What happened in the vegan community?
I hadn’t heard about any of this until seeing that ToS post.
Based on the post they were spreading misinformation and being really unsightly, calling not vegans things akin to slurs like “meaties” or some shit. I don’t know the full story though.
Vegans have hilarious nicknames, they seem to spend quite a bit of time on it
Is “meatie” or “carnist” really a slur though? Those seem benign at worst and mildly accurate at best. Who is throwing a fit over that?
“No no, you have to protect the feelings of “meat eaters” and “carnivores” by using the full word.” ??? Like… why is this the hill people die on?
I agree that feeding a cat a vegan or vegetarian diet is still animal abuse, though. They’re not omnivores like us. They’re obligate carnivores, and pretending they’re not is abusive.
The long and short of it is, One of the lemmy.world admins demoted a mod of the vegan community over a comment about how cat can be fed a 100% vegan diet with supplements and the cat will be fine.
What an asshole vegan. How stupid can you be to say you love animals and say something as dumb as this
Jesus, stop downvoting someone for asking a question what the fuck is wrong with you people
Cats are obligate carnivores. They have evolved to eat meat and only meat. A vegan diet can and will kill them.
I once gave a vegan friend of mine pause for thought when I pointed out that we probably shouldn’t be keeping pets in the first place if those pets aren’t in their natural habitat doing what their species evolved to do. They had cats.
A good thought, if you are planning to buy one from a breeder! Don’t do that (unless you are a farmer who needs a very specific breed of working dog). By adopting instead, you can ethically have a companion, imo. The animal life already exists, so by giving it a good home, you’re engaging in harm reduction. Don’t forget to slay and neuter those pets!
I have 2 cats but they weren’t born because of me. They’re from a shelter. They can freely roam the woods behind my house and of course they kill a lot of mice (and a few birds).
The other alternatives would be keeping them locked up for life and feeding them cat food from industrialized animal farms, or putting them to sleep. I don’t think those alternatives would be more ethical.
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point.
Edit: I recognize my comment is a bit condescending. I do not mean to discourage discussion. I am genuinely curious and encourage your feedback. Please let me know if I’m missing something important here.
Well I understand you point for sure. Mine is just larger than just the diet. If you are so vegan that you would force your diet into.you pet, shoud you have a pet at all?!! Isn’t that captivity?? Why is it better?? And why even have a cat if you know there are other types of pets that are vegan by nature?
If it’s a one in a 1000 cases that the cat was inherit and can’t be rehomed than that cat is too old to adapt into a new diet without being very distressed. So why torture an animal if you are a lover? And if it’s a new animal… well get a turtle or a bird or none, since vegans are against animal exploitation and captivity.
I’m sorry but I get really angry when people come with the “Rules only apply when it suits me” shit
Wtf is happening in the comments. Why are people getting so insane over this topic over and over again? If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what? The only two reasons to object are if someone is 100% convinced such a product doesn’t and cannot exist or if they’re entirely ideological about it. And if we have to apply the naturalistic fallacy that only the natural way can be morally okay, why of all things argue about pet food? I really, really don’t get it why people get so intensely emotional about it.
If only this was readily researchable…
But yeah, animal cruelty gets people het up. This is the internet, don’t fuck with cats
What should stop a company from supplementing the right amount of all the nutrients listed? The article simply claims it’s not nutritionally complete, but that would only be an argument against the brands currently available and tested, not against the idea in principle.
If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what?
Because the vegan cat food that claims to be nutritionally complete isn’t. Whenever these brands have their products studied they turn out to not be nutritionally complete. Feeding them to a cat is abuse.
So they should simply start producing one that is. Problem solved. No law of nature prevents us from supplementing the right amount of taurine and b12, so there is no reason to be irrational about it.
Maybe no one in the history of the internet has argued about this and it’s just time for people to duke it out. I thought everything was settled about cats by now, but maybe not.
Vegan 2.0 was released recently and the attention it received led to a private equity buyout. Vegan® is now a trademark term and you need that ® or it’s in violation. I hear they are about to release a line of fake-vegan® meat for people who want to look vegan but like the taste of cow.
