barefoot vegan sept_oct issue.pdf

Veterinarians commonly prescribe vegetarian diets to dogs
with urate stones (most often Dalmatians) and food
allergies. The Purina HA diet, which is marketed as
vegetarian, has passed AAFCO feeding trial criteria for
both puppies and adult dogs. However, the vitamin D3 and
possibly other supplemental nutrients are derived from
non-vegan sources. Furthermore, the Purina HA diet
contains trans fat. This type of fat has not been wellstudied
in dogs, but is known to be harmful to humans,
who albeit are innately more prone to diet-induced
atherosclerosis. Additional formal research was conducted
on competitive sledding dogs who showed no difference in
their hematological values whether eating meat-based or
meat-free diets over sixteen weeks (10). A new company
called Indogo Canine Nutrition Company is setting out to
conduct humane, scientifically sound research on dogs
eating vegan diets. The research results will be made
public, and they plan to sell foods based on the data. To
learn more about this initiative, go to www.indogolife.com.
Although cats are considered obligate carnivores, it seems
likely that some day there will be a sound, cruelty free
product that meets their nutrient requirements. Vegan
sources of nutrients that were previously understood to be
only animal-derived like DHA/EPA and vitamin D3 are
becoming increasingly popular. Even taurine, an essential
amino acid for cats, is most commonly added to cat food
from synthetic, non-animal sources. In addition, in vitro
meat seems to be an ever more plausible reality. Still, a safe
non-animal derived cat food product would require strict
quality control and substantial evidence supporting its
digestibility—both of these traits are unfortunately lacking
in all current vegan feeding options for cats. In 2004, one
sample each of Evolution Vegetable Stew and Gourmet
Entree and Vegecat KibbleMix were found deficient in
several key nutrients (11). Without even knowing their
digestibility, these products failed to contain the nutrients
they claimed to on their label. A later study found that all
seventeen cats eating commercial or homemade vegetarian
diets had adequate blood levels of vitamin B12 and
fourteen of them had adequate levels of taurine (12). Both
of these nutrients are regularly supplemented in
companion animal food from vegan sources. While there is
anecdotal evidence of a few veterinarians maintaining
some cats on commercial vegan diets, there is also
anecdotal evidence of veterinarians seeing cats eating
these diets who develop dilated cardiomyopathy among
other health problems. Overall, I do not see myself >
“Although cats are
considered obligate
carnivores, it seems
likely that someday
there will be a
sound, cruelty free
product that meets
their nutrient
requirements.”
recommending currently available vegan cat food
products once I am in practice. It is hard to say what
is the most ethical way to feed your cat animal
products beyond meeting his or her health needs.
One possibility is feeding a homemade diet that
includes shrimp if one views certain crustaceans as
capable of less suffering than other animals. Another
ethically debatable choice is feeding flesh from larger
animals, such as cows, so fewer lives are taken. Given
the resources that beef production requires, however,
there are many collateral animal casualties that
should be considered. A third possibility is feeding
only foods with meat by-products for which animals
are not specifically slaughtered. I will let the vegan
ethicists debate this topic from here.
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