Its not a strawman, that would imply no one was actually advocating for feeding cats a vegan diet, and this post was made up to pretend they did in order to disparage vegans. This post is a reference to someone on Lemmy arguing in favor of vegan diets for cats, and the thread you linked is literally people advocating for and discussing vegan diets for cats.
That being said, if you read the comments you’ll see vegan folks arguing that this is a difficult thing to safely do in practice, and needs oversight and direction from a vet.
Making decisions to feed your pets, who can’t advocate for themselves, things other than what they biologically evolved process as a healthy diet, even if you believe you’ve balanced everything just right, is morally questionable.
Making such a decision about your own diet on moral grounds is an admirable sacrifice and difficult lifestyle change one can be proud of. Choosing to make that sacrifice on behalf of a creature you’re responsible for the health and happiness of is needlessly jeopardizing the wellbeing of that creature. They can’t communicate their needs, and you’re the one responsible for them. Don’t go making questionable choices on their behalf that they’d be powerless to do anything about.
One point, we already make the decision for our pets diet. You are already supposed to consult a vet or nutritionist if you care about ensuring the animal is healthy, vegan food or not.
Its not a moral decision for the cat in this case anyways, its in service of their health first and foremost. If the cat can’t be healthy on a vegan diet, or just simply doesn’t like it, then a vegan will look for the next best thing that could be the healthiest fit for their pet, and see how it goes.
Conversely, plenty of non vegan owners will buy whatever random food is sold in their box store, do zero research past a facebook/reddit corporate circle jerk, and then pat themselves on the back for being such great owners.
The simple fact that vegans are involving pet nutritionists should be a clue as to their priorities. You could also simply ask your vet about it, just like I did, and find out that they won’t accuse you of animal abuse.
So it’s immoral to force your will on a cat regarding their diet when they themselves would choose different is immoral but forcing your will on cows/pigs by killing them even though they would choose to live is not?
Cats, like humans, need certain nutrients (macro and micro), they don’t need that nutrients from a specific source.
Of course a healthy vegan diet needs effort and monitoring to ensure sufficient intake of these nutrients, but it’s certainly possible, both for humans and cats.
Maybe the meta-study that specifically calls out how little quality and volume there is in this areas of study, comments on how self-reported studies are bias and in conclusion basically says:
“It doesn’t seem to immediately kill your pets in the limited studies that have been done, we have even seen some benefits, but we don’t have enough quality data to be that confident about anything”
How about this one which is again largely based on self-reported results.
You should actually read the “Study Limitations” section for this one.
Or the last one which is about vegetarian diets, again goes out of it’s way to specifically call out the lack of current research and that the majority of current research supporting these diets is “rarely conducted in accordance with the highest standards of evidence-based medicine”
I’m aware i’m cherry picking quotes and points here, but only to illustrate that these papers aren’t the silver bullet you seem to think.
Not to say there is no validity to the argument that these diets can be beneficial but it’s a far cry from vegan diets are scientifically proven safe for cats and dogs.
Another indication you haven’t actually read any of the papers, even the titles
3/5 of the papers are for both dogs and cats.
I’m aware the title of the post you linked to was exclusivity about cats, the content of the majority of papers was not.
No goalposts were moved i was responding to the information you posted, if you aren’t going to actually read them yourself your opinion on what constitutes goalposts means nothing.
Other than the final line, nothing in my response even mentions dogs.
However, lets say we only apply what i said to cats, every single point still stands.
I’m assuming you don’t have any actual arguments or you would have mentioned them instead of picking up on a single word that doesn’t actually change the content of the response.
Just as an aside, I’ve noticed “moving the goalposts” is one of new favorite fallacies for people to slap around when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The funny thing is he moved the goalpost, but in the right direction. His argument was stricter on itself than required. It’s so funny when these people cry out fallacy, when in fact they are arguing using a fallacy.
One of the abstracts asks if vegan diets can be safe without answering it; the rest of the article is behind a paywall. Another only studies owner reported palatability behaviors (did Fifi come running when the food dish is filled?) that had nothing to do with health. Another says the research on vegan diets is paltry. Another does do owner reported health information, though it isn’t really enough on its own to say vegan diets are healthy for cats.
So no, this does not show any kind of scientific consensus. The evidence is very limited. Perhaps vegan diets for cats will be vindicated in the future, but these studies are insufficient.
It’s a shame; i’m sure there are vegans feeding their cats this way, and when those animals lose muscle mass quickly, the first thing that gets really damaged by that are their kidneys - and this does normally only get noticed shortly before the cat is going to die.
And it’s an ugly death.
I’ve had a young cat which had nearly dead kidneys when we got her, and it’s pure torture for them - we tried everything we could, but there’s not much to be done after they show symptoms.
Those “studies” you are throwing around with the owner-reported feedback regarding the health of their cats which can only be objectively be seen by bloodwork and a kidney ultrasound have actual negative worth.
Someone is creating a strawman argument.
Read the scientific evidence for yourself.
https://lemmy.ca/post/27579367
Its not a strawman, that would imply no one was actually advocating for feeding cats a vegan diet, and this post was made up to pretend they did in order to disparage vegans. This post is a reference to someone on Lemmy arguing in favor of vegan diets for cats, and the thread you linked is literally people advocating for and discussing vegan diets for cats.
That being said, if you read the comments you’ll see vegan folks arguing that this is a difficult thing to safely do in practice, and needs oversight and direction from a vet.
