I find it sickening that you have fooled yourself into justifying feeding carnivorius animals a vegan diet. That is abuse.
Does any of this sound like abuse?:
"Barney's general health has significantly improved since I discontinued feeding
him a meat-based diet (previously Science Diet or other quality food). The
vomiting and gagging has improved, so I reduced medication to about 10%." —
Beverly W., Eastlake, Ohio
"For three years prior to this diet, she had abdominal pains, vomiting, bloody
stools, was given antibiotics/steroids by vet — did no good — made her feel
worse — she no longer has this problem!" — Judy C., Phillipsburg, Kan.
"Before he was vegetarian, he had diarrhea every two to three months. Stool
sample was always negative and vet said some dogs are just sicker than others.
Since I've had him on veggie diet, he has not been sick at all. This has been
approximately one year. He used to eat Science Diet." — Andy S., Chicago, Ill.
"Used to have instances of momentary paralysis and had to be given an aspirin
to help her come out of it (lasted five to 15 minutes). Hasn't had any episodes in
the last year." — Andrea and Mike B., Ft. Myers, Fla.
"Dog had severe case of osteochondritis dissecans in hind hocks at five months.
After operation at Angell and months of aspirin and Feldene treatment, hocks
were swollen to the size of golf balls. Following change of diet to natural and
vegan and homeopathic treatment, dog is completely normal. She used to be
unable to walk around the block and now she will run with my horse for hours
with no adverse effects." — Elizabeth F., Bristol, R.I.
"Since becoming vegetarian, she has had a lot more energy..." — Peggy J.,
Arlington, Texas
"Prior to vegan diet — vomiting acidic yellow substance, ear infections, skin
allergies ... vet recommended low-fat high-fiber diet. Tried him on Prescription
d/d (Hill's) Lamb & Rice, which caused severe diarrhea. Put him on vegan diet
and almost all symptoms disappeared." — Diane W., Rockville, Md.
"They became more playful and energetic with vegan diet." — Carol B., Mountain
View, Calif.
"Floyd ... stays at a good slimmer weight since going veg. Loves the food."
"[Weasel] loves the food — was a picky eater before going veg." — Lanie W.,
Visalia, Calif.
"He has always had a thyroid problem so he's on thyroid medication. This diet
has decreased the amount of supplemental thyroid he must take." "She used to
throw up occasionally but since becoming vegan no longer throws up." —
Beatrice K., Sunrise, Fla.
"Much better since we switched to vegan diet. Better coat, more energy,
revitalized!!" — Elmo M., Laundale, Calif.
"Two months prior to eating a vegan diet, my dog had cystitis twice, with blood in
his urine. He has been tested since and no longer has blood in his urine or
cystitis. Since being on a vegan diet, my dog is no longer overweight and
lethargic. He looks and plays like a dog half his age. About two to three years
before this, he had stopped playing with sticks, balls, etc. It is almost
unbelievable to see the positive change in him." — David F., Rumford, R.I.
There are many, many more testimonials in the study where that came from:
Dog Health Survey.
Some other results from that study:
"There appeared to be a distinct advantage to being a vegan or vegetarian for a
larger percentage of one's life—all of the following percentages are greater than
for the entire surveyed population:
Of the 12 lifelong vegetarians in the study, 100% were in good to excellent
health.
Of the 26 dogs who had been vegan or vegetarian for 90% of their lives, 22
(84.6%) were in good to excellent health.
Of the 65 dogs who had been vegan or vegetarian for 75% of their lives, 53
(81.5%) were in good to excellent health.
Of the 142 dogs who had been vegan or vegetarian for 50% of their lives, 120
(84.5%) were in good to excellent health.
There also appeared to be a health advantage to veganism over vegetarianism:
82% of dogs who had been vegan for five years or more were in good to
excellent health, while only 77% of dogs who had been vegetarian for five years
or more were in good to excellent health".
