Providing care to some animals as a vegan can be fraught with ethical compromises. One of the biggest issues that is often used to deride veganism for being hypocritical is whether or not it is cruel to feed dogs on a plant-based diet. Caregiver to two very healthy dogs, Surge contributor Claire Hamlett talks us through her personal journey navigating this sensitive subject.

I recently got embroiled in a Twitter ‘debate’ on the subject of how Britain produces animal flesh that resulted in me being called an animal abuser. It started when I pushed back on sheep farmer Gareth Wyn Jones for his campaign against Blue Peter for encouraging children to go meat-free to be ‘climate heroes’ (a topic I wrote about for Surge). He tried to derail the ensuing discussion, such as it was, by asking me if my dogs are vegan. I said they don’t eat meat and bam - I was branded an animal abuser.

In fact, I feed my two dogs mainly on kibble made from vegetables and insects  - specifically, black soldier fly (BSF), which is one of the insects described by the Pet Food Manufacturers Association as “rich in protein” and with a “well-balanced amino acid” profile. BSF don’t have nociceptors that make other animals feel pain and take significantly less land, water, and carbon to produce. I chose the insect protein route because, like many people with dogs, I have my concerns about whether a vegan diet is the healthiest choice. Yet despite my own hesitancy, my instinctive reaction to what happened on Twitter was to think that, as long as the dog is healthy and happy, feeding them vegan food does not make their humans abusive or immoral. Am I right to think that?

Can dogs be healthy on a vegan diet?

After further research, the short answer appears to be: yes. I won’t go into details too much here as experts have covered this topic in-depth elsewhere. There is plenty of evidence that shows that a dog’s nutritional needs can be met on an entirely vegan diet that has veterinary approval. See petfoodinnovation.info, for instance, a resource developed by Andrew Knight, a veterinarian and Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics at the University of Winchester, or this peer-reviewed article by author Alice Oven and veterinarian Ernie Ward, a co-founder of vegan dog food company Wild Earth. This article by veterinary nutritionist Cailin Heinze also digs helpfully into questions regarding the dietary needs of dogs.

“It’s a common misconception that dogs are carnivores who must eat meat to survive, or at least to thrive,” says Oven, “largely because we’re encouraged to associate our pets with their wild ancestors, grey wolves. Meat-based pet food companies bombard us with marketing messages that we should feed our chihuahua’s ‘inner wolf’ or appeal to our cavapoo’s ‘basic instinct’ to devour animal flesh. In reality, our domesticated dogs have undergone thousands of years of genetic and biochemical adaptations that allow them to process the starches in plant-based food and synthesise all the nutrients they need from a meatless diet. Our pet dogs are omnivores, not carnivores, and they can be their healthiest selves without eating other animals.” 

An argument against a vegan diet is often that it’s ‘natural’ for dogs to eat meat. But this isn’t a particularly strong argument in favour of feeding dogs flesh, in the view of philosopher Josh Milburn. “The idea of naturalness doesn't really make much sense when it's applied to companion animals,” he says, as we let them do lots of ‘unnatural’ things like sleeping on beds or taking them to the vet. “And even if it did, there's a kind of ‘so what?’ sense. Lots of things that are natural are very bad, like disease, or suffering, or starvation, and lots of things that are unnatural, are very good, you know, literature, medicine, the internet.”

A lot of animal-derived pet food is also not ‘natural’ in any meaningful sense. Meat in pet food can come from some stomach-turning sources, including the leftovers from slaughter, such as hides, skins, horns, feet, pig bristle, feather or blood, which itself will come from animals mainly raised in intensive farms where they are kept in highly unnatural and unsanitary conditions. A far cry from any animal flesh that dogs would have consumed in the wild.

So what moral concerns remain?

One comment made by a few people on Twitter about me was that my dogs wouldn’t choose not to eat meat and I was cruelly imposing my own beliefs on them. But my dogs will gobble any old bit of human food they find on the ground, whether it’ll kill them or not. We once had to rush one of them to the vet to induce vomiting because she ate a small number of raisins she found in a field. The 90 minutes she was forced to spend purging to save her life taught her absolutely nothing about not eating whatever she fancies. It’s so common for dogs to eat socks - which surely don’t even taste that good - that there are dozens of websites giving advice on what to do if this happens.