Making decisions to feed your pets, who can’t advocate for themselves, things other than what they biologically evolved process as a healthy diet, even if you believe you’ve balanced everything just right, is morally questionable.
Making such a decision about your own diet on moral grounds is an admirable sacrifice and difficult lifestyle change one can be proud of. Choosing to make that sacrifice on behalf of a creature you’re responsible for the health and happiness of is needlessly jeopardizing the wellbeing of that creature. They can’t communicate their needs, and you’re the one responsible for them. Don’t go making questionable choices on their behalf that they’d be powerless to do anything about.
One point, we already make the decision for our pets diet. You are already supposed to consult a vet or nutritionist if you care about ensuring the animal is healthy, vegan food or not.
Its not a moral decision for the cat in this case anyways, its in service of their health first and foremost. If the cat can’t be healthy on a vegan diet, or just simply doesn’t like it, then a vegan will look for the next best thing that could be the healthiest fit for their pet, and see how it goes.
Conversely, plenty of non vegan owners will buy whatever random food is sold in their box store, do zero research past a facebook/reddit corporate circle jerk, and then pat themselves on the back for being such great owners.
The simple fact that vegans are involving pet nutritionists should be a clue as to their priorities. You could also simply ask your vet about it, just like I did, and find out that they won’t accuse you of animal abuse.
So it’s immoral to force your will on a cat regarding their diet when they themselves would choose different is immoral but forcing your will on cows/pigs by killing them even though they would choose to live is not?
Cats, like humans, need certain nutrients (macro and micro), they don’t need that nutrients from a specific source. Of course a healthy vegan diet needs effort and monitoring to ensure sufficient intake of these nutrients, but it’s certainly possible, both for humans and cats.
TL;DR;
Posting a link to a bunch of other links you don’t seem to have actually read isn’t a good basis for an argument
Scientific evidence, sure, but if you’d actually read them you’d see they aren’t as inline with your argument as you seem to think.
Do you mean the one behind a paywall
Perhaps the one consisting almost entirely of owner reported (and thus inherently bias) results
Maybe the meta-study that specifically calls out how little quality and volume there is in this areas of study, comments on how self-reported studies are bias and in conclusion basically says:
“It doesn’t seem to immediately kill your pets in the limited studies that have been done, we have even seen some benefits, but we don’t have enough quality data to be that confident about anything”
How about this one which is again largely based on self-reported results.
You should actually read the “Study Limitations” section for this one.
Or the last one which is about vegetarian diets, again goes out of it’s way to specifically call out the lack of current research and that the majority of current research supporting these diets is “rarely conducted in accordance with the highest standards of evidence-based medicine”
I’m aware i’m cherry picking quotes and points here, but only to illustrate that these papers aren’t the silver bullet you seem to think.
Not to say there is no validity to the argument that these diets can be beneficial but it’s a far cry from vegan diets are scientifically proven safe for cats and dogs.
Now you’re moving the goal posts that “vegan diets are not safe for dogs”.
Another indication you haven’t actually read any of the papers, even the titles
3/5 of the papers are for both dogs and cats.
I’m aware the title of the post you linked to was exclusivity about cats, the content of the majority of papers was not.
No goalposts were moved i was responding to the information you posted, if you aren’t going to actually read them yourself your opinion on what constitutes goalposts means nothing.
Other than the final line, nothing in my response even mentions dogs.
However, lets say we only apply what i said to cats, every single point still stands.
I’m assuming you don’t have any actual arguments or you would have mentioned them instead of picking up on a single word that doesn’t actually change the content of the response.
Feel free to surprise me though.
Just as an aside, I’ve noticed “moving the goalposts” is one of new favorite fallacies for people to slap around when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The funny thing is he moved the goalpost, but in the right direction. His argument was stricter on itself than required. It’s so funny when these people cry out fallacy, when in fact they are arguing using a fallacy.
deleted by creator
Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension the he in this sentence is directed at senal.
After these the papers that observed limited bioavailability of synthesized taurine in cats?
Hey, give me a little credit…
I’ve managed to misrepresent two sides of an argument in this one.
I’m vegan and just downvoted you. Also a social media post is not scientific evidence.
The post has 5 studies. You didn’t click on the link.
I did click it, and read the abstracts. Did you?
One of the abstracts asks if vegan diets can be safe without answering it; the rest of the article is behind a paywall. Another only studies owner reported palatability behaviors (did Fifi come running when the food dish is filled?) that had nothing to do with health. Another says the research on vegan diets is paltry. Another does do owner reported health information, though it isn’t really enough on its own to say vegan diets are healthy for cats.
So no, this does not show any kind of scientific consensus. The evidence is very limited. Perhaps vegan diets for cats will be vindicated in the future, but these studies are insufficient.
Just take the L okay, you are literally doing the opposite of convincing people.
“Just keep letting the animal abuse occur when it can be prevented”
Yeah, you and your kind.
You should take your own advice, because you’re not making the argument you think you’re making.
It’s a shame; i’m sure there are vegans feeding their cats this way, and when those animals lose muscle mass quickly, the first thing that gets really damaged by that are their kidneys - and this does normally only get noticed shortly before the cat is going to die.
And it’s an ugly death.
I’ve had a young cat which had nearly dead kidneys when we got her, and it’s pure torture for them - we tried everything we could, but there’s not much to be done after they show symptoms.
Those “studies” you are throwing around with the owner-reported feedback regarding the health of their cats which can only be objectively be seen by bloodwork and a kidney ultrasound have actual negative worth.
🤓