(09-21-2014, 03:08 PM)Unbound Wrote: On that note, I am just curious as to your standpoint, would you recommend a "most ethical" way of slaughtering the animals for food for carnivorous pets? (Since it might take a long time to turn every cat and dog vegan lol)
Any decrease in cruelty is progress. We have a major dilemma with all the cats and dogs, who are no longer in a natural habitat, so we obviously have to feed them something.
The issue I have is when humans continue to eat animals, claiming that they were 'humanely' slaughtered and therefore it's 'ok.' There is a huge difference between choosing the least cruelly produced dead animals to feed other animals, vs. supporting the UNnecessary killing of animals to feed humans, since humans don't need to eat meat to begin with.
I highly recommend reading Obligate Carnivore. It totally blasts some of the myths about dogs' and cats' optimal diets. For example, it's not 'natural' for an 8-lb housecat to kill a cow or an ocean tunafish.
There is no easy or instant solution. But there ARE solutions! If humans transitioned to vegan, the artificially bloated cattle population would gradually shrink to a more natural and manageable size. We are responsible for the dogs and cats, but I reject the notion that we must kill some animals in order to feed others, so I'm optimistic that cats and dogs can indeed thrive on a vegetarian diet. I would rather have the goal of transitioning them to a vegetarian diet (which includes some small amounts of free-range eggs, perhaps) first, to see how they do, before attempting all the way vegan. That makes sense to me.
We are seeing more and more videos of animals engaged in compassionate acts towards other animals of other species. My own cats didn't know what to do with a mouse they caught. They seem to have lost their instinctual desire to kill and eat that mouse or bird. One of my dogs goes nuts over fruit!
Yes, I am optimistic that our dogs and cats are capable of evolving in a swift shift in consciousness, just like we can. There's no reason why their first lifetime as a human can't be a vegetarian human!
But we can't expect them to, if we are still dragging our own feet.
Edit: I just realized that you were asking if I could recommend a 'most ethical' method. (At first I thought you were asking if I supported that.) I wish I could, but I don't know an easy answer to that. I am transitioning my own dogs at this point. We won't change the world overnight. That's why I contend that we must start with ourselves.
Edit: Just found this in the comments section. Last I checked, they had vegan doggie kibble but not kitty kibble. Apparently now there is a vegan kitty kibble! Yipppeee! This is great news, since my cats turned their noses up at the egg-potato stew my dogs enjoy.