Is eating lab grown meat vegan?
“a person who does not eat any food derived from animals and who typically does not use other animal products”.
not by that definition
Depends who you ask:
some would say that it’s vegan as long as no animal has suffered or been deprived for your meal, meaning that lab grown qualifies.
Others, such as the crazies in the vegan circle jerk community, believe that as long as it’s ever been in the same zip code as a leather belt, it can never be vegan.
That last one is exaggerated, of course, but nowhere near as much as you’d hope…
Not yet. Growing cells in a lab still requires fetal bovine serum which is obviously an animal product. There is work going into replacing it with a synthetic alternative but, to my knowledge, noone has been successful yet.
You seem knowledgeable, is the FBS clonal? Like can it grow more undifferentiated or does it need to be continually harvested?
FBS doesn’t contain cells. It’s a chemical/protein mixture used to grow various cell cultures. On It’s own it doesn’t do anything. It just contains most of the things that growing cells need.
I actually know very little about it though. Check out The Thought Emporium on youtube if you want a better look at how it is all done. They do all sorts of fun stuff like engineering yeast to produce spider silk, growing neurons and using them for basic computation, making a meat berry, and using a genetically engineered virus to cure their lactose intolerance for a while.
Edit: Also that youtuber did some testing on replacing FBS and the growth medium with other substances with some sucess. If I remember correctly, they found that for growing regular muscle cells they could replace like 60% of the FBS needed with egg yolk without harming the cells. But that’s still an animal product so it’s still not exactly vegan.
Vegans do a better job of pissing everyone off about a pretty sensible topic than any community I’ve ever seen
their vitriol is…weird. if they just said “i prefer…” not many would be bothered.
“you’re a murderer.” does tend to ruffle feathers.
Forreal, longtime vegan here… Vegans (online mostly) annoy me more than most people. I swear we aren’t all jerks! I’m probably a major sell out, I don’t even have a problem with hunters.
Honestly as a linux nerd sometimes I feel like us open source folks have a similar problem
You do a bunch of work and make sacrifices to accomplish living in a way you feel proud of! Wonderful! And then you turn around and antagonize people who don’t invest all their time and energy in the issue that you personally really connect with…! Oh… Wonderful… 🙃
A lot of us are murderers in that way. Or accomplices, whatever. The thing about vegans specifically is that there’s not any moral need for it. The goodness to animals would make you vegetarian. Not having cheese or eggs is not the slightest bit morally better.
Eh kinda. The working conditions of cows and chickens is pretty horrible. I could see not wanting to be involved in that.
But personally, I’m going to worry about improving the working conditions of humans first.
Well now I’m wondering if you ever had an actual conversation with a vegan, because they actually have good reasons for this. A vegan diet is simply the most consequential idea if you want to minimize the necessity for animals to die, at the very least (even if we ignore the various ways of exploitation) because male chickens and calves obviously have to be killed in order for these industries to function.
You really just have no idea what you’re talking about, huh?
Watch the documentary above and tell me that dairy and eggs have “not the slightest bit” of ethical concern for animal products other than meat.
Almost like ruffling feathers is the point when you truly believe most people are being murderers. You don’t change society by being polite.
Activism isn’t about being polite as much as effecting change, which vegans are doing the opposite of through much of their online presence.
Lots of activists change society by passing legislation, organizing political action and peaceful protests.
Irritating other people with half-baked personal invective won’t get you anywhere productive.
It’s because they don’t actually give a shit about animals, they just want to feel morally superior.
Same as anyone wanting to ban x, y, or z “for the children”.
Same as people who want to stop using a perfectly good term because they think it might be offensive to such-and-such group, despite never actually consulting any members of such-and-such group.
This is an absurd take. Vegans have to sacrifice a lot. I absolutely love animals and it’s insane to me that someone can’t see the amount of torture and murder of animals there is out there.
I decided to cut out, as much as is reasonably possible, anything that was made by or is these animals. I don’t do this because I want to feel superior, I do it for the animals. Most vegans don’t do this for attention. Just because you see some vegans shouting online doesn’t mean we’re all like that.