Vegan Food For Our Pet… Yes Or No?

One of the movements that has grown the most around the world is animalism. In fact 50 years ago it would have been nonsense to talk about things like animal rights. Fortunately, our perceptions of them and our respect for different ways of life have been changing. However, there are extremes that generate certain controversies. One of these lies in whether you should have a vegan diet for your pet. Let’s thoroughly review what it is about:

What is vegan food?

Veganism is a moral stance against the consumption of any type of product or food that is of animal origin. Likewise, it follows the idea that animals, as beings endowed with emotion, should not be treated as merchandise.

It refers to a position of respect towards the quality of life of pets, for which practices that lead to the death and suffering of thousands of them are rejected, for example through experimentation, tests, confinement, breeding for human consumption, etc.

Currently, there are many companies dedicated to the production of food, clothing and merchandise free of cruel treatment towards animals, using alternative materials that are beneficial to the environment.

Feeding

The diet of vegans is very strict, causing them some inconveniences when eating out, because culturally society has many products of animal origin incorporated into its food systems.

Vegans differ from vegetarians because they not only exclude meat from their diets, but also any kind of product that comes from animals, for example milk, eggs or honey.

However, achieving these diets is not as difficult as it is thought, some ingredients of the original recipes are simply replaced by substitutes, taking care to have an adequate protein, fat and caloric intake (which comes mainly from animal sources). This is especially important for those people who ate meat and stopped.

How these diets affect pets

The feed or balanced with which we feed our pets, as well as many of the homemade diets, have meat or some other element of animal origin. Therefore, feeding this to pets corresponds to a contradiction within the philosophy of life of vegans, for which some decide to submit their animals to the same diet that they eat. But how appropriate is this?

Many of the domestic animals, especially those we use for companionship, are or were predators in their natural environments. This includes felines, canines, reptiles, among many others. Therefore,  their diet must be composed of meat because they have very specific needs to consume animal proteins and fats.

However,  many animals supplement their diets through the consumption of plants, flowers, tubers, etc. Many vegans choose to use complementary and substitute foods to replace animal protein needs for vegetables.

In purely hypothetical terms it could work, however, this would have consequences on the development of the animal, for example at the immune level, strengthening its skeletal and muscular systems and the correct functioning of some organs. This  is especially important in animals whose diet is exclusively carnivorous, such as cats.

In addition, it must be borne in mind that derived from the above, there are vegetables, fruits and plants that are dangerous for the animal, because they have  high concentrations of substances that they cannot metabolize properly and end up intoxicating them, as is the case with onions. or chocolate.

This is due to the fact that the organism of carnivorous or semi-carnivorous animals is not designed to process vegetables, they have another class of enzymes, bacterial flora and shorter intestines, which make the sufficient assimilation of nutrients from a strictly vegan diet unfeasible.

Also within this discussion, an ethical situation strongly enters, because it is not good to subject an animal to processes that can be potentially risky for them, just because we have a position on something, even if this goes against the nature of the animal. own animal. Part of respecting and caring for a pet involves feeding it in an appropriate way, responding to its specific needs and not to our philosophy.