Yeah, to be clear, you should not feed your cat a Vegan diet. Cats are obligate carnivores. Synthetic Taurine has made vegan catfood somewhat more viable, but cats don't just need Taurine from prey. They need several vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids from animal protein to survive. Beyond that, their digestive tract isn't very efficient at digesting plant matter, so even if these foods have the nutritional value they need, they might not be absorbing it. Also, a lot of these products seem to be made from grains and other carb heavy products, and cats need a very low carb, high protein diet. If you want to completely divest from the meat industry, you simply shouldn't own a cat.

That being said, Vegan catfood products are on the market, so whether or not they are good for cats, they have been approved by several regulating bodies. You can claim that they're unsafe (I certainly do), but having an admin nuke a comment section for claiming otherwise is a huge overreaction. It would be like going into a vape community and banning accounts that claimed vaping is safer than smoking; it probably isn't, but I don't need admins deciding who gets to have discourse about that.

Finally, I'm also not a fan of dead cats, but if you're dumb enough to take veterinary advice from an internet vegan group, you're probably too dumb to keep a cat alive anyway.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Vegan catfood products are on the market, so whether or not they are good for cats, they have been approved by several regulating bodies

Yeah, that's not how it works. Especially in countries with extreme regulatory capture like the US.

Unless a product has text that says in a very specifically worded way that it's been tested and approved by a relevant regulatory body, it hasn't.

The fact that something hasn't been taken off the market YET does not necessarily mean that it's been approved. Especially not when you're dealing with politically volatile stuff that could lead to lengthy public lawsuits sapping the resources of the already chronically underfunded and understaffed agencies.

If it's vegan food for obligate carnivores, it MIGHT technically be "safe" (as in won't be outright lethal), but for the reasons you yourself mentioned, it's likely to significantly decrease the animal's enjoyment of life at best and more likely to be downright torturous.

It would be like going into a vape community and banning accounts that claimed vaping is safer than smoking

Except for the fact that those accounts would be absolutely right and have reams of scientific evidence from the world's foremost experts in related fields to back up their claims. Unlike the people abusing cats in the name of not abusing animals.

it probably isn't

It is. It's not even anywhere near the next city over from the neighborhood of close.

but I don't need admins deciding who gets to have discourse about that

Except limiting the spread of dangerous misinformation, such as common myths that are keeping smokers away from one of if not THE most effective smoking cessation tool, is a big part of what admins are FOR.

if you're dumb enough to take veterinary advice from an internet vegan group, you're probably too dumb to keep a cat alive anyway

Yeah..that's not a valid argument either. A lot of vegans avoid getting a cat because they're too overzealous in their veganism to even want carnivorous animals to eat meat.

The Venn diagram of people vegan enough to love carnivores but refuse to give them meat and people who would trust a vegan online echo chamber more than competent veterinarians is a circle within a bigger circle.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, various vegan catfoods have been approved for use in not only the U.S. but also the E.U., but your point about regulatory capture is fair. Unfortunately, it's undercut by your support for vaping, a nicotine product brought to market with an insane lack of oversight. Ironically, most of what you're complaining about with the cat food is exactly what makes vaping so dangerous. We don't have as much research or long-term studies on the effects of vaping to say it's as dangerous as smoking, but we know that they contain propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which are toxic to cells, aldehydes, which are associated with lung disease and heart disease, acrolein, which can cause COPD, asthma and lung cancer, as well as various heavy metals. I'm pretty sure that a lot more people will die of vaping than cats will die of veganism. That being said, I don't think people who support vaping should be removed from lemmy for using a product that's probably unsafe, and and it's not the job of admins or moderators to stop people from taking bad health advice from strangers on the internet.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago

In the UK the NHS is advocating for vaping as a way to stop smoking, and it works. Also, i don't know where you get your information about VG and PG (especially regarding their toxicity), but i am more than sure that your information is outdated/obsolete by now.

A large part of your cells walls are made out of vegetable glycerin. The LD50 for rats is about 12g/kg body weight (mice 8g/kg) when ingested (so about 1kg for a 100kg human), and the seen adverse effects when inhaling were minimal and only visible in hourlong exposures at the highest tested concentration.

Propylene Glycol has an even higher LD50 in rodents (20 GRAMS/kg b.w.) and is in use in every theatre in the world for fog and smoke effects (in HUGE volumes in contrast to vaping - i vape a lot and am somwhere between 5-10ml VG/PG 1:1 per day) for ages now, and there would have been found a correlation between stage workers and lung cancer by now. It's widely used in the agricultural sector as a feed additive in pretty large quantities too.

you get acrolein when the e-cigarette overheats. modern devices should not even really do this anymore. The heavy metals are a hypothesis i heard in the beginning and for which i haven't seen any source in the last 5 years. At least if you aren't overheating your NI80 coils on purpose to a dull red glow. all my homies use SS316 for smooth automatic temperature control :-)

I'm with you regarding the aroma additives (which i assume you meant as source for aldehydes); not many of those have been tested regarding inhalation (except for aromatherapy probably), and they might prove to be detrimental. i also believe that if i had kept my pack or two a day hobby for much longer, it would have had a real chance of killing me. i am also advocating that this stuff should be 18+ - by that age the whole "peer pressure" thing that led to me starting smoking with 14 should be mostly over.

in the end, the most important part is: i choose to use e-cigarettes since it's harm reduction in comparison to smoking (and nothing else worked for me), and i know that it would be healthier not to do it. cats don't have much choice regarding their food, especially when combined with an religiously motivated owner.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 6 points 2 months ago

I feel like nobody is approaching this from a consent aspect either. If someone offers their cat an array of cat food options and makes an actual honest attempt to determine a long term preference and the cat legitimately prefers the vegan cat food, then that's way less problematic than saying "you will eat this weird food or you will starve."

The forced veganism thing just feels a lot like saying "studies show that a human can technically survive on roaches and rat feces as long as they get a vitamin C supplement."

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

I just wanted to add: the reason why most carnivores go for the digestive tract first when eating their prey is that they eat the predigested plant matter with the entrails, making those nutrients much more readily available to them.

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. That one "study" that other poster is throwing around with the owner-reported feedback regarding the health of their cats has actual negative worth.