Vegan and plant-based pet foods are increasingly available, raising important welfare questions about nutritional adequacy, digestive health, and the ethics of applying human dietary values to animals.
Vegan pet food welfare involves two distinct considerations: the welfare of the pet eating the diet, and the welfare of animals whose lives are spared by reducing conventional pet food demand. For dogs, evidence supports nutritional adequacy of well-formulated plant-based diets. For cats, the question is more complex — while synthetic supplementation can provide required nutrients, digestive adaptation to low-meat diets varies. The ethical calculus of feeding one animal on the lives of many smaller animals is genuinely relevant. However, pet welfare must be the primary consideration: no ethical argument justifies feeding a pet a diet that causes them nutritional harm.