Eating Meats.

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garethw

Settler
Sorry but I just couldn't get by without a big juicy rare steak... yes I love fish, yes I love veg, and fruit.. but my favourite dish is a big entrecote, with a bottle of bordeaux.
Guess that's what living in France does for you...
Cordialement mes amis
Gareth
 

Xunil

Settler
Jan 21, 2006
671
3
55
North East UK
www.bladesmith.co.uk
Do you know I had never considered that Tengu! I suppose people who are vegetarians through morality just don't own cats or dogs. Please reassure me that no-one makes natural carnivores eat a vegetarian diet?

My vet tells me that there are many cases (the number is apparently growing steadily) of vegetarians trying to feed dogs 'alternate' diets. She made no mention of cats but she did tell me of two cases she knows herself where one animal became seriously ill and the other died, and she says that more and more cases are making themselves apparent.

The folks involved were supposedly more shocked and upset at the possibility of prosecution rather than the distress caused to the family pooch...

I can ask for more details, but it does go on. That said there is no reason why a dog cannot survive well on a properly implemented vegetarian/vegan based diet - note the use of "properly implemented".

I'd never chance it even if I was that way inclined. It just seems fundamentally flawed to go against nature at its very core and to inflict your own very personal views onto an animal that is predisposed towards something you happen to find disagreeable and who has absolutely no choice in the matter. That has to be the very worst kind of human arrogance and indifference towards the animal itself.

Funny old world...
 

garethw

Settler
Sorry but I just couldn't get by without a big juicy rare steak... yes I love fish, yes I love veg, and fruit.. but my favourite dish is a big entrecote, with a bottle of bordeaux.
Guess that's what living in France does for you...
Cordialement mes amis
Gareth
 

Whittler Kev

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Mar 8, 2009
4,314
12
64
March, UK
bushcraftinfo.blogspot.com
My vet tells me that there are many cases (the number is apparently growing steadily) of vegetarians trying to feed dogs 'alternate' diets. She made no mention of cats but she did tell me of two cases she knows herself where one animal became seriously ill and the other died, and she says that more and more cases are making themselves apparent.
Worked with a vegan that put his dog on the same diet. Nearly killed the dog until he started feeding it "real" dog food again
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Xunil you are mistaken.
Vegetarian diet is easy on just what is produced in the UK.
Been there, done that.

That I am happy to have oranges and the like that won't grow here doesn't take away from that fact.
One can get very tired of field beans but they produce a milk much like soya from them now, and it's nutritious too.

Could we feed our present population without importing food....if we brought the land back into cultivation and used modern crops, then yes.

These are all old arguments.
Strange how very intolerant the meat eaters among us seem to be though :confused:
Not one vegetarian has demanded that the meat eaters desist.

Ah, each to their own.

Off for a cuppa (and yes, tea does grow in the UK but I prefer China myself) and a bit of chocolate (deepest, darkest Brazilian :rolleyes: ) and to feed the cat..........don't know what, a tinful of something or other dead, in gravy. Funnily enough Madam steals my braised tofu if she gets the chance :)

atb,
Mary
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,780
1,517
51
Wiltshire
British Red, you dont want to know what animal lovers do to animals.

You also dont want to know what goes on in buddist societies...

And it has a human cost too, such as in places like Mustang there being a caste of untouchables to do the slaughtering butchering and leatherwork.
 

Xunil

Settler
Jan 21, 2006
671
3
55
North East UK
www.bladesmith.co.uk
Xunil you are mistaken.
Vegetarian diet is easy on just what is produced in the UK.
Been there, done that...

My apologies - I meant in relation to a sudden upsurge of numbers of people suddenly placing much, much heavier demand on the currently available resources - I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible :)
 

Xunil

Settler
Jan 21, 2006
671
3
55
North East UK
www.bladesmith.co.uk
Thats just sick - I hope they get prosecuted for animal cruelty :(

On the flip side there are many specialised dog foods that are vegetarian or vegan that are used to treat dogs with various allergies.

It's not the issue of putting a dog on a vegetarian diet that I struggle with, although it just feels plain wrong in every sense to my way of thinking - it's the bloody minded attitude of those who inflict it on the family pooch without understanding what it is they are doing, that gets me. They appear to have a common sense bypass in making the assumption that what can be made to work for them can be directly applied to a dog or, even worse, when they feed said dog leftovers and peelings.

Prosecution would be very low on the list of things I'd see done to them...

