This morning, as usual, I was woken up by the large ball of golden fluff that is my dog, Honey. At a time she considers decent, she bounds on to my bed, tail wagging furiously, to tell me it’s time for her breakfast. Honey still has the puppyish bounce she has always had – even though, at the age of almost 12, she is gently settling into canine old age. And I’d go so far as to say that what I give her to eat has a lot to do with her youthfulness.
Eye-roll as much as you like, but I believe one of the key reasons Honey is thriving is because she hasn’t eaten meat for more than six years. Yes, my dog is vegan. Not that she realises that, of course: as far as she’s concerned, she still gets the same sausages, dog chews and choice of dry and wet foods as she’s always had.
The only difference is what that food contains. It’s not the rendered remains of some miserable creature, like a pig, who may be more intelligent but who ended up on the losing side of our confused attitude to animals. Instead her breakfast comprises vegetables, herbs, cereals and grains, fruit, yeast, algae extracts, amino acids and minerals – carefully balanced to make sure it includes all the nutrients she needs. As much as it may amuse detractors to imagine Honey moping over a carrot and a piece of lettuce in her dog bowl, this simply isn’t the case.
Of course, as the owner of a vegan dog, I am aware that few subjects trigger more extreme reactions. One relative banged her fists on the table when the topic came up at dinner, declaring me ‘very, very selfish’. ‘Dogs are carnivores and must have meat’, ‘Forcing your beliefs on your dog is wrong’ and ‘You’re killing your dog’ are just some of the more polite objections I have had levelled at me on social media whenever I discuss the subject.
But it seems I’m not the only dog-lover questioning the oft-repeated assumption that ‘dogs need meat to live’. The news that plant-based pet food company Omni, developed by vets, has won over investors on Dragons’ Den after achieving £2.7 million in sales last year means it no longer feels like such an outlandish or eccentric choice.
Still, if edging your canine towards a vegan diet seems to go against the grain, I get it. For a long time I was sucked in by the marketing message that meat was ‘the food of her ancestors’ – when, in reality, pet foods have evolved to become a handy dumping ground for the least palatable byproducts of our own lust for meat.
Commercially prepared pet foods were invented by a canny Victorian electrician, James Spratt, who spotted a gap in the market in 1860. After seeing street dogs gobbling up discarded biscuits, he started selling his own version: a blend of wheat meal, vegetables and beetroot, mixed with a little beef blood. But as our meat cultivation has become more intensive and industrialised over the past 150 years, our consumption has skyrocketed – and so has our dogs’.
One relative banged her fists on the table when the topic came up at dinner, declaring me ‘very, very selfish’
The problem is that we now feed dogs so much meat that their food has become a major contributor to human-made climate change. Pet dogs and cats consume at least 9 per cent of all livestock products annually, according to a 2023 study in the journal PLOS One. And according to another study, pet dogs’ and cats’ meat-based food is responsible for at least a quarter of the environmental impact of meat production. Switching our pets to plant-based diets on a global scale would save 1.5 times the amount of greenhouse gases as those emitted by the entire UK, according to further 2023 research for the same journal by the University of Winchester. With an estimated 13 million pet dogs in the UK alone, and around 470 million worldwide, analysts say we won’t be able to meet our greenhouse gas targets unless we reconsider what our animal companions eat too.
Still, I often hear dog owners – even those who are vegans themselves – absolutely insist it’s cruel to feed dogs plant-based food. Yet a growing amount of research is finding the opposite is true. One 2022 study of dogs fed vegan or meat-based diets for at least one year found that plant-based diets lengthened the lives of dogs by an average of 1.5 years, probably because they were less likely to develop issues such as obesity. It saved on vet bills too: dogs fed vegan diets were also found to be less likely to require medication, and needed to be seen less by their vets for health issues.
But perhaps that’s not so surprising when you look into what ingredients are allowed in meat-based commercial pet foods. Despite the happy dogs pictured on the packaging, many of these products include a mixed bag of animal byproducts unfit for human consumption, rendered down at high temperatures (sometimes so high that the amino acids present in the meat are destroyed anyway, so have to be added back in artificially), compressed into kibble, and then coated in animal fat to make the whole thing palatable. A quick read of the government’s list of permitted ingredients shows that slaughterhouse leftovers that can be used in commercial dog foods include ‘hides, skins, horns, feet, pig bristle, heads of poultry, hatchery waste, day-old chicks, blood, placenta, wool, feathers, hair, hoof cuts’.
There’s another threat lurking in these foods, too. It’s estimated that between 70 and 90 per cent of food animals are farmed on factory farms, and these slaughtered animals are also given antibiotics to try to keep them disease-free in crowded conditions – so these also filter into our pet’s food chain.
And don’t worry. When pet food manufacturers make plant-based versions of dog foods, they don’t just mash up some vegetables and cross their fingers. They work with vets and nutritionists who make sure these foods also contain all the nutrients every dog needs. Malnourished dogs are not good for business, after all. Now that vegetarian and vegan dog foods have been around for well over a decade (since 1980, in fact), there are also plenty of older dogs to show how they can thrive on them.
And what of Honey’s health after six years on a vegan diet? So far, she’s never had any major illnesses. Her blood tests have routinely found that her levels of iron and vitamin B – which many people wrongly believe can only be found in meat – are normal.
So even if you’re not ready to go vegan to help tackle climate change, maybe let your dog show you the way. The chances are they won’t even notice if you switch them to a nutritionally complete plant-based diet – and they might even have a healthier, happier life for it.
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