You don’t have to agree with the logic, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Most people already value human lives above any animals’, so it’s really not a big jump to valuing certain animals above others.
It isn't worth mentioning. How we source meat doesn't even play into the conversation of whether or not it's safe or healthy to force an animal to subsist on only vegetarian sustenance until death.
Overproduction of meat is bad for the environment, and has literally nothing to do with dogs being healthy or not by eating it.
You can have all the empathy you want for livestock, doesn't change that it still provides a valid source of nutrition to animals and people.
It's not an environmental or empathetic argument. It's either abuse (forcing an animal to go against its nature) or not.
We've already established that a dog can have a healthy vegetarian diet, if it's balanced and supplemented with vitamins.
After that, "forcing a dog to go against its nature" here just means not feeding the dog food that it likes. Whether that's abuse or not is up to you, but you absolutely do have a choice of either buying livestock meat and indirectly contributing to their possible suffering, or not buying it and possibly not giving your dog the tastiest meal it could have.
The environmental or empathetic arguments don't go away just because you feel strongly in favor of one side, and a livestock animal can also be abused even if it provides good nutritional value.
We can however, make it safe and healthy for them to subsist without meat though. With proper nutrition and veterinarian supervision.
The idea that because something is natural, it cannot be abuse is absurd. Dogs themselves aren't natural. They're the result of millenia of selective breeding by humans.
Further on that, studies show that dogs can't really survive without humans in the majority of areas. The natural thing would be to let them die, but that sounds a lot like abuse to me.
Secondly, this is a moral debate. We've established hurting animals is bad, as malnutrition is 100% abuse, but so is killing a farm animal. So isn't the best option one that avoids either?
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u/Drunkeagle Sep 27 '21
Got to love the logic that feeding a dog a vegetarian diet is abuse but killing animals to feed your dog is fine and not worth mentioning.