vegan
Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
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Welcome
Welcome to c/vegan@lemmy.world. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'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 ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
- Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
- Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- embedded images of text require alt-text
- posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or alt-text
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
- Content warnings are required for triggering content.
- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
- Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
- No brigading, either off-site or on-site. An incitement to brigade includes two elements: a call to disruptive action and a specific direction outside of this community in which to take that action. Exceptions include:
- Calls to boycott.
- Calls to in-person protest of a government, high-profile individual, or company/organization.
- Votes provided they have a sufficiently broad target audience or provably effective controls against vote brigading.
- Petitions.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service also apply.
Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy:
Mastodon:
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
!homecooks@vegantheoryclub.org
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
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I'm inheriting a cat (long story) and did some basic research into the possibility of a vegan diet. It seems that while it is possible, like your links suggest, there is no easy way to do it. I looked in thr local stores and while I have found vegan food for my dog, they don't have anything for cats. A few online specialty places but the food is so expensive it is off the table.
I've switched to trying to find the lowest impact food but even that information is hard to find. I hope that it gets better and this small market gains traction, but it's not really at a level right now where thr average person can make a switch.
The main thing I've read (not a cat owner) is that unlike a dog, you're walking a fine line when providing a vegan diet to a cat. It can be done, and this is reflected in robust scientific literature, but you need to seriously know what you're doing. As a critical part of that, I think consulting a vet about getting them on a specific, well-planned diet is something any vegan cat owner ought to be doing. Mainly because while you can probably get away with feeding your cat a suboptimal meat-based diet and have them still be healthy, the risks with a suboptimal plant-based one mean that I don't think DIY research cuts it.
Nonetheless, I think the best thing for a vegan if possible (not your case) is simply not to own a cat, not because it's impossible to accomplish this but moreso because statistically it's much, much harder to accomplish, and normalizing it among vegans is liable to create situations where well-meaning but incompetent owners simply cannot meet the challenge and either give up partway through and go with meat-based food or slowly destroy the cat's health.
I haven't seen this brand locally but it does look decently priced. I don't live in the US but I do see a couple specialty stores in Canada that can ship it. I might give it a try. Thanks for thr recommendation :)
😊😊
Hey, for reasons I briefly go into below, I might consider another brand of cat food. A lot of things on this website point to it being a scam at worst or, at best, written by someone who probably shouldn't be trusted with the delicate balance that is your cat's health on a plant-based diet.
Yeah, I'm removing the comment with that link, because I genuinely do not trust this website; everything on it sounds completely unhinged, and that doesn't inspire confidence in me that they can pull off something so delicate as a plant-based food for cats.
Like the entire site is just bizarre. One of the alleged testimonials from "[REDACTED]" reads:
"[REDACTED]"
Literally what on Earth is this. The site just keeps referencing some single "university study" over and over again and doesn't seem to link to it. The production value for the UI seems high, but the contents frankly come off as some combination of machine generation and psychosis. It's like they took a Katamari through a list of buzzwords.
I have to say I am really disappointed with this hand holding form of moderation, treating me as a child that can't make up my own mind on a product. I was able to find that cat food sold through a reputable pet store and now I can't remember the name because you've deleted it. You've decided your opinion trumps my research and that's not how an open forum for discussion should be.
I know you think that animals are going to be harmed and you're trying to do the right thing, but it's simply overplaying your role and blocking discussion. Imagine going into a BDSM community and telling the people there that what they're doing is harmful and they need to see a psychiatrist. Maybe you could be right? But it's not your call.
You should be stopping hateful speach, bullying, and trying to keep illegal content off the server. Sluthing links and deleting posts because they don't match your opinion is simply not the role of a mod. I don't mean to be rude or insult you personally, but these kinds of actions matter and really make me reconsider if this is a community I want to be a part of if it is run this way.
It's trivially obvious the website is a scam. The entire site is in all-caps, the UI is jank as hell, it just nonsensically repeats buzzwords all over the place with no rhyme or reason, it constantly references a single study that I can't even verify exists, the reviews are so obviously fake it hurts because their English is just as broken as the website's and they throw out the same buzzwords in the same manner, it's full of unfounded superlatives like "the healthiest" and "the longest life", and just in general, there is a complete lack of professionalism or coherency that I would expect from any reputable storefront, again let alone one which is trying to walk the fine line of selling vegan cat food. Even disregarding LW ToS rule 8.1 which that website unambiguously fails to meet, it's our duty as vegans to reduce the suffering we cause for animals as far as possible, and that includes not leaving up – I emphasize – obvious links to scam sites for their food.
I did some digging, however, into the doctor that the scam website keeps referencing. It turns up this website which seems to actually have accredited professionals behind it and actually reads like coherent English written by a person not in the midst of psychosis. It also says it was founded in 1989, which is the same year the scam site claims to have been founded. Thus, I believe that the website linked to before was essentially trying to be a scam/bootleg version of petdiets.com, although to what end I'm unsure. Mystery ostensibly solved, @lunarul. petdiets.com doesn't seem to actually sell their own cat food but rather seems to perform individualized consultations for pets.
The comment is staying deleted; your analogy makes no sense because it's your cat's health on the line here, not your own. This community does not and will not host links to scammers masquerading as veterinary nutritionists.
You may be 100% right in your assessment of the scam. I can't argue otherwise because you deleted the URL, so you win by default.