As for cats, the study,
Evaluation of cats fed vegetarian diets and attitudes of their caregivers, found the following (emphasis mine):
"Blood was obtained from 17 cats. Mean ± SD age
of the cats in this subset of group V was 6.6 ± 4.4 years,
and they had been fed a vegetarian diet for 4.4 ± 3.4
years. Seventy-six percent of the cats were kept strictly
indoors, 76% were reported to be in ideal body condi-
tion, and
94% were reported to be in good health.
Forty-seven percent of the cats were fed a commercial-
ly available diet,c 12% were fed food prepared with a
commercially available supplement,d and 41% were fed
a combination of the 2 components. In 2 instances,
plasma was not submitted; therefore, plasma taurine
concentrations were available for only 15 of 17 cats.
Mean plasma taurine concentration was 119 ± 41
nmol/mL (median, 114 nmol/mL; range, 52 to 188
nmol/mL; reference range, 60 to 120 nmol/mL). Only
1 sample yielded a value less than the reference range,
and no values were less than the critical concentration
of 40 nmol/mL. Mean blood taurine concentration was
388 ± 117 nmol/mL (median, 364 nmol/mL; range,
224 to 672 nmol/mL; reference range, 300 to 600
nmol/mL). Three cats had a value less than the refer-
ence range, but those values were greater than the crit-
ical concentration of 200 nmol/L. Serum cobalamin
concentration for all cats was within reference range
(mean, 873 ± 326 ng/L; median, 1,005 ng/L; range, 299
to 1,201 ng/L; reference range, 290 to 1,499 ng/L)".
Standard, commercial pet food is based on meat deemed unfit for human consumption. Some of this meat is from cancerous or otherwise diseased animals, or from animals which were so unhealthy that they died before reaching the slaughterhouse. If anything's abuse, it's feeding food of
that quality to a companion animal, not feeding it a nutritionally complete, healthy vegan diet on which it thrives.
Or are cats and dogs just blindly following a "belief system" that they should eat meat, which you label as carnist apologism?
Please, Neil, let's try to stay grounded. Animals in the wild, and humans in subsistence cultures before the modern era of agriculture, had limited choice in what they ate; they often had to pretty much take what they could get, when they could get it. Belief systems such as carnism become applicable when
choice becomes predominant. When you can - as can almost all of us in the West - freely choose whether to destroy an animal's life to get your nutrition or to eat the fruit of a plant, and you freely choose to destroy the animal's life,
then it is obvious that you are operating from a belief system as much as are vegans.
Because there is nothing wrong with killing an animal for food.
Repeating a blind assertion doesn't make it true. I have engaged with the basic premise of your position: that animal products are essential for human health. I have argued that it has no basis in fact, and I have provided evidence to support this. On the other hand, you have utterly ignored the basic premises of my position: that avoidable harm ought to be avoided, and that the consumption of animal products entails avoidable harm. I have pointed out that the first is a premise that essentially all humans accept, and that the second is self-evident. The conclusion based on these two premises renders your assertion false. You are free to continue to ignore this argument, but if you do, I will continue to point out that it renders your assertion false.
The difference is a meat eater actually eats the animal they kill, where vegans just waste the animals' lives.
OK, so, since you refuse to let this issue drop, and since apparently the responses that I have already made are not enough for you, then let me add some more. My pre-written response to which I directed you linked to Gaverick Matheny's paper,
Least harm: a defense of vegetarianism from Steven Davis's omnivorous proposal. I strongly doubt that you took the time to read it. I encourage you to remedy that. Here are a few highlights from it:
Davis suggests the number of wild animals killed per hectare in crop production (15) is twice that killed in ruminant-pasture (7.5). If this is true, then as long as crop production uses less than half as many hectares as ruminant-pasture to deliver the same amount of food, a vegetarian will kill fewer animals than an omnivore. In fact, crop production uses less than half as many hectares as grass-fed dairy and one-tenth as many hectares as grass-fed beef to deliver the same amount of protein. In one year, 1,000 kilograms of protein can be produced on as few as 1.0 hectares planted with soy and corn, 2.6 hectares used as pasture for grass-fed dairy cows, or 10 hectares used as pasture for grass-fed beef cattle (Vandehaar 1998; UNFAO 1996). As such, to obtain the 20 kilograms of protein per year recommended for adults, a vegan-vegetarian would kill 0.3 wild animals annually, a lacto-vegetarian would kill 0.39 wild animals, while a Davis-style omnivore would kill 1.5 wild animals. Thus, correcting Davis's math, we see that a vegan-vegetarian population would kill the fewest number of wild animals, followed closely by a lacto-vegetarian population.
