Do you guys have good resources on how to feed your dog vegan?
There are a lot of pages online that simply say "consult an advisor" who will calculate what your dog needs. I'm not bad in maths, I could calculate it myself if I'd knew what the dog needs. I can look into commercial dog food ingrediants but there are declarations like "minerals" without any further specificiations. Moreover, I eat a huge variety in differrent vegetables and food in general, yet my dog shall always eat the same according to vegan complete feed. Moreover, I can not properly judge whether a feed is good because the information is missing.
Where does the nutritionist get his information from? There must be someone who has studied the needs of a dog based on size and breed and created a formula such that you can calculate the servings.
I've looked into books on amazon and the comments are horrible. There's nothing on libgen and google scholar doesn't yield appropriate results.
Dogs aren't, cats are. But I agree. Dogs can't consent to this insanity. This will be tough on the dog. If you can't handle that the dog isn't "vegan" then please give it to someone who can properly care for it. No dog deserves that.
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
I honestly don't know why people who want herbivorous pets choose to get dogs or cats. Rabbits and guinea pigs are lovely creatures. Rodents, birds, and certain lizards all make very good vegetarian companions, so why not choose one of those?
I have a personal love for tiny screaming dinosaurs, but having also kept rabbits and guinea pigs I'd honestly recommend them.
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
Overall, it seems the jury is still out on whether feeding our carnivorous four-legged friends vegan diets is actually safe.
What we can be certain about is that both strong pro- or anti vegan pet feeding arguments are potentially misguided, and not backed by evidence. For now, owners committed to feeding their pets a vegan diet should take a cautious approach. Use a complete and balanced commercial vegan diet formulation, and schedule regular health checks with a veterinarian.
There is an urgent need for large-scale population-based studies to further investigate this question, with a particular focus on assessing the dietary aspects cited to be of particular concern, e.g., taurine and folate. For guardians wishing to feed their pets vegan diets at the current time, based on the available evidence it is recommended that commercially produced vegan diets are used since these are less likely to lead to nutrient imbalances.
"In the few studies that measured health directly through examining the animals or running laboratory tests, there was little evidence of adverse health impacts from vegan pet diets. Nutrient levels were generally within normal range, no heart or eye abnormalities were detected, and body and coat condition were normal."
"However, it’s important to note these studies often involved low numbers of animals, with vegan diets only being fed to animals for a few weeks – so deficiency may not have had time to develop. Furthermore, the study designs were often ones considered less reliable in evidence-based practice, for example with no control groups used as a comparison."
"For now, owners committed to feeding their pets a vegan diet should take a cautious approach. Use a complete and balanced commercial vegan diet formulation, and schedule regular health checks with a veterinarian."
For me personally I wouldn't try to keep a dog and especially a cat on a vegan diet until there's more robust evidence to say that it would be safe to do so.
Both those links don't inspire confidence, neither are written by scientists or universities as far as I can tell.
The article that's being quoted through this thread comes with a lot of caveats to it and the other article I found mentions the poor quality of the studies mentioned in said article.
The risks and lack of robust data should be emphasised and the extra effort and monitoring a pet owner would need to be engaged in to make sure their pet stays healthy be first and foremost when talking about vegan pet diets.
I would personally be happy if pets can have vegan diets, but their safety should come first.
Edit: Accidentally said op was quoting an article throughout this thread when a mod has been doing so. I edited that to be more specific sorry for the mistake.
Ah yes, the carnists coming into the comments in good faith ™️ to explain how the vegans are actually animal abusers never ceases to amaze me! Please kindly continue commenting so that you can be permanently banned from the community!
Edit: Also, OP getting reported twice for "animal abuse"... seriously the moderator reports are all carnists reporting vegans on the vegan community 🤯
At first I thought people were downvoting because I mentioned libgen but then the first comments appeared and I quickly understood that there's a lack of information. I didn't know that it was that bad prior to this thread.
Please do not abuse your pet. Dogs are not herbivores, and will suffer if subjected to it. You'll find a lot of resources from idiots stating otherwise, but the science does not lie, and there have been a ton of malnourished suffering dogs because people keep trying this.
Dogs cannot properly digest vegetation, which is why 70%+ of their diet needs to be meat based.
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
your second link lmao: "Dr. Cailin Heinze, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist, and professor at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine writes: “Most dogs can do quite well on a carefully designed vegan diet that meets all of their nutritional needs.”"
keep in mind that a well formulated, "carefully designed" vegan kibble is just as "bad" as non-vegan kibble, so unless you're against all kibble, nutritionally complete vegan kibble is fine. Animal abuse is needlessly killing and hurting animals, not finding ways to avoid it
"However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used."
As far as sources on the ideal amounts of different minerals to cross reference with the guaranteed analyses, I'm not sure, sorry I couldn't be more help
Sorry your post got shit on so hard, it's a shame people just jump to conclusions based on general ideas rather than recognizing we have the technology to pretty easily feed even obligate carnivores a vegan diet they thrive on
Be advised, I'm the only active mod on this community and I just saw this thread. !vegan@lemmy.ml has quicker mod action (in my opinion) as well as less carnist trolling