• naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Silly vegoon, only the cute animals I didn’t want to eat have feelings. The others are unfeeling slabs of meat that is magically created by wholesome farmers being folksy.

      • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        There are people working on foods for cats which aren’t based on cruelty. There already exist options, though some are sold as special diets.

        Example: https://sustainablepetfood.info/

        https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0284132 it’s already happening.

        The work in “lab meat” products is actually going to contribute to this too.

        Note: cats don’t eat cows or pigs or even adult chickens in “nature”.

      • Floey@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Obligate carnivores in nature. Why do you care if a cat is fed with fortified plant bits vs fortified animal bits? Neither product exists in nature and the cat can live a healthy life on both. Also breeding cats to be pets is completely unnatural, so why are you fine with that?

        • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Let me burn this horses skin so it is marked for the rest of its life

          dont you dare put your cat on a vegan diet!

          I believe it ties into the “if it cant be done 100% perfectly its not worth doing at all” excuse omnis have

        • meliaesc@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It’s not a “moral” obligation, it’s how their body actually processes and uses proteins and nutrients… you know, it’s probably better for me to not engage here. Stop neglecting animals based on your own beliefs.

          Go get a rabbit for a pet instead.

          • Floey@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            This is bullshit because pet food exists where the proteins are denatured because some animals have serious allergies. Animals can build the proteins they need from the constituent parts. There are surely proteins unique to cats, where do you think they get them, cannibalism? Are you saying veterinarians recommending such products are harming animals?

            Also who said I have a cat companion, even if you were 100% correct about what constitutes neglect it would not apply to me. But you’re obviously not engaging in good faith and just want someone to paint as a monster. What’s really monstrous is we have an industry that brutally harvests billions of sentient creatures every year just to feed ourselves and other animals.

              • Floey@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                Link to studies please.

                Nobody is suggesting we feed cats tofu and spinach. The naturalistic argument and yelling “We don’t know!” a bunch really only works if you are proposing we feed cats only raw meat from fresh kills, what they would eat in the wild. Pet food isn’t a pet’s natural diet, vegan or not, and it all has to be fortified.

                I don’t believe in such a naturalistic argument though. Humans are able (key word, able, most don’t) eat healthier with modern diets. Why would we assume we can’t develop food that is just as healthy or even healthier than an animal’s natural diet?

                • meliaesc@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6380542/

                  Indeed, the cat appears to have less capability to adapt to most changes in dietary composition because it cannot change the quantities of enzymes involved in the metabolic pathways. This evolutionary development has resulted in more stringent nutritional requirements for cats than for omnivores such as the rat, dog, and man.

                  Biologically, humans are omnivores. Your suggestion would work great with other omnivores. I’m all for balanced healthy humane diets for the animals we are responsible for feeding! But not to the point of neglect.

                  • Floey@lemm.ee
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                    6 months ago

                    When I said study I meant an observational or longitudinal study measuring health outcomes, not a description of the mechanisms at play. Such studies are important to concluding that alternative diets are already nutritional or elucidating the flaws so that they may be addressed.

                    Don’t you think such knowledge of cat digestion would be integrated into feeding a cat in a vegan way? We are incredibly good at synthesizing nutrients these days through both chemical processes and modifying microorganisms or plants. We can produce “higher forms” of things such as vitamin A and D without invoking animal biology, these aren’t hypotheticals, such things are already common in the huge supplement and cosmetics industries.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I don’t eat meat, but the more we learn about plant intelligence, the less I can say with confidence that plants do not have their equivalents of things like pain and emotion. It doesn’t help that we have great difficulty defining what emotion means.

      But we know a lot about plants now that we thought were animal things. Grass “panics” or “screams” by sending out chemical signals when you cut it as a warning to others of its species that they are seriously injured and danger is coming. That’s what the smell of fresh-cut grass is. Sure, calling it a panic or a scream is anthropomorphizing it, but it’s kind of hard to describe it in other terms.

      We also have learned about “mother trees,” which will send resources to their offspring if the offspring let the mother tree know they are in desperate need of them. Which sounds very much like parenting in animal species. There’s also lots of evidence that plants can learn from experiences and retain some sort of memory of them in some capacity.

      Do I think plants have the same sort of sentience as animals and will I stop eating broccoli? Of course not. But I will still have to admit that at the end of the day, I might just be choosing to cause a different kingdom of life pain and suffering because it’s far enough away from my species that I don’t consider that to be pain and suffering.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        If you’re eating meat, then you’re contributing to the death of all of those plants that had to feed the animals you’re eating. Even if you grant plants sentience, veganism is still the more ethical option.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Is “more ethical” really enough if you accept that plants can suffer? You’re still essentially saying one group of living things’ suffering is acceptable to you. Isn’t that like saying the holocaust of the Jews was bad, but the holocaust of the Roma at the same time was fine because there were fewer Roma than Jews? Does “less” matter when we’re talking quantities so massive?

          I don’t think there are easy answers to any of these questions. Not if you want to approach them from an honest philosophical level.

          • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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            6 months ago

            Is “more ethical” really enough if you accept that plants can suffer

            I don’t accept that, but even if I did, you should still act to minimize suffering as much as possible.

            Do you really believe that killing a plant is the same as killing an animal?

      • iusearchbtw@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Weird how every time veganism comes up everyone is suddenly deathly allergic to anything that doesn’t scream when it dies

        • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          …every time veganism comes up…

          You mean every time that a vegan uses whatever tenuous link to the current topic they can imagine exists to bring up veganism?

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Post: animals have emotions

            Comment: we shouldn’t kill things with emotions

            I dunno seems pretty related. And when we’re feeling a lot of empathy for animals is probably the best time to think about these issues

            • skye@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              And then when someone brings a topic to discussion related to these issues

              “I can’t be vegan, i’m allergic to a lot of stuff”, suddenly it’s not about having a discussion anymore but rather to push one side of the story without consideration for others.

              • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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                6 months ago

                You can still care about animal cruelty and be ethical, even if you have an allergy. Having a medical condition doesn’t give you a free pass to do whatever you want.

        • BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Stuff from milk, mushrooms and eggs don’t scream, so do a lot of salads and olive oil, even rice is silent.

          And don’t start with those industrial cows that only get to live because of the milk. That stuff tastes like shit. Same with those chickens in cages.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Plants scream when they die, we just don’t notice it. They release all sorts of pheromone type chemicals that warn other plants that there is danger. That’s definitely a scream.

          I’m not saying eating meat is better, I’m just saying that seemingly the only truly ethical things to eat are raw minerals, and I don’t believe that’s possible, other than salt. Salt seems to be the only tasty rock.

          • iusearchbtw@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Graphics cards totally scream when they die too, the smell warns their symbiotic sysadmins to turn off the power

            And don’t even get me started on how chalkboards scream when you scratch them, why do vegans not talk about this cruelty