I can't see how the typical moral stance of many vegetarians can apply to the family dog to begin with. Animals are not raised and slaughtered for the sole purpose of making dog food, so why the fundamental objection to feeding a dog meat ?

Seems a perverse perspective on personal choice to me.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,780
1,517
51
Wiltshire
Ok, Xunil, where does all this muck in tins that are fed to dogs and cats come from?

Surley thats where our excess horses go? (And there are few animals more useless than a nag)
 

Xunil

Settler
Jan 21, 2006
671
3
55
North East UK
www.bladesmith.co.uk
Ok, Xunil, where does all this muck in tins that are fed to dogs and cats come from?

Surley thats where our excess horses go? (And there are few animals more useless than a nag)

OK, I don't want to sail out over deep waters here, but most of the vegetarian friends I have seem to share a variation on the theme of objecting to farming animals for food - as in, raising and killing the animal for food.

I can't see how that applies to dog food since animal 'waste' products appears to be the major ingredient to most canned and some dry dog foods. The animals were not farmed/raised and killed solely to make the dog food, therefore my simplistic logic tells me that the fundamental objection cannot apply since the farmed animal is:

1. already dead
2. was killed for another primary purpose
3. was not solely raised to ultimately become dog food

What I am getting at is why inflict a very personal lifestyle and ultimately dietary choice on an animal (that most owners would purport to love) that is genetically preprogrammed to hunt and eat meat ?

If said owner is going to make that choice for their animal, doesn't the animal at least deserve for it to be done properly ?

You wouldn't take a pound of sausages to the lake to feed the local ducks.

Why expect Rover to flourish on carrot and potato peelings ?

This is great campfire chatter and there are far too many facets to explore properly where the forum environment doesn't allow facial and vocal expression and where the written word can sometimes be taken any one of a number of ways that it wasn't intended to mean.

My basic stance: a dog is primarily, if not necessarily solely, a meat eater. Just because a dog can do well on a well thought out and implemented vegetarian diet doesn't mean that it should. My baseline objection is founded on the above mentioned cases where folks were effectively shoving kitchen peelings and vegetable waste into their pooch and then, lo and behold, illness and death follow. The dietary needs had to have been abused for some time to reach the stage of death, and for quite a while to cause the level of illness my vet mentioned to me. That's what I can't cope with.

People can choose their own path.

That could be anything from knitting your own yoghurt, hunting with a bow and arrows, going vegan, opting to only eat fish or white meat, etc, etc and so on. We have the luxury of choice.

Dogs, being almost entirely dependent on their owners, haven't that luxury, and by and large it is fair to say that animals aren't generally farmed for the sole purpose of making them into tins of pooch food.

I just find it distasteful, extreme and downright cruel unless it is approached properly, which the cases I mentioned weren't.

We definitely need a campfire and a good brew to hammer this out properly :D
 

trixx

Member
Jul 14, 2010
46
0
Scotland
Cats are obligate carnivores and they cannot survive on an exclusively vegetarian diet. Unfortunately many deluded individuals seem to be obligate cat owners.

Dogs can survive on a vegetarian diet. In fact, dogs are so well adapted to making the most of whatever they can scavenge that it takes considerable time, effort and dedication on the part of an owner to feed a dog a diet that will cause malnutrition and serious metabolic disease. Sadly people seem to rise to the challenge with depressing regularity.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I wondered about that Trixx. I know my cat is a carnivore, but dogs always seemed to be true omnivores.....like foxes, who'll even dig up and eat earthworms as well as raid dustbins and chicken coops and eat fallen apples.

That said, all of the cats I've had munched grass at times, and in Winter have been known to have a chew at the pot plants, so much so that I don't keep toxic ones. They have also had a taste for the weirdest of foods, from rice pudding, with raisins, to the present moggy who likes braised tofu :rolleyes: and it's not for lack of cat food in their dishes either. I think Madam would eat pretty much anything though so long as it had gravy on it :)

cheers,
M
 

trixx

Member
Jul 14, 2010
46
0
Scotland
all of the cats I've had munched grass at times, and in Winter have been known to have a chew at the pot plants

Most cats do that, and the results of eating some pot plants can be fairly serious (in the case of cannabis plants the symptoms can be serious, but strangely amusing). One of my cats used to go daft for bits of melon, another liked oranges and yet another used to have a thing for salted peanuts.

Although they might chew on plant material, they don't get much if any nutritional benefit from it.
 

rik_uk3

Banned
Jun 10, 2006
13,320
24
69
south wales
Canned dog/cat food has to be fit for human consumption, certainly in the UK (or was when I was a retail manager many years ago).
 

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