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It is infuriating to read articles published by little known Google vets on behalf of vegan pet brands trumpeting a brave new world for health-conscious hounds, their devoted pet parents and the wider planet. We, like so many other prominent pet food pioneers are very vocal about the ‘nutritional upside’ associated with adding a generous smattering of fruit, veg and seeds to a dog’s primarily meat centric daily diet however this ‘balanced diet’ mindset is very different from what some members of an increasingly attention-seeking vegan fringe are currently suggesting.
Dogs are not and never have been obligate carnivores, because there is a significant body of research that shows even dog’s distant relatives foraged for nutrient-rich grasses, berries, herbs & root veg to supplement their meat-heavy diets. However, spurious claims that the more sedentary lifestyles of today’s dogs today means that they are perfectly equipped to adopt a vegan lifestyle feels at best misguided and at worst rampant opportunism.
Digging a little deeper let us look at some of the recipe decks being pushed by these so-called plant-based luminaries:
Rice, potato protein, dried red linseeds (10%), sunflower oil, beet fibre, minerals, yeast (partially hydrolysed), apple fibre, hydrolysed vegetable protein.
Vitamin A (16000 IU), vitamin D3 (1200 IU), vitamin E (130mg), vitamin C [as ascorbylmonophosphate, calcium sodium salt] (200mg), vitamin B1 (10mg), vitamin B2 (15mg), vitamin B6 (15mg), vitamin B12 (70mcg), pantothenic acid (40mg), niacin (60mg), folic acid (4mg), biotin (600mcg), taurine (1000mg), L-carnitine (300mg), iron [iron-(II)-sulphate, monohydrate] (180mg), zinc [glycine-zinc chelate, hydrate] (160mg), manganese [manganese-(II)-oxide] (16mg), copper [glycine-copper chelate, hydrate] (20mg), iodine [calcium iodate, anhydrous] (2mg), selenium [sodium selenite] (0.25mg).
Wheat, Barley, Maize, Textured Vegetable (Soya) Protein, High Protein Soya, Soya Oil, Vitamins and Minerals. Additives: Colourants: Red Oxide.
Nutritional Additives/Kg: Vitamin A 11,700 IU, Calcitriol Glycoside 1,170 IU, Vitamin E 56mg, Vitamin B1 1.8mg, Vitamin B2 3.7mg, Vitamin B6 1.8mg, Vitamin B12 18.5mcg, Vitamin B3 Niacin 18.5mg, Vitamin B5 Pantothenic acid 14mg, Folic Acid 1mg
Trace Elements: Calcium Iodate Anhydrous 1.44mg, (Iodine 0.88mg), Sodium Selenite 3.1mg (Selenium 0.14mg), Curpic Sulphate Pentahydrate 54mg (Copper 13.5mg), Ferrous Sulphate Monohydrate 150mg (Iron 45mg), Manganous Oxide 130mg (Manganese 81mg), Zinc Oxide 257mg (Zinc 185mg). Taurine 130mg, L-Carnitine 67mg
So what is the common thread that links the recipes of the aforementioned plant-based evangelists? Could it be that in each instance we are seeing a heavy inclusion of grains and soy loaded with a ‘truck load’ of chemicals. Perhaps disingenuous tag lines such as ‘powered by plants,’ should be changed to ‘fuelled by chemicals.’
Unfortunately, the disinformation does not end there, because these are the very same ‘chemical pushers’ who make boastful and wrongful claim of clean ingredients. There can be three possible reasons for such wrong declarations (i) Brand custodians do not know the meaning of clean ingredients (ii) people doing the back label (product managers) and those doing the front of the pack label (marketers/ brand managers) are sitting is different silos and totally disconnected from each other (iii) intentionally want to dupe customers with a false claim.
Are the producers of such cynical Frankenstein concoctions really thinking about the wider needs of the planet or simply paving the way to make a quick buck? Surely bona-fide pet lovers wouldn’t put any animal’s wellbeing at risk by toying with its eating patterns when the long-term impact of such a radical dietary overhaul is simply unknown!
Then there are the high-profile vegan pet parents who claim that their dog’s vegan vigil has resulted in everything from a miraculous reduction in arthritis symptoms to a happier pet persona. These claims seem incredulous when one considers that there’s no cure for human arthritis that includes a light sprinkling of potato, rice or maize. It might well be that the aforementioned chemicals are momentarily ‘helping’ the bones, but at what cost to the kidneys?
