Does it make sense to have carnivore pets if you are vegetarian/vegan? [closed]

Question

I am vegetarian (I don't eat meat and fish). I have had dogs as pets in my life. More precisely, when I lived with my parents we had dogs. It doesn't really matter, but they were German shepards. My parents are not vegetarian, and the dogs were feeded with normal dog food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_food. I don't remember the type of meat this food had, but I assume chicken and similar things. It was ordinary good-quality dog food, sometimes of two types as suggested by the veterinarian.

Of course during our meals we would also give something to them (not the leftovers), and they basically tried everything we had that was not dangerous to them (all fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, pasta, etc.), in small amounts. This is to say that they were part of the family, and this is not a question about animal diet in general, or the ethic/moral problem of owning a pet if you're vegetarian/vegan.

A vegetarian doesn't eat meat and fish. More pragmatically, being vegetarian might be interpreted as a life choice that aims to stop the meat/fish mass production by not buying those products (this is the practical result that would be achieved if we were all vegetarian, whether one does it for ethical, environmental or other reasons) or buying them very rarely (this would have the same effect: you don't start producing a good if it's bought twice a year and it's not crazy expensive). Dogs are not vegetarian, and I don't want to consider vegan dog food right now - just pretend it doesn't exist. To survive, they must eat meat/fish. So the logical conclusion is that to live with a dog, you must buy meat/fish in form of dog food. This is in contradiction with your life choice.

The question is the following. To be coherent, do you think a vegetarian/vegan should never own a dog, or are there loopholes to my argument?

EDIT: some answers are focusing on the fact that dogs can be feeded with vegan food. I didn't want to consider this possibility simply because that's not possible for all pets. So if you like you can replace "dog" with "cat" everywhere in my question. I am interested in knowing if you think it's a coherent thing to do.

Answer 1

I have extremely unpopular opinion. As vegan I don't think you can genuinely have a 'pet', because (for me) having a pet implies some sort of ownership over an individual.

I don't deny the fact that there's true love and respectful relationship between a human person and it's pet, but ultimately the (human) person makes all the decisions. For example when and what will the 'pet' eat and all the access to areas, medical care, entertainment etc. Even if there's no intention to keep a pet even for entertainment, in practice pets still 'serve' some kind of purpose and do not have a complete freedom.

That being said, I don't think you can have a pet as vegan. It gets even more complicated if the pet must consume animal products such as meat.

I am sure that many people who are part of the vegan community would disagree with me but I'm not aware of any straight lines established for such issues/questions out there. Please correct me if I'm wrong

Answer 2

I don't want to consider vegan dog food right now - just pretend it doesn't exist. To survive, they must eat meat/fish.

Sorry, but asking a vegan to "pretend that meat eating is necessary" isn't going to work :D

We all know that dogs do not need to eat meat. Cats too.

Vegansim, per the Vegan Society, is defined as:

Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

If you already have food in your house that you can use to feed a dog (you do), then it would not be vegan to go out and buy dead animals to feed a dog.

Answer 3

A slight frame challenge to your question: dogs can be vegetarian.

• Source 1: in this answer I already provided a link to a complete dog food (i.e. can be the primary part of a dog's diet) which is vegetarian, made by a mainstream pet food company in the UK. There are those who claim that it's impossible or unhealthy for dogs to eat only vegetarian food, but presumably this company wouldn't have survived for two decades selling vegetarian complete dog food if that were the case.

• Source 2: personal experience. I had a dog who was (like myself) a lifelong vegetarian. She lived primarily on Wafcol vegetarian complete dog food, with of course other things to make her diet more interesting, such as vegetables and non-meat protein sources. She lived to a ripe old age (for a dog) and never had diet-related health problems as far as I know.

Essentially, it all comes down to a question of what essential nutrients (amino acids and so on) a given species requires. If you want to be sure, list them and figure out what vegetarian foods can act as sources for each of those nutrients.

• Disclaimer: I don't know if it's possible for a dog to be vegan, and I've heard that it's impossible for a cat to be vegetarian or vegan. So this answer doesn't cover all possible pet/diet combinations, but you mentioned that you're vegetarian (not vegan) and you mentioned dogs as well as cats, so I hope this answer can be helpful for you.

From the British Veterinary Association:

The answer is more complex and more nuanced than TV debates or discussions allow for. From the veterinary profession’s perspective, there just isn’t enough scientific evidence currently to safely promote a vegan diet for dogs and cats.

[...] Dogs are omnivores, which means that they eat both meat and plant products. While it is theoretically possible, the British Veterinary Association does not recommend giving a dog a vegetarian or a vegan diet as it is much easier to get the balance of essential nutrients wrong than to get it right.

Cats are obligate carnivores, which means it is much harder or even impossible to meet their nutritional needs without feeding them meat.

This strikes me as a carefully worded text, presumably to avoid the possibility of being sued as well as of saying anything wrong. They do not recommend vegetarian or vegan diets for dogs, but only because it's difficult, acknowledging that it is possible. (Presumably, a vegetarian diet would be easier than a vegan diet.) For cats, as mentioned above, it may be actually impossible.