The Ethics of Plant-Based Pet Food (The Plant-based and Vegan Handbook, Springer, 2024) (original) (raw)
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Pets and People, 2017
Animal lovers normally contribute to significant harm inflicted upon nonhuman animals. This is because dogs and cats are fed animal-derived foods, which are the product of death and suffering. This chapter presents an argument suggesting that, typically, people have an obligation to feed their companions a vegan diet. The claim is then defended against three challenges—from dignity, naturalness, and freedom, respectively—that are unsuccessful. A final challenge, from health, is more problematic, and a four-pronged approach to companion veganism is defended. For dogs, people’s moral and political obligations roughly coincide: individually and collectively, people should switch their dogs to vegan diets. For cats, people’s obligations diverge: while individually they should minimize the impact of their companions’ diets, as members of society they have an obligation to come to a greater understanding of how the negative impact of cats’ diets can be fully eliminated.
Anuário Antropológico, 2012
The text is a facsimile of the print edition. Devouring the carcass: counter cooking and alternative diets in animal feed Bernardo Lewgoy UFRGS Caetano Sordi UFSC : TThe emergence of alternative diets has crossed the species barrier and is now a phenomenon that is also observed in the field of animal nutrition. Between criticisms of the pet food industry and radical proposals for the "vegetarianization" of domestic animals, we identify a wide field of lay and professional controversies that this article intends to map. We also observe changes in sensitivity, representations, and market realities related to both livestock and pet animals. While the former are increasingly understood as productive machines, the latter are the object of hypersubjectivation that is reflected in products that are increasingly distant from mere "nutrition" (organic sourcing, subsistence) and closer to "feeding" (food carrying meaning and status). The article reconstructs this universe based on two critical events that exposed the globalized intricacies of the large sociotechnical network of animal feed: the outbreaks of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) in the 1990s in Europe, and the massive pet food recall of 2007 in the United States.
Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice, 2021
Sustainability is defined here as the conscientious management of resources and waste necessary to meet the physiologic requirements of companion animals without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their environmental, social, or economic needs. Life-cycle analysis of pet foods has identified that the most significant impact category to the environment is climate change (quantified as kg CO 2 eq), with wet foods tending to have a greater impact than dry foods, and dogs having a greater impact than cats. Opportunities for improvement in sustainability exist at all phases of the pet food life cycle, including formulation, ingredient selection, manufacturing processes, packaging materials, transportation methods, reduction of food and packaging wastes, and proper disposal of pet waste. Veterinarians have a central role as a resource for clients on diet selection, feeding management, and proper pet waste disposal practices, as well as the sustainable farming of livestock animals. The advancement of sustainable practices in companion animal care will require a collaborative effort between pet food industry stakeholders, veterinarians, and pet owners.
Pet Food Communication: Notes on the Crisis of Naturalism
2018
Since the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, an important change has been taking place in western society regarding the relationship between humans and animals – i.e. pets, wild animals and livestock. We wonder if changes in progress can be interpreted as a crisis in naturalism, and we will try to reflect on whether, and how, the relationship of naturalism with other ontologies, first of all animism, can be used as a lens in order to understand the sense and direction of the ongoing processes. We will focus on domestic animals and pet food, because food represents a mediator of extraordinary relevance in human-animal relations. We analysed the packaging of a collection of pet food products which are currently on the market in Italy and Europe. The body of material chosen was examined in order to find answers to the following research questions: What pet food values are being promoted by the producer? What kind of consumer, either human or animal, is being profile...
Plant-based (vegan) diets for pets: A survey of pet owner attitudes and feeding practices
PLOS ONE, 2019
People who avoid eating animals tend to share their homes with animal companions, and moral dilemma may arise when they are faced with feeding animal products to their omnivorous dogs and carnivorous cats. One option to alleviate this conflict is to feed pets a diet devoid of animal ingredients-a 'plant-based' or 'vegan' diet. The number of pet owners who avoid animal products, either in their own or in their pets' diet, is not currently known. The objective of this study was to estimate the number of meat-avoiding pet owners, identify concerns regarding conventional animal-and plant-based pet food, and estimate the number of pets fed a plant-based diet. A questionnaire was disseminated online to Englishspeaking pet owners (n = 3,673) to collect data regarding pet owner demographics, diet, pet type, pet diet, and concerns regarding pet foods. Results found that pet owners were more likely to be vegetarian (6.2%; 229/3,673) or vegan (5.8%; 212/3,673) than previously reported for members of the general population. With the exception of one dog owned by a vegetarian, vegans were the only pet owners who fed plant-based diets to their pets (1.6%; 59/3,673). Of the pet owners who did not currently feed plant-based diets but expressed interest in doing so, a large proportion (45%; 269/599) desired more information demonstrating the nutritional adequacy of plant-based diets. Amongst all pet owners, the concern most commonly reported regarding meat-based pet foods was for the welfare of farm animals (39%; 1,275/3,231). The most common concern regarding strictly plant-based pet foods was regarding the nutritional completeness of the diet (74%; 2,439/3,318). Amongst vegans, factors which predicted the feeding of plant-based diets to their pets were concern regarding the cost of plant-based diets, a lack of concern regarding plant-based diets being unnatural, and reporting no concern at all regarding plant-based diets for pets. Given these findings, further research is warranted to investigate plant-based nutrition for domestic dogs and cats.