We already have to make choices on behalf of animals in our care because left to their own devices some of their choices will be very bad. However, restricting their choices isn’t just about protecting their health - it is often also about protecting others, whether animals or people, or adhering to socially accepted norms. “We have a great deal of responsibility and control over our dogs’ lives as part of our job as responsible guardians to ensure that they're not doing harmful things,” says Milburn.

For example, dogs have an instinct, to varying degrees, to chase prey animals and guardians should keep their dogs leashed around farmed animals and wildlife so as not to cause those other animals distress or injury. I know from the strength with which one of my dogs strains against her leash when we are in an area with rabbits or pheasants that she wants absolutely nothing more in the world than to follow her nose. Even a chunk of animal flesh waved in front of her face can’t compete with her desire to chase wildlife (I have tried this tactic in the past, before I stopped feeding her meat).

But it would not be reasonable for me to feel guilty for stopping her from indulging this instinct, nor for other people to call me cruel for doing so, as it is my responsibility to both protect my dog from harm - she could chase an animal into a busy road or get shot by a farmer for worrying his sheep - and protect others from her.

The same logic applies to how we control the ways our dogs interact with other dogs and humans so as not to annoy or harm them. This doesn’t always involve physical restrictions like using a leash, as ideally, people will train their dogs how to behave in public. Training is a form of choosing for your dog - you choose which behaviours are encouraged and which are not, regardless of how ‘natural’ they are for the dog - but no responsible dog guardian would argue that it is therefore cruel, unless of course it uses punishment-based methods rather than the now more commonplace positive reinforcement.

None of this is to say that cutting flesh out of your dog’s meals means they shouldn’t get to make their own food choices. “It is compatible with feeding dogs a plant-based diet that a great deal of choice is given to them,” says Milburn. “There is a wide range of plant-based foods available on the market. Within certain parameters, we should be doing what we can to maximize the choice that our dogs have … that’s the key point, it’s within certain parameters.” The impact of our dogs’ diets on the planet and other animals “might change the space in which it is appropriate to give dogs a choice.”

The cost to other animals and the planet

Beyond the issue of what is healthy for dogs, at the heart of the vegan dog food debate is what we owe to other animals and to the planet. Feeding dogs flesh, which is commonly sourced from intensive farms, has a massive environmental and climate impact. But feeding them so-called ‘ethical’ meat is problematic too.

“I recently studied the feeding habits of more than 700 dog and cat owners as part of a research project at University of Winchester,” says Oven, “and feeding ‘ethical’ meat was a common justification for keeping dogs on meat-based diets. However, this is problematic in a number of ways. Firstly, there are very few ‘high welfare’ labels on commercial pet foods, so you would need to be creating homemade diets, which aren’t always nutritionally sound. Secondly, feeding your dog ‘human-grade’ meat, whether it be organic and free-range or not, means that farmed animals are being bred and killed specifically to feed your pet. We’re not just talking about your pet’s food being a byproduct of the human food meat industry, we’re talking about creating new victims: many thousands over the course of your dog’s life.”

I can almost hear my Twitter detractors screaming, “Then don’t have a dog!”, but as Milburn pointed out to me when I mentioned this potential response, that argument would rest on the hidden and evidently untrue premise that it is bad to feed a dog a vegan diet.

Moreover, anyone who is concerned about a dog’s right to choose should, morally speaking, also be concerned about the rights of other animals to choose. No animal chooses to die to feed us or our dogs, and certainly none chooses to be raised in cruel and unhealthy conditions. There is therefore a significant irony in animal farmers claiming it is abuse to not feed a dog meat because it's forcing something on them when they make their living forcing animals into slaughterhouses against their will.

For my part, I’m comfortable right now with my dogs’ diet, given its relatively minimal impact on the Earth and other creatures, and the fact that both my dogs are bright-eyed and waggy-tailed. But I will keep looking more into the available vegan dog foods and perhaps will make the switch sometime soon. And if I do, it’ll be with a clear conscience.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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