However, suppose this were not the case and that, in fact, fewer animals would be killed under Davis's omnivorism. Would it follow that Davis's plan causes the least harm? Not necessarily. Early in the paper, Davis shifts from discussing the harm done to animals under different agricultural systems to the number of animals killed. This shift is not explained by Davis and is not justified by the most common moral views, all of which recognize harms in addition to those associated with killing.
[...]
I cannot think of an ethical theory that equates 'harm' with 'number of deaths.' All the theories of which I am aware are quite concerned with the treatment of animals up to their deaths. Davis, in discussing the number of animals killed rather than their treatment prior to death, ignores an important question that must be answered in order to assess which system of agriculture causes the least harm.
In comparing the harms caused by crop and ruminant production, we should compare the treatment of, say, a wild mouse up until his or her death in a harvester, with that of a grass-fed cow. The wild mouse lives free of confinement and is able to practice natural habits like roaming, breeding, and foraging. In contrast, the grass-fed cow, while able to roam some distance in a fenced pasture, may suffer third-degree burns (branding), have holes punched in his ears (tagging), be castrated, have his horns scooped out of his head (dehorning), and be kept from breeding naturally. Once reaching market weight, he can be transported up to several hundred miles without food, water, or protection from extreme heat or cold; then he is killed in a conventional slaughterhouse. The conditions of slaughterhouses have been described in detail elsewhere (Eisnitz 1997). Suffice it to say, it is hard to imagine that the pain experienced by a mouse as she or he is killed in a harvester compares to the pain even a grass-fed cow must endure before being killed. Likewise, those who are concerned principally with the treatment of animals, rather than simply the number of animals' deaths, have more reason to become vegetarian. Again, this is because vegetarianism causes the least harm, understood in terms of animal suffering, compared to any system of animal agriculture, Davis's included.
And to respond specifically to your point: these lives are not necessarily wasted. It has been observed that birds of prey follow harvesters around, and it is likely or at least possible that they consume many if not most of the small animals killed by the blades of harvesters.
If you accept plant sentience, how can you say that it is okay to exploit plants for their fruits and seeds, but it's not okay to exploit chickens for their eggs?
Firstly: there
are problems with the way plants are treated in modern agriculture, in particular growing them in monocultures, which is in all likelihood not their preferred environment, and selectively breeding them based on human ends rather than their own best interests.
That said, there is little real comparison in the treatment of plants in the procurement of fruits and seeds with the treatment of chickens in the procurement of eggs. Plants are naturally immobile; there is no question of "confining" them. There is really no sense in which plants in agriculture are "imprisoned", nor even "mistreated" other than the above mentioned caveats. This is obviously radically different to the imprisonment and mistreatment (debeaking with blowtorches, separation from the opposite gender, amongst other things) of hens in the procurement of eggs. Another radical difference is that male chicks, being of no commercial value in the production of eggs, are routinely destroyed, often by grinding them up alive - obviously, no such horror occurs in orchards.
So you think it is not okay to "force" a cat or dog to live with us, but it is okay to force them to eat a diet that they would not choose on their own?
I think it is wrong to force other animals to die for our pets when we have the choice not to do so.
How can you advocate wanting animals to be in a natural environment, and in the same breath advocate forcing an unnatural diet on them?
The appeal to nature fallacy is exactly that: a fallacy. What you or anybody else considers "natural" is irrelevant; in this context, all that matters is what is ethical and healthy.