Can Vegans Have Pets?
(The short answer is yes, vegans can have pets.)
Have you heard this one?
“Animal rights extremists want to end all animal use! If they succeed, you will not be able to keep a pet.”
Or how about this one:
“If you’re a vegan, you can’t have a dog.”
Some people feel threatened by veganism and try to find loopholes. They look for anything. They’re the same people who point to recycled rubber shoes and say, “You’re not a vegan because you’re wearing leather!” and then walk away before you can explain that it’s NOT leather. They’re ridiculous and wrong.
Even vegans who are opposed to pet ownership don’t want to take family pets away from loving homes. Vegans do not want to put animals in bad situations or remove animals from good situations. We just want to save lives and protect animals.
And even if some vegans are hypocrites (who say they’re against all animal use, yet buy pets from pet stores) that says nothing about whether or not omnivores should adopt a plant-based diet. It’s unrelated.
It’s better to try to be as vegan as you can be than to eat animals. It’s better to be an imperfect vegan than to be an omnivore who looks for loopholes in veganism. Your choices are:
- Do less harm by eating a plant-based diet, or
- Do more harm by eating meat.
It really is just that simple.
As Matt Ball at Vegan Outreach wrote:
[T]he issue for thoughtful, compassionate people isn’t, “Is this vegan?” Rather, the important question is: “Which choice leads to less suffering?” Our guide shouldn’t be an endless list of ingredients, but rather doing our absolute best to stop cruelty to animals.
But let’s answer the question, Should vegans have pets?
It’s up to each individual, but my opinion is this: If you rescue animals, great. That’s not doing harm, that’s doing good. But if you buy a “pet” from a breeder or pet store, that’s doing harm. That’s creating a market for breeders, including puppy mills and kitten mills. Moreover, that’s formalizing the animal’s status as property, not as family member or companion. Buying animals, dead or alive, is not vegan.
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Pets = companion animals = nonhuman family members. For simplicity, I’ve used the common word, “pet,” to refer to all animals kept as human companions.
I agree with you that rescuing animals from shelters and other such institutions is a wonderful thing, and that breeders are cruel. The thing that has always bothered me about my companion animals is feeding them. I have a cat that I feed meat to, even though I don’t eat meat myself. Although there are companies that produce vegan cat food, I haven’t seen a lot of literature that indicates that cats can live a healthy vegan lifestyle, although dogs are able to. (If there is information saying otherwise, please direct me to it).
~ Recent blog post: Beware of Deer at Dusk ~
They’re the same people who point to recycled rubber shoes and say, “You’re not a vegan because you’re wearing leather!” and then walk away before you can explain that it’s NOT leather. They’re ridiculous and wrong.
This reminds me of an episode of Life I’ve been meaning to write about. The case (it’s a cop drama) involved the murder of a cancer researcher/vivisector; the main suspects were the members of a SHAC-like anti-vivisection group (mainly because their group name was spray painted all over the crime scene). When the cops went to interview the group, they noted the leader’s shoes, which appeared to be leather. (To paraphrase, “If you’re vegan, why are you wearing leather shoes?”) Turns out, the shoes were made from “Bob,” the group’s founder, who had passed away and willed his body to the group.
And it only got better from there (SPOILER ALERT: the animal rights advocates didn’t do it!). So many shows play into the whole green scare meme, I was more than a little psyched that one of my favorites cleverly skewered it.
Sorry for the total threadjack, says the vegan with six companion animals
~ Recent blog post: Witches and leopards and piggies, oh my! ~
I’ve encountered the argument that vegan’s want to rid the world of pets several times. Usually it’s backed up by a quote, taken out of context, made by someone like Wayne Pacelle or Ingrid Newkirk. From what I’ve seen, it seems to be an organized attempt to discredit compassion for animals (though I haven’t looked to closely into it). I interpret this stuff as very desperate attempts to confuse the issue.
“Buying animals dead or alive is not vegan”
I really like that statement and agree with it wholeheartedly. However, I have similar issues as karmalily and that my problem lies with feeding my 4 rescue cats. Yes I buy meat cat food, no I’m not happy with it but I have made the choice to have pets and this is something I either have to learn to accept or get rid of my cats. The second choice isn’t even an option so I just have to learn to live with it.
Does it make me a hypocrite?
Probably if someone really wants to pick bones, pun intended. But out of all the choices I have made in life - feeding my beloved cats meat is really low down on the priority scale right now!
~ Recent blog post: Vegan MoFo Day 31: MoFo youyou ~
Buying animals, dead or alive, is not vegan. ABSOLUTELY agree.
I often wonder what a vegan future would look like if we were to attempt to keep all the omnivore (pet) animals alive… Or the “wild” ones who could not be released into their habitat for whatever reason. The best senario I can figure is that the (other) animals who died a natural death would be used(?) But would that be “enough”? A good solution to this problem has always eluded me - I suppose vegans (animal lovers) could donate their bodies… But would that be “enough” (?). Someone help me out here - I just don’t know how this part would work.
For the two people above who feed their cats meat, don’t feel bad. Humans evolved as plant eaters, and if I have a right to eat the food that my body needs, then so do cats, who are obligate carnivores. I personally think that feeding carnivores a vegan diet is harmful, and slowly killing your companion animal in order not to kill factory farmed animals doesn’t make sense.
It’s an imperfect world, and we are oftentimes forced to make a “less bad” decision instead of a good one. Feeding cats meat is a less bad decision in my opinion. It’s not perfect. Perfect, after all, would be not having domesticated animals in the first place. Perfect would be humans not needing pets because we live in an abundant world full of plants and animals that we interact with daily while we forage. What we have now are concrete jungles, and the wild places have diminishing numbers of animals because we’re afraid of them getting too close, so we kill anything that steps even one inch into human territory.
We have cats, too, and we feed them meat. (We feed the dogs vegetarian or vegan dog food. Dogs are not carnivores the way cats are - dogs can eat as herbivores.) I am hoping vatmeat will become a reality so I can feed the cats testtube meat instead of dead pigs, dead chickens, dead fishes, or dead cows.
I have a cat that I feed meat to, and I have a dog who is now mostly vegan! That took a while because he was so picky and he has skin issues so I had to be careful with switching his food. I say he is “mostly vegan” because when he’s with my sisters or my parents I know they feed him meat, but when he’s at my house (95% of the time) he eats vegan now. It took a while to find the right food, but I’m glad I could switch him over. As for my cat - I agree with everyone above….what else can we do? I don’t want to harm her or kill her, so I do feed her meat, but in the grand scheme of things I’d say I’m doing pretty well. Oh, and both were rescues - I wouldn’t have it any other way!
~ Recent blog post: My Little Halloween Monkey! ~
I would think that it’s a matter of perspective as to what constitutes “buying”. That is, if you pay someone for a dog it does not imply that you see it as property, but simply that they will not be willing to part with it unless you give them money. If you believe you can give that dog a better life (than with someone else who does see it as buying) and live with eachother just fine, then why not part with this money which in my opinion is simply a representation of your hard work? My point is, even vegans (wait, especially vegans) can be a victim to this point of view. Simply spending money to “buy” a pet does not mean you see said pet as property.
On another note I’m thrilled to see that its possible to get vegan dog food. Awesome.
Personally, I am not anti-vegan, but I am against pushing vegan diet on obviously non-vegan creatures. Examples being vegan cat food, etc. From personal observations, I saw that ALL my cats hunted a wide variety of small critters for food. The only time they ate vegs was a bit of grass so they could poop better. That was their nature so I let them run free. Animals are awesome and already equipped with instinct to live. Don’t try to fix what isn’t broken.