this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 453 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (125 children)

There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.

For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.

Interesting enough, that's not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn't for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn't something you can arbitrarily do.

[–] [email protected] 136 points 3 months ago (18 children)

It's bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?

I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can't bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn't really remove the "pet dilemma" to me.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 months ago (16 children)

Most people I know adopt from rescue shelters and all the vegans I know do that, often even focusing on pets that are somewhat "disadvantaged" regarding getting adopted, i.e. disabled or chronically ill animals. They go to an animal shelter not primarily with the wish of having a pet but providing a better life for an animal (because let's face it, even the best-intentioned shelters are understaffed and underfunded).

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 months ago (7 children)

am not vegan but I'll point out:

giving a cat a home, and fixing it so it won't breed further rescue cats, is not a dilemma to me.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

When "keeping bees" you are ever only hosting them. If the conditions are not to the hive's liking, they will find somewhere else to live. This is a significant problem in North America where honeybees are not native, as they will displace native species. But if you have a productive hive, they are happy and well treated.

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[–] [email protected] 107 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.

I don't. Veganism is about the fact that humans can live without animal products, which is true. Not accepting that actual carnivores exist, even being unhappy with this means you're well in extremist nutjob territory.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago (8 children)

There are plenty of vegan friendly pets to choose from too. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, chinchillas, pygmy goats ect. If they are willing to accept insectivorous animals that list gets longer.

Why choose a pet like a cat if their diet is a philosophical problem for them? Choose a different animal.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don't realise that it's a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is "as much as you are able" so I guess there is extremism everywhere.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I'm vegan and I don't know why these "vegans" are towing the line to to include non-human species. It's just as gross for vegan humans to apply their values to values in a dominant manner as it is for non-vegans to. Literally vegans doing this is antithesis to the entire cause.

I'm glad they got slapped. You'll always have idiots in a movement I guess...

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

It's a microcosm for science denial or misunderstanding of all kinds. Vegan cats and antivax may not seem related but the underlying misinformation is not dissimilar.

I tried following up on the vegan cat research being posted and it was very difficult to get a solid answer. There are multiple brands of vegan cat food marketed and sold, and it isn't outrageous to believe that our industrial society could find an ethical way to source the necessary nutrients and enrich the cat food.

But also there's very few studies that test the claims of the vegan cat food. What few meta-analysis exist, and anecdotes online, would suggest that all those foods lack certain critical nutrients for long-term feline health. But the anecdotes are drowned out by well-intentioned people who want to believe it works, and the studies are small, rare, hard to read, and locked behind paywalls.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (59 children)

Why do people even try to keep cats on vegan diet? It was your fucking choice, not the cats.

Im vegetarian, my cat eats meat. Im not gonna force anything on him unless he comes to me and tells me he wants to try it.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago

A lot of vegans will hate this, but YOU'RE NOT A FUCKING SCIENTIST! Drop all the journals and research you want, but your pet is not a lab-controlled experiment. Besides, something being in a journal doesn't make it true. If it is regularly cited as true, and has swept into general understanding of how to feed a pet, then it's factual...

I'm all for vegans living their best lives. Don't force it on a pet that doesn't know better. Vegans harming animals through their own food choices isn't a new thing, ask most vets and they'll have seen the effects of malnutrition from someone that thought that they knew better.

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[–] [email protected] 222 points 3 months ago (27 children)

Vegans argued that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can eat a vegan diet safely. Lemmy.world admin removed the posts for being misinformation, and the vegan community threw a fit over it.

[–] [email protected] 188 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Ask your vet what they think about a vegan diet for your pets. They will tell you "no". That should really be the end to the discussion, but I guess these guys think they know better than actual experts.

[–] [email protected] 110 points 3 months ago (23 children)

It's so sad, because veganism is a good force in our culture. Look at all of the vegan meat alternatives and more and more restaurants that have to have at least vegetarian options in certain areas. That wasn't a thing 20 years ago.

Vegan diets help the environment and improve health. But many vegans get this brain rot, probably a consequence of a superiority complex where they have to police everything around them. It happens in a lot of communities.

I'm not a vegan. But the idea has me eating less and less meat every year.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 months ago (9 children)

I imagine most vegans are just ordinary people. And hell, good on them for making the environmentally friendly choice. I've been excited that my local stores are starting to carry plant-based alternatives that aren't expensive as hell. Fuck are the weirdos loud, though.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

My MIL likes to pull out the phrase "indoctornated" anytime a doctor/vet/educated professional disagrees with her hardcore plant based diet views for all people and animals

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 3 months ago (39 children)

Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.