Just fodder: The ethics of feeding animals
Contemporary Political Theory, 2023
In the first substantive chapter of Just Fodder, Josh Milburn outlines his account of the 'animal lovers' paradox' (p. 21). This paradox arises when self-professed animal lovers feed their companion animals with protein derived from the (often tortured) bodies of other animals. This leads to the troubling notion that these people would better serve animals overall if they weren't animal lovers-fewer meat-eating companion animals might mean fewer animals rendered into eaten meat. This description called to mind something that has been troubling me as I keep up-to-date with the post-rescue lives of the various 'speed noodles' (greyhounds) that I follow on social media. Companion humans, seemingly oblivious to any irony inherent in doing so, often post videos of their long-snooted friends and family members enthusiastically 'monching' on 'chimken' and other meat-based treats and elaborately prepared dishes (canine-friendly chicken laksas seem to be all the rage at the moment). It is unsettling, seeing dogs who have been rescued from one exploitative and often cruel industry by humans who are well informed about, and often vocal critics of, this industry, being fed the flesh of other sentient creatures, who have also suffered within an exploitative (and even crueller) industry. Of course, the dogs themselves cannot be held morally responsible for any wrongdoing in this instance. But if a wrong has taken place, who is to be held accountable, and what is to be done? After all, might it not be harmful to feed nonherbivorous companion animals a plant-based diet? These are just some of the questions, often ignored by animal ethicists and vegans alike, with which Just Fodder grapples. It is not only those with a particular concern for animals for whom these questions should be of interest. As Milburn makes clear, we are all implicated in whether and how various animals are fed. Such animals include the companion dogs, cats, and members of other species whom we regard as a part of our families, but also the birds we feed in our gardens, the field mice who eat our crops, the rescued animals who convalesce in rehabilitation centres, and the animals who face
Book Review: Food, Animals, and the Environmental: An Ethical Approach
Essays in Philosophy, 2020
This empirically rigorous textbook serves as an introduction to food ethics and an overview of the major issues currently discussed in this emerging subfield of environmental ethics. While the book may be too dense in places for introductory-level undergraduates, it is nonetheless a welcome addition to the scholarship in this area, since textbooks focusing specifically on food ethics remain relatively rare.
Relational animal ethics (and why it isn't easy) (Food Ethics, 2024)
Food Ethics, 2024
In Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals, I explore a range of overlooked practical questions in animal ethics and the philosophy of food, developing a new approach to animal ethics. According to the position I defend, animals have negative rights based on their possession of normatively significant interests, and we have positive obligations towards (and concerning) animals based on our normatively salient relationships with them. Gary O'Brien, Angie Pepper, Clare Palmer, and Leon Borgdorf offer a range of insightful challenges to my framework and its applications. Here, I respond to them around five themes: extensionism, agency, predation, interventionism, and environmentalism.
Food Ethics, 2022
New omnivorism is a term coined by Andy Lamey to refer to arguments that-paradoxically-our duties towards animals require us to eat some animal products. Lamey's claim to have identified a new, distinctive position in food ethics is problematic, however, for some of his interlocutors are not new (e.g., Leslie Stephen in the nineteenth century), not distinctive (e.g., animal welfarists), and not obviously concerned with eating animals (e.g., plant neurobiologists). It is the aim of this paper to bolster Lamey's argument that he has identified a novel, unified, and intriguing position (or set of positions) in animal ethics and the philosophy of food. We distinguish new omnivorism from four other non-vegan positions and then differentiate three versions of new omnivorism based on the kinds of animal products they propose we consume. We conclude by exploring a range of argumentative strategies that could be deployed in response to the new omnivore.