Let us also tackle the ‘ethical guilt’ hoisted upon us by those who claim that animal agriculture as the greatest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions; even though according to the World Resource Institute, the 3 largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions are as follows:
Simply put animal agriculture only accounts for 11% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One study peddled by so-called vegan visionaries is that pets consume around a fifth of the world’s meat and fish. While this may well be true for US, this claim certainly does not hold true in countries like China and India that incidentally account for 40% of the world population and where pet-per-person numbers are significantly lower.
Even assuming the 1/5th argument is correct and we eliminate all animal protein from the pet diets, that would only reduce greenhouse gas emission by less than 1% and is this really a sound rationale to put our beloved animals health and happiness at risk?
It is also worth noting that however well-intentioned some vegan food trends might be, their environmental footprint isn’t nearly as ‘planet-friendly’ as you might first imagine. For instance, it takes 74 litres of water to make a single glass of almond milk and 54 litres of water to create a similar sized glass of rice milk. Perhaps next time our vegan friends smash avocados on toast for their next sumptuously choreographed Instagram post, they should mention that 2,000 litres of water was diverted to produce a single kilogram of this most celebrated of fruit, and that’s without mentioning the alarming amount of deforestation currently taking place to accommodate this trending vegan food. So even vegans have a high environmental impact and I am sure they will not stop eating despite their food is hardly carbon neutral.
The vegan hypocrisy does not end there given that fruits like avocados require migratory beekeeping in order to pollinate the plants as demand for avocados globally cannot be met by the earth’s natural production capacity.
Others point to the risk of high level of contaminations in animal-based products and yet as many of us are only too aware, there’s actually a massive mould problem that exists in plant-based ingredient production, a truly global issue that’s been linked with many fatal ailments such as liver failure.
As the % of vegetable origin ingredients go up that probability or possibility of mould contamination is only going to increase. The way to eliminate or reduce contamination is not to switch from animal-based products to plant based ones but for the petfood production houses being responsible and held responsible for the quality standards.
This all feels uncomfortably familiar! Back in the 1950s ‘big business’ fuelled the myth that dogs need carbohydrates to live active lives, even though the inclusion of these cheap, lazy fillers is far more about easy access to cheap and abundant ingredients with long shelf lives than any fictitious dog health benefits.
Today well-meaning but misguided ‘pet parents’ are buying food unaware that they are littered with starch, soy (hydrolyzed soy protein) and oats, even though any well-informed veterinarian will confirm that soy interferes with a dog’s thyroid gland’s ability to make T4 (thyroxine) and (T3) tri-iodothyronine which can result in hypothyroidism. Remember, thyroid hormones affect virtually every cell in the body, so it is hardly surprising to learn that dogs with hypothyroidism are prone to everything from hair loss, weight gain, ear infection and anaemia (to name but a few).
Worse still is the small matter of hydrolysed soy protein often containing large amounts of MSG (monosodium glutamate), which poses a myriad of health risks of its own, including obesity, nervous system disorders…. Unfortunately, businesses fuelled by investment from some of the richest in the world are cynically operating under the veil of veganism, peddling products awash with cheap grain fillers and synthetic nasties and only the lightest trace of beneficial veg.
The vegan advocates may push as their arguments as much that dogs are not carnivores but facultative omnivores (which means theoretically they can survive on vegan diets) they tend to forget that when we adopt pets we should do our best to give them a diet that keeps them healthy and happy and not put them on a diet on which they can just survive.
One can quote the name of any vet, research or theory of evolution/ domestication; that dogs are not wolves etc. but even today based on the intestinal length and coefficient of fermentation (a measure of the body’s ability to extract nutrients from plant-based foods) dogs are closer to carnivores and their bodies are designed to eat more meat and not grains and vegetables and definitely not a dozen of chemical compounds that power most commercial vegan foods. It is a biologically established fact that eating too much vegetable matter (long term) effects reducing the acid level in the dog’s stomach. The higher pH levels increase the risk of disease as high pH levels (weak acid) do not kill bad bacteria that can be present in multiple surfaces they happily lick. Yes dogs can eat grass – to be sick or to gain nutrients but that should not be mistaken they can be vegan.
I just wish I could reach out to all those dogs suffering in silence as a result of vegan pet parents imposing their own dietary beliefs on their four-legged friends.
As Fran Lebowitz once remarked: ‘If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he in turn wears a tail.” – If you my canine friend are being asked to eat vegan diet ask your owner to try peeing with one leg up in the air.’