I'm not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed... I had to block their communities. It didn't seem likely that I'd be reading any productive discourse there.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 months ago (32 children)

I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn't talk to anyone about it other than to say, "I don't eat that."

I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still 'more vegan' and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.

"Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool."

Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.

I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 3 months ago (3 children)

"Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”

I'm a level 5 vegan. I won't eat anything that casts a shadow.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (11 children)

Between them and Linux evangelicals, this place can be pretty annoying at times.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 3 months ago (11 children)

Spoken like a meat eating windows user

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as vegan, is in fact, GNU/vegan, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus vegan.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago

Linux evangelicals

We just want to save your code from eternal damnation

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago (23 children)

Exactly my experience. I often heard stories of vegans being like that, but I never ever saw it so I thought it was just made up to belittle vegans.

Then I joined lemmy and found out that I'm apparently in favour of massacres, slavery and rape because I consume meat/milk/eggs from time to time.

I imagine the vast majority of vegans just go about their lives and resprectfully discuss the ethics of animal consumption when the topic comes up, but these loud militant members really make vegans look bad and they sure as hell make it so that even less people consider going vegan

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I stick with Margaret Cho’s advice on vegans from her Assassin tour back in 2005:

And especially, especially, don't fuck with vegans. Do not look vegans in the eye. If you get into an argument with a vegan, say "I'm wrong" and run away as fast as you can. Do not fuck with vegans because they will fuck you up...BECAUSE THEY'RE HUNGRY.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Context: official c/vegan post, lemmy.world admin post 1 of 2
TL;DR: Debate over whether claiming that plant-based diets for carnivorous animals could be safe constitutes encouraging animal abuse + whether an admin's reaction to demote the entire mod team was justified

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wow that is a proper trash fire comment section! Haven't seen one that stinky since I left reddit

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (3 children)

“Meatsplained” made my day though fr.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 3 months ago (4 children)

You know I'm kinda okay with vegan cats being the most controversial topic on Lemmy. Could be doing a lot worse.

Personally I believe the only ethical way to enjoy a cat steak is if the cat is vegan and that's the TRUTH here's a study:

Ethical&nutritiousCatMeat.com

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (70 children)

Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).

EDIT: I want to add I'm very much pro-vegan. They're literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won't see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (6 children)

As a vegan, can confirm.

When I was on reddit, I could not be part of the r/vegan community, it was fucked.

The community here on Lemmy was better (though I wasn't subbed because these communities are mostly newcomers to the vegan scene coming fresh off the high of being morally superior to the carnists).

The good vegan communities were the ones focused on recipes.

If you want to discus animal liberation, good, go do that, but I don't want to my feed to be a combination of dinner and animal abuse. I'm trying to move past that...

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 3 months ago (2 children)

People started arguing about whether cats can eat vegan, mods on c!vegan got involved, then an admin got involved. People's personal feelings about veganism overtook any actual discussion about when it is or isn't inappropriate for Admins/mods to step in, hence the pinned post on the front page.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 months ago (150 children)

I have lots of friends that are vegan/have been vegan, or are sympathetic to the cause. IRL I have had some wonderful conversations about veganism and the ethics of our diet. But on the Internet it's the vegans ironically that need to get out and touch grass. It's like there's no nuance to any conversation, like sorry I can be Peter Singer, it's actually kinda difficult to be that moral.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago (2 children)

"we taught a lion to eat tofu!"

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (20 children)

Some vegans decide all cats, like all other animals, should join their club, whether they want to or not. Deemed dubious practice by some but not impossible by others.

Admin loses mind, power trips.

You're caught up.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I wonder if we need some kind of middle ground like Twitter where you leave the content up, with a big banner saying "this content is bullshit and here is the evidence"?

While I agree that harmful information should probably be hidden so that impressionable people don't act on it, I also don't like non-experts being the arbiters of censorship.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Absolutely, first he lumps dogs and cats together, they have extremely different dietary needs.

Second, I couldn't find anything specific to cats dietary needs being met by a vegan diet. The video's sources seem to be based on self reporting surveys. Not science.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (4 children)

if cats were vegan, they'll be eating grass like the gazelles in the Serengeti.

you don't feed lions a vegan diet just like you don't feed giraffes a meat diet.

not that hard.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I just had a look over there, every post bar one in the last week is about vegan cats.

They're not handling this well at all.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (4 children)

What the hell? If a human decides to go vegan, then great! But forcing a CARNIVOROUS animal into it is just animal abuse.

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