I don’t have a full answer to the question, but if you do feed the dog meat, one starting point would be to prefer meat that has less suffering associated with it. It is typically claimed that beef has less suffering per unit mass associated with it than pork and much less than chicken, simply because you get a lot more from one individual. The counterargument would be to claim that cows > pigs > chickens in intelligence/complexity to a great enough extent to outweigh this consideration.
I’m curious: are there specific reasons to believe that dogs need meat while humans (also omnivores) do not? A quick Google search finds lots of vegetarians happy to proclaim that dogs can be vegetarian too, but I haven’t looked into details.
The counterargument would be to claim that cows > pigs > chickens in intelligence/complexity
My understanding is that pigs > cows >> chickens. Poultry vs mammal is a difficult question that depends on nebulous value judgments, but I thought it was fairly settled that beef causes less suffering/mass than other mammals.
Huskies love fish (for obvious practical reasons), and fish are just dumb. (Though the way we achieve that is to mix fishy cat food into our husky’s dog food, which is random tinned dog food.)
Pigs on top surprises me, given that I thought pigs had more intelligence/awareness than other meat sources (as measured by nebulous educated guessing on our part).
tldr: Dogs are opportunistic carnivores more than omnivores. They eat whatever they can get, and they’ll probably survive without meat, but they’ll be missing a bunch of things their bodies expect to have.
I don’t have a full answer to the question, but if you do feed the dog meat, one starting point would be to prefer meat that has less suffering associated with it. It is typically claimed that beef has less suffering per unit mass associated with it than pork and much less than chicken, simply because you get a lot more from one individual. The counterargument would be to claim that cows > pigs > chickens in intelligence/complexity to a great enough extent to outweigh this consideration.
I’m curious: are there specific reasons to believe that dogs need meat while humans (also omnivores) do not? A quick Google search finds lots of vegetarians happy to proclaim that dogs can be vegetarian too, but I haven’t looked into details.
My understanding is that pigs > cows >> chickens. Poultry vs mammal is a difficult question that depends on nebulous value judgments, but I thought it was fairly settled that beef causes less suffering/mass than other mammals.
Huskies love fish (for obvious practical reasons), and fish are just dumb. (Though the way we achieve that is to mix fishy cat food into our husky’s dog food, which is random tinned dog food.)
Pigs on top surprises me, given that I thought pigs had more intelligence/awareness than other meat sources (as measured by nebulous educated guessing on our part).
From his last sentence, Ben agrees with you. He has just reversed the meaning of the inequality sign.
You’re right, I failed a parse check. Thanks!
Here’s a quick citation: http://pets.webmd.com/features/vegetarian-diet-dogs-cats
tldr: Dogs are opportunistic carnivores more than omnivores. They eat whatever they can get, and they’ll probably survive without meat, but they’ll be missing a bunch of things their bodies expect to have.