cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26218550
View the original post to see the images
(posting to both communities)
A carnist lemmy world instance admin has stepped in and meatsplained to the mods while restoring comments that violated the community's rules. They deleted comments that they did not agree with, citing 'misinformation', and threatened to demod the mods if those comments were removed again. The comments were deleted and the admin was banned from the community as per violating the rules of the community, that was until they unbanned themselves (admin abuse) and unmodded two of the moderators because of "promoting harmfull actions against pets".
As far as it stands, if the lemmy world community wasn't already not a safe vegan place for you (it really wasn't) it most certainly isn't now as carnists (lemmy world instance admin) currently mod it.
I suggest any vegan who wants a safe and welcoming space to come and interact with vegantheoryclub.org. Sorry for any inconvienance that this may have caused. I am deeply upset at the admins actions today and don't condone them whatsoever.
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Honest question: are cats really not obligate carnivores?
They are, but that's a term about ecology. In a natural environment they must derive their nutrients from meat because they are unable to get them from plants.
That's because they lack the ability to grind plants/process large amounts of fibre, absorb nutrients gradually etc. If you try to keep a cat alive on whole lentils or something they will get sick and die, however if you feed a cat pelletised mixtures of nutrients refind from plants they will be fine (as long as you include taurine).
Many commercial cat foods already use plant derived nutrients and synthetic taurine.
Yea ... I didn't know what the original incident was ... but seeing this is saddening. AFAIU, it's just taurine that cats need, a pretty simple molecule that would be easily synthesised. And of course cat food is heavily processed already.
Well you need to remove the excess fibre, reduce carb content relative to proteins and fat, balance aminos etc. It's not trivial, but quite tractable.
Huh, I'd never really thought about what it is in meat that cats actually need/what they might not tolerate in plants.
I'm admittedly skeptical on people doing this unless they're really committed to doing it properly, though. Reading about it online it seems like there's a fair few things besides taurine you have to ensure the cat is getting. That's compounded with the issue that pet food isn't monitored and regulated as well as human food, so it's harder to be sure your pet food is actually what it says it is. This can be ameliorated somewhat by going for established brands which have the necessary supply chain scrutiny/manufacturing tolerances/regulatory oversight to actually back up their claims, but it seems like vegan cat food is often a more boutique or small scale operation.
Anyway I don't even have a cat so I'm not an authority. Just hyperfixated on this for like 15 mins
I mean pet food in general is absolute completely fucked. Like the standard kibble is awful, it contains random excess from animal ag (including, amusingly, a lot of plant matter), garbage from the grinding process including plastic, ash etc. It's bad stuff.
So the usual care and precautions apply, plus obviously it's early days and so you should be getting regular health checks. Of course you should be doing that anyway. Something that frustrates me a little in all this is that people act like everyone buying the random kibble and free feeding a cat is being responsible, but if that kibble was a different kibble it's suddenly abuse. That's basically just privileging that status quo, and nutritional inadequacies in "pet" diets are astonishingly common.
Anyway food allergies etc are a thing, so even if you were killing to feed a cat you should make any dietary changes carefully and slowly.
I understand, and yet... don't think giving cats conventional kibble is inherently "responsible" (outside of feeding your cat in general being a bare minimum threshold of responsibility) but going for an unconventional diet regime probably opens you up to more risks in addition to the ones inherently to pet food like you mentioned.
So apparently it's a misleading way of approaching the question. You can successfully do a vegan diet with your cat if you provide them with the correct food. As @BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net stated, carninst answers are not worth listening to.
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Huh. TIL
I appreciate the article you linked although there are some holes in the study, like self reporting, outdoor cats
that might be eating meat unobserved, etc.
would be cool to see a more in-depth study with more controls!