Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct
iso@lemy.lol 2 months ago
What the fuck is “vegan cat food”? I sometimes can’t understand people.
Ok. I get it. As people, we are bad. We raise animals just for food, modifying them with artificial selection for productivity. So I can understand veganism (although I am not vegan).
But have we really reached the point where we can stop animals from eating meat? Either I’m a bigoted idiot or people are out of their minds.
lemmy_99c4zb3e3@reddthat.com 2 months ago
[deleted]Rose@lemmy.world 2 months ago
For me, the purpose of the post is exactly what it asks for. I don’t think I’ve ever posted to !vegan except for today, to cross-post the OP, but my own fate as a long-time lemmy.world user likely rests on the outcome of this request. I run a tiny community that has no relation to animal rights or ethics but I feel it is absolutely threatened when there are moderators like Rooki that act based on their views rather than the rules.
EndlessApollo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That vegan community has a rule against misinformation. The idea that a cat is perfectly healthy on a vegan diet is misinformation. You feel threatened by mods like Rooki who act based on rules rather than your views. You’d rather mistreat animals than admit that anything any vegan has ever said ever might be wrong, and not allow anyone to point out that your wrong
Neon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Idk, but I personally think there doesn’t have to be a rule that explicitly states “don’t hand out misinformation that will cause animals pain”
like, if someone told someone else that “drinking polonium cures depression” we would also want that person banned, even if there isn’t a rule explicitly against it.
Vivendi@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
People are out of their minds. It’s a cult. Thankfully, mostly constrained to the west.
Beaver@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I see a straw man argument.
The vegan position is that we should eliminate the use of animal products in the diets of the animals we see as companions.
solrize@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It is about pets, which are domestic animals who eat what you feed them. Choosing brand X of pet food prevents your pet from eating brand Y, I suppose, but every pet owner has to make such choices. Plant-based diets start to look like just another choice.
You really can’t stop cats from eating meat anyway, especially if you ever let them outside. They love to catch and eat mice, birds, and bugs, and they will do it no matter what pet food you might also give them.
iso@lemy.lol 2 months ago
I wonder if we feed our animals with “vegan food” for a year, would they start to choose that instead of meat or meat based food?
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Man, I’ve had cats off and on my whole life.
You can offer kittens freshly weaned anything you want, and they’ll go after the stuff that smells right.
You can feed a cat any brand of food, and if they catch a bug or a rodent, or a bird, they may well eat it, or leave it on your pillow as a gift. Kinda rolling the dice which one tbh.
Cats are predators driven by instincts. A kitten rescued after being separated from its mother, raised by hand and then runs across something that sets off the prey drive will try to catch it. Adult cats that aren’t even hungry will engage in hunting behaviors because it just flips the right switches in their brain.
Animals? They have almost zero choice in their food. When they do have a choice, they’ll eat what smells right, and/or acts like food. You can’t train koalas to eat meat as their main diet, and you can’t train cats to not eat meat. At best, as an animal guardian, you provide them with limited choices, and they eat or starve (if the food isn’t close enough to being food for their instincts, they won’t even try to eat it).
Frankly, anyone taking a predator as a pet and not being willing to fulfill its basic needs is dumb. They’re choosing their wishes over the care of the animal, just to fulfill whatever belief it is they’re following.
You don’t want the animals in your care to not eat meat, don’t get animals that eat meat at all. No dogs, no cats, no snakes, nothing like that. Go adopt a bird that people didn’t know how to take care of and dumped at some rescue. Pick the animal companions that fit your life choices, don’t try and shoehorn yours into their existence.
In other words, vegans keeping meat eating pets are hypocrites because they’re exploiting animals for their own preferences and needs instead of the animals’
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
Cats (which are what all this nonsense is about) are obligated carnivores, so they’d either find meat elsewhere (and probably move to another home were they weren’t mistreated, if able) or die.
illi@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Don’t know about cats, but can answer from dog perspective - I imagine it might apply to cats as well. And this is a completely utilitarian answer: food alergies. Animals can have them.
We have a dog who is alergic to most if not all most common meat proteins - chicken, pork, beef, fish… didn’t test all but you (and we) get the picture. Luckily, there are less common meat proteins (venison as one example) which he accepts just fine - but there was a distinct possibility he would not. So we would be faced with two options - buy him super expensive, ultra processed analergic food, or go for vegan options. If faced with this decision, I’d opt for option B for sure.
I know cats are seen as true carnivores and dogs are omnivores, but I think it applies to your question
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 2 months ago
That is not correct from a cat perspective. Dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are. What this means is that the amino acids that cats can’t produce on their own are only available naturally from other animals. The amino acids that dogs don’t produce on their own are available from vegan sources.
illi@lemm.ee 2 months ago
And I clarified this.
ganksy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Nobody is suggesting to stop animals in the wild eating meat or for incidental kills our furry companions make. Animals eat meat. It’s natural. We breed animals as pets and feed them industrial amounts of food each year that we produce from other animals in very questionable ways. Not natural. The entire planet benefits from less meat being mass produced. It’s not crazy to entertain some ideas that get us closer if they’re proven equally nutritional.
iso@lemy.lol 2 months ago
Then we should be against pets too. If we are not okay to breeding animals, we should also discuss pets too. That’s not natural either.
ganksy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m not against befriending animals but breeding animals is shit.
femtech@midwest.social 2 months ago
There are vegans that think of pets as an abuse. I think the pet industry with breeders is abusive but making friends with an animal is mutually beneficial.