Carrot and the stick for vegan dogs

Is it morally superior to feed your pet a diet devoid of animal ingredients?

In a new survey out of the University of Guelph, 35 per cent of pet owners indicated an interest in switching their pets to a plant-based or vegan diet.

The study, the first to investigate the prevalence of “meat avoidance” in the pet owner population, comes as more Canadians are reconsidering their own relationship with animal flesh. Nearly 20 per cent of the population is minimizing, or eliminating entirely, meat products from their diets, and, according to a recent survey, Canada is now home to 1.3 million self-identifying vegetarians and 466,000 vegans (no dairy or eggs), the highest surveyed numbers yet.

“People who avoid eating animals tend to share their homes with animal companions, and a moral dilemma may arise when they are faced with feeding animal products to their omnivorous dogs and carnivorous cats,” U of Guelph veterinarian Sarah Dodd and her co-authors wrote in the journal PLOS ONE.

One option to alleviate this “moral conflict,” they said, is to make pets go meat free. However, since neither dogs nor cats are free to choose their lifestyle, is it ethical?

British cat owners were recently warned they could face charges under animal welfare laws for feeding their favourite feline a vegan diet.

According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, “cats cannot be vegetarian!”

Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they need a well-balanced, meatbased diet to stay fit and healthy, the royal society says on its website.

Dogs, theoretically, could live on a plant-based diet alone, animal physiologist Wanda Mccormick wrote in The Conversation, provided such diets contain the same essential nutrients dogs would normally get from meat. Yet few studies have evaluated the nutritional quality of plant-based pet foods, kibbled or canned, and the few that have tended to find the adequacy of diets wanting. Homemade formulas, Mccormick wrote, are particularly risky.

What’s more, chomping on bones, rawhide and other meaty chews “can be an immensely satisfying and relaxing experience for dogs,” she said, given how much time they tend to spend alone.

The new study was based on a survey — titled Pet Feeding Practices — circulated online to dog and cat breeders, owners and “general enthusiasts.” In the end, the sample included 3,673 responses, predominantly from pet owners in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. Dietary information was provided for 2,940 dogs, and 1,542 cats.

The majority of pet owners (84 per cent) reported eating an omnivorous diet, six per cent identified as vegan, six per cent as vegetarian and the remainder pescetarian (a person who does not eat meat, but does eat fish).

Most pets — 97 per cent of dogs and 99 per cent of cats — were fed food that contained meat. However, many (10 per cent of dogs, and three per cent of cats) were also intermittently fed vegetarian or plant-based foods.

In total, 35 per cent of pet owners who were not already feeding their pets a plantbased diet indicated interest in doing so, with a little over half of those owners saying “further stipulations needed to be met” before they would do so, including evidence of nutritional sufficiency.

Fully 27 per cent of vegans reported feeding their pets an exclusive plant-based diet. Twice as many dogs as cats were fed exclusively plantbased diets.

There’s no published evidence of health benefits of meat avoidance in pet dogs or cats, according to Dodd and her co-authors. And, as with humans, pets fed only plantbased foods could suffer vitamin deficiencies.

In fact, half the omnivores surveyed, and more than half of vegetarians, considered it immoral to make pets go vegan, compared to just over a quarter of vegans, which isn’t that surprising, given vegans were the only ones making their pets go without meat.

In total, less than two per cent of dogs and cats in the sample were being fed a strictly plant-based diet. However, “that’s still a large number of animals that are potentially affected,” said Dodd, who is specializing in veterinary nutrition.

She believes the trend is likely to grow, given the number of vegans, vegetarians and “flexitarians” — people who are consciously limiting meat — is on the rise.

“Nutrition for pets really does shadow what’s going on in human nutrition,” she said.