconsistent with the evidence in this field, and incorrect. Given the positive health outcomes for dogs and cats maintained on nutritionally-sound vegan diets, and the substantial environmental benefits such diets may offer, the use of such diets should be supported.
Analysis of 16 studies on the impact of vegan diets on cat and dog health
Domínguez-Oliva et al. (2023)concluded, “there was no overwhelming evidence of adverse effects arising from use of these diets and there was some evidence of benefits. … Much of these data were acquired from guardians via survey-type studies, but these can be subject to selection biases, as well as subjectivity around the outcomes. However, these beneficial findings were relatively consistent across several studies and should, therefore, not be disregarded.” They advised, “… if guardians wish to feed their companion animals vegan diets, a cautious approach should be taken using commercially produced diets which have been formulated considering the nutritional needs of the target species.” [i.e., that are nutritionally-sound].In 2023 veterinary Professor Andrew Knight and colleagues published a large-scale study of 1,369 cats fed vegan (127 – 9%) or meat-based (1,242 – 91%) pet food, for at least one year. Cats fed vegan diets had better health outcomes for each of seven general health indicators studied. First, differences between diet groups in age, sex, neutering (desexing) status and primary location (outdoor vs. indoor) were all controlled for statistically. Next, risk reductions were calculated for cats of average age, and other characteristics. For average cats fed vegan diets, risk reductions were:
• increased veterinary visits (possibly indicating illness) – 7% reduction
• medication use – 15% reduction
• progression onto a medical diet (after being fed a vegan or meat-based diet) – 55% reduction
• reported veterinary assessment of being unwell – 4% reduction
• reported veterinary assessment of more severe illness – 8% reduction
• pet guardian opinion of more severe illness – 23% reduction.
• Additionally, the number of health disorders per unwell cat decreased by 16%.No reductions were statistically significant, but collectively they revealed a strong trend. Additionally, the prevalence of 22 of the most common feline health disorders was studied. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one health disorder. 15 disorders were most common in cats fed meat, and seven most common in cats fed vegan diets.
In 2021 veterinarians Dr Sarah Dodd and colleagues published a large-scale study, including dietary information for 1,026 cats, of whom 187 were fed vegan diets. The latter were more frequently reported by guardians to be in very good health. They had more ideal body condition scores, and were less likely to suffer from gastrointestinal and hepatic (liver) disorders, than cats fed meat. No health disorders were more likely, for cats fed vegan diets.
And in 2006 veterinarians Dr Lorelei Wakefield and colleagues published a study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association comparing the health status of 34 cats maintained on vegetarian diets, and 52 maintained on conventional diets, for at least one year. No significant differences existed in age, sex, body condition, housing, or perceived health status between the two groups. Most of the caregivers in both groups described their cats as healthy or generally healthy.
Im no vegan, and was originally convinced that giving cats vegan food was animal abuse, and am still sure its best for cats to eat meat But really, seeing so much people just saying ‘vegans are hysteric/lunatic/cultist’ without any more reflection gave me a weird vibe, like it’s the exact same rethoric used against any progressist idea It got me thinking, like I think I disagree with vegans on the vegan cat food thing but people are being so mean to vegans and tolerant to power abuse, i’d rather be on the vegan side
Its likely because most of the arguments against vegan cat food are “of course its bad”, which is a horrible reason to think anything.
I hope some people also noticed this and allowed them the opportunity to learn more about what is possible for a cats diet.
my only argument for the vegan food is this: if the cat enjoys the food and it provides all the nutrients then what is the issue?
No one is suggesting we force feed cats wall paper paste.
Vegans are fine, it are those that enforce/demand it from others that are radicals, all radicals are lunatics.
meat eaters are fine. it’s just those that enforce and demand it from others.
