feeding pets meat + animal welfare

xGreenling · **Posted:** Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:59 pm

Moon wrote:

Being a part of the rat rescue community, let me tell you that the conversation around feeder rodents gets brought up a lot.

Feeder rodents that are raised my people who "prepare" them commercially pretty much have the worst lives ever. Take every single thing you've seen posted on FB or online talking about animals living in their own excrement, not being able to see the sun, breating air that is full of ammonia, having no mental stimulation whatsoever, and literally piled on top of eachother. They are regularly injured and obviously receive no medical care, and females are bred back to back to back since they can produce offspring about once a month.

They are regularly frozen to death, bludgeoned, or killed with CO2, which means they have horrible, painful suffocation.

Rats are easily more social, intelligent and emotionally complex than chickens and many of the other food animals available to us - and they are regularly dealt pretty much the worst possible hand in terms of animal rights. Then it gets into the whole argument of, should snakes even be kept as pets? I don't believe that they're able to be domesticated making the short answer to that "no". But as long as other people are purchasing them and they are ending up in rescue, they need homes as their being held in captivity is no fault of theirs.

Thanks for that response - I didn't really have any knowledge of how feeder rodents are raised beyond seeing the (pretty comfortable?) feeder mice in pet shops as a wee bairn. So would you say in that case it's probably better (not good, but better) for the owner of a snake to small-scale breed and kill their own mice?

I'm really glad that my favourite companion animals are guinea pigs. No worries about carnivorous diets there, haha.

Moon · **Posted:** Sat Dec 01, 2012 10:37 pm

xGreenling wrote:

Moon wrote:

Being a part of the rat rescue community, let me tell you that the conversation around feeder rodents gets brought up a lot.

Feeder rodents that are raised my people who "prepare" them commercially pretty much have the worst lives ever. Take every single thing you've seen posted on FB or online talking about animals living in their own excrement, not being able to see the sun, breating air that is full of ammonia, having no mental stimulation whatsoever, and literally piled on top of eachother. They are regularly injured and obviously receive no medical care, and females are bred back to back to back since they can produce offspring about once a month.

They are regularly frozen to death, bludgeoned, or killed with CO2, which means they have horrible, painful suffocation.

Rats are easily more social, intelligent and emotionally complex than chickens and many of the other food animals available to us - and they are regularly dealt pretty much the worst possible hand in terms of animal rights. Then it gets into the whole argument of, should snakes even be kept as pets? I don't believe that they're able to be domesticated making the short answer to that "no". But as long as other people are purchasing them and they are ending up in rescue, they need homes as their being held in captivity is no fault of theirs.

Thanks for that response - I didn't really have any knowledge of how feeder rodents are raised beyond seeing the (pretty comfortable?) feeder mice in pet shops as a wee bairn. So would you say in that case it's probably better (not good, but better) for the owner of a snake to small-scale breed and kill their own mice?

I'm really glad that my favourite companion animals are guinea pigs. No worries about carnivorous diets there, haha.

My rat rescue friends would kill me but... absolutely. If I had a pet that absolutely, no other way possible, had to be fed a rodent diet, I would raise my own. The problem is, people who raise their own often end up with a surplus that end up in the "free to good home" glut of homeless rodents. And you can never really know what happens to those little guys

bluestars · **Joined:** Fri Jul 01, 2011 12:10 am **Posts:** 42

There was an article a few months ago in Whole Dog Journal about animal research at Procter & Gamble’s Pet Health & Nutrition Center: http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues ... 547-1.html

strawberryrock · **Joined:** Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:15 pm **Posts:** 1658

aaaah wrong thread

annabazoo · **Joined:** Fri Nov 30, 2012 5:26 pm **Posts:** 148

In theory it would be great to feed my cats and dogs vegan food. However, i think that it is unfair for me to force my own food choices upon them. They're carnivorous by nature, and if given the choice i am sure they would choose steak over a plate of veggies any day.

Larisa · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:48 pm

I'm kind of going back and forth on this one. I don't give much credence to the "it's natural" argument -- the dog I'm getting is a beagle/chihuahua mix, so her existence isn't really all that natural, and it's not really "natural" for a dog to live inside my house and eat food from a factory out of a plastic bag or can, anyway. I'm just not really sure what's healthiest. I'd like to try transitioning her to vegan food, but with the understanding that, if she doesn't do well on it, then I'll switch her back to meat-based.

raspberrycomplaint · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:29 pm

annabazoo wrote:

In theory it would be great to feed my cats and dogs vegan food. However, i think that it is unfair for me to force my own food choices upon them. They're carnivorous by nature, and if given the choice i am sure they would choose steak over a plate of veggies any day.

Yeah, but whatever you feed them, you are imposing your choice. A person who feeds a raw meat diet, a person who feeds supermarket dog chow, and a person who feeds holistic grain-free trout and sweet potato dry food are all imposing their choices on their dogs. My last dog loved chocolate. Given the choice (chocolate left in her presence, unattended), she would choose to eat it every time. If I had a child, the child may prefer to eat McDonald's for every meal. That does not mean I am obligated to feed my dog chocolate and my kid Happy Meals. My dog, like a small child, cannot understand the cruelty inherent in meat production. I can, and I know that dogs can thrive on a vegan diet*, so I make the choice not to use my money to support the killing of animals. Animals whom I believe to be as sentient and deserving of life as my dog is.

*Cats are much more difficult than dogs to feed a vegan diet to, so I understand that cat people are in a different position.

AlwaysHungry · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:49 am **Posts:** 478

To be honest, no I don't think about animal welfare when picking cat food, unless you count my cat's welfare. It seems redundant to me.

teapot · **Posted:** Thu Jan 31, 2013 10:10 am

My cats eat a mix of chicken we ruv ya and Petcurean foods. My dog is much harder. He was vegan until he developed severe allergies and inflammatory bowel disease. When I first started to switch his foods I tried venison and bison withthe reasoning that as large animals less of them would have to die for his dinner.
Now after trying every food on the market he eats raw rabbit and quail because he is allergic to everything else!
Once he becomes allergic to this he will have to go on medication for the rest of his life as he will be allergic to all food. Then i will probably feed him vegan again.

Imogen · **Posted:** Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:42 am

I feed my two adult cats vegan Ami cat food (http://www.veggiepets.com/shop/ami-vega ... -10kg.html) although I don't know if you can get it outside Europe. They are very healthy and happy, in fact much better than when they were on cheaper meat-based food.

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