(posting to both communities)
A carnist lemmy world instance admin has stepped in and meatsplained to the mods while restoring comments that violated the community's rules. They deleted comments that they did not agree with, citing 'misinformation', and threatened to demod the mods if those comments were removed again. The comments were deleted and the admin was banned from the community as per violating the rules of the community, that was until they unbanned themselves (admin abuse) and unmodded two of the moderators because of "promoting harmfull actions against pets".
As far as it stands, if the lemmy world community wasn't already not a safe vegan place for you (it really wasn't) it most certainly isn't now as carnists (lemmy world instance admin) currently mod it.
I suggest any vegan who wants a safe and welcoming space to come and interact with vegantheoryclub.org. Sorry for any inconvienance that this may have caused. I am deeply upset at the admins actions today and don't condone them whatsoever.
This is true. Cats need to eat meat as there is taurine in it without which they go blind.
Whilst we are vegan personally we don't think cats or any animals that live with us should be forced to forgo their natural diets for our ideals. If they could consent to it then yeah, but forgoing their natural diets because we have a problem with it is in our opinion bad.
We suggest any vegans that want animals that don't need to eat meat don't bring animals in their lives that need to eat meat. We suggest having something like a rabbit etc.
We don't, however, agree with this person's behaviour over such comments.
Hi there,
Thanks for your contributions on this server, you seem like a reasonable sort. Unfortunately there's a couple of issues with this comment but rather than just remove I thought I'd explain and let you make some corrections so you hopefully stick around.
Cats need taurine yes! which is only found in meat naturally. However synthetic taurine is a thing (e.g. in popular energy drinks) and is frequently added to cat food. This sort of equivocation between meat and nutrients, in the same vein as referring to meat as the only source of protein, is problematic. Cats also have a few other issues with unprocessed veg stuff, it's not like if you sprinked taurine over a dhal they'd be able to eat it, but that is a whole other thing.
It probably doesn't feel like it but this is speciesism. Privileging the pleasure of certain 'pet' species over the many animals they consume is problematic if we have other choices (the degree to which that is true is still being determined but tentative evidence suggests cats can avoid meat, or at least vastly reduce their intake). While the ethics of pet keeping is an entirely separate conversation everyone caring for non humans, whether in the context of pets or at a sanctuary, makes many decisions on their behalf. Consider for example that 'wild' domestic cats don't each much fish and yet it's very common for cat foods to be based on fish. Arguments to nature aren't very useful for determining what is or is not right.
This is a very emotive issue, but it's important we assess it in a non-speciesist and vegan framework.
Cheers,
This is an excellent comment! I wanted to add that commercially produced carnist cat food has supplemental taurine added to it already, so switching to a plant based food isn't introducing a new and 'exotic' ingredient.
Thank you for your reply.
We have read it and want to give ourselves time before we reply, to really think through it.
Hope things are going well!