Can dogs be vegetarian (split from thread "Feeding cichlids and other fish meat")

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Christians eat all types of meat, except during prescribed fasting periods, where they only eat fish without backbones (e.g. shellfish) and on certain feast days during a fast (e.g. Palm Sunday) fish.
Not entirely true
 
I read years ago that Dogs and Cats never get "cholesterol" They can eat fatty meat every day and never get a heart attack later in life. Maybe true or urban legend?
 
Judaism.

Christians eat all types of meat, except during prescribed fasting periods, where they only eat fish without backbones (e.g. shellfish) and on certain feast days during a fast (e.g. Palm Sunday) fish.
If only we could discuss that further...
 
I read years ago that Dogs and Cats never get "cholesterol" They can eat fatty meat every day and never get a heart attack later in life. Maybe true or urban legend?

They certainly can get high cholesterol.

 
I also had to stop feeding my dog beef for allergy reasons. But followed the same logic in trying to pinpoint what she might be allergic to. I doubted a wild mini schnauzer would be hunting and taking down many cows. Sure enough beef was causing her allergies.

Good discussion here IMO
It's called Mammal Meat Allergy (MMA) and is caused by ticks. People can get it as well as dogs and cats. The ticks carry something that gets passed onto the dogs and makes the dog become allergic or intolerant of mammal meats. The dog can still eat bird meat and fish but can't tolerate anything from a cow, sheep, pig, horse, etc.
 
Something intersting:
Bramble held the Guinness World Record for being the world's oldest dog. Bramble lived on an exclusively vegetarian diet of organic vegetables, rice, and lentils.
Bramble was a border collie (medium sized dog).
Small breeds regularly outlive big breeds, and medium sized dogs fall in between when if comes to life expectancy.
eg: I know a number of people who have terriers that lived to be over 20 years old.
I know people who owned great danes, grey hounds, Irish wolf hounds, etc, (all big breeds) and their dogs died before they were 10.
I know people who have medium sized dogs that lived to be 15.

Doing a Google search has brought up 2 more dogs that lived longer than Bramble. A blue healer named Bluey who lived to 29, and Butch the beagle who lived to 28.

It's kind of interesting that while small breeds normally outlive larger breeds, the 3 oldest dogs on record are medium sized working dogs. I need more information about them because this is interesting.

I wonder if they were sterilised and if so, at what age?
What were the other dogs fed (we know what Bramble ate)?
How much exercise did they do?
Were they living in cities or rural properties?

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The hip problem in your Rottweiler was probably hip dysplasia and is common in big dogs and dogs with poor genetics.
 
So why keep them on the diet of a herbivore?
I refrain from eating meat, not because of the ethics surrounding the meat industry but because of the unhealthfulness of the meat.
Why would I feed my dog meat if I personally wouldn't eat it? If its bad for my body, its bad for theirs as well. And if there is an alternative route why not take it?
Dogs teeth are mainly for cutting and eating meat. They have a number of sharp pointy teeth.
Cow's teeth are mostly flat molars like people have.
Human teeth are mainly flat molars designed for grinding up plant matter.

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Dogs have a shorter digestive tract to people. This is typical of carnivores (meat eaters) because they don't want rotting meat in their intestines too long, and they get the nutrients out of the meat quicker compared to vegetarian animals.

Vegetarian animals have a longer digestive tract and some have multiple stomachs to help break down the plant matter so they can get nutrients from it.

Humans have a fairly long digestive tract but only 1 stomach. It is used to break down mostly plant based foods but also animal protein.

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Humans and dogs have different teeth and different digestive tracts designed for different types of food. We are both omnivores but humans are omnivorous with a predisposition to plant based foods. Dogs are omnivores with a predisposition to meat based foods. This is shown by their teeth.

The dental attributes show what types of food an animal eats, as does their stomach/s and intestine.
 
Oh ok... So I can eat dead carcasses on the road... I was wondering! Vultures eat it so I can!
We used to be able to but most of us no longer have the ability to tolerate road kill (due to lack of variety in the bacteria in our intestines), especially if it's been dead more than a day. But if the animal hasn't been dead too long, and you cook it to kill the bacteria in it, then you can eat it. Although it might have a slight metallic taste, which is common in rotting meat that has turned.
 
The Consumer Union tested hamburger samples from a cross-section of retail suppliers. In the test, they specifically were able to identify fecal contamination.
The conclusion of this test showed that 73 percent of the samples had a coliform count that was high enough to cause mild sickness.
Knowing that hamburgers constitute more than half of America's beef consumption, it is clearly a significant danger to public health.
I am sure similar tests have been done in Europe with similar results.
They also found that the samples ready to go out to the stores had already begun to putrify.

The GAO's independent check of 68 poultry processing plants found the sanitary conditions unacceptable. Almost half of the results found that they were contaminated by fecal matter, digestive tract contents, bile, and feathers.
Sounds delicious, right?

Cancerous sores are often cut off the carcass, and the rest of the animal is sold for food. Of course, the cancer virus is spread throughout the rest of the body.

Just about all chickens carry leukosis viruses, and chicken farmers run a 6 times more risk of dying from leukemia than nonfarmers.

We can all agree that meat is an excellent medium for growing bacteria, right?
Peutrificatin begins almost immediately in a dead animal and progresses rapidly. There is no way to prevent that.
Once the effects of spoilage become obvious in color, smell, and taste, they pump large amounts of chemicals into the flesh to restore its appearance.

Picture in your mind the combined effects of the animal's waste products trapped in the flesh, the chemical additives of the fast-growing food supply, the filth factor of the packing house, and the various injections given to restore proper appearance. What do you have? A completely unfit source of protein.
Connorlindeman's comments about meat at abattoirs and in fast food outlets does have genuine scientific evidence behind it and is a health concern if the meat is not treated or handled properly before we eat it. This is why we have a Health department and why there are laws about handling and storage of food products and why health departments do regular checks of places that manufacture and sell food.

All meat should be cooked for a long enough period of time to kill any bacteria in or on the meat.

Fruit & vegetables can also become contaminated in harmful and undesirable bacteria and this shows up in the news from time to time when there is a product recall of certain items due to contamination. So all foods (meat & plant based) need to be handled safely and not allowed to become contaminated.

During covid there were people deliberately coughing on fresh fruit and vegetables at stores and that food would have been contaminated by the people coughing on them.

If food is cooked properly and stored correctly, it should be safe to eat and you won't catch anything from it and you shouldn't get sick from eating it.

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The GAO's independent check of 68 poultry processing plants found the sanitary conditions unacceptable. Almost half of the results found that they were contaminated by fecal matter, digestive tract contents, bile, and feathers.
Sounds delicious, right?

Cancerous sores are often cut off the carcass, and the rest of the animal is sold for food. Of course, the cancer virus is spread throughout the rest of the body.
All abattoirs have animal waste, blood, hair, feet, etc, and these are not wanted in our food. However, if you were in the wild hunting your own food, then the meat you got from your prey, would get sand, leaves, grass, partially digested food, waste, hair and other gross things on it. This happens when you chop up an animal.

In the wild if you were gathering plants to eat, there is a possibility some if them would be contaminated by insect, bird or animal waste, hair, dirt, dust and other things.

The fact is, in this day and age, most people buy food in plastic packaging and don't go hunting for it. So we don't see what is actually involved in food preparation. Seeing animals at the abattoir vs picking an apple off a tree is completely different. A 3 year old child can pick a flower or strawberry and not have any issue with it. But most adults would throw up if they walked into an abattoir during business hours.

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There are more dangerous things in poultry abattoirs too. Every commercial poultry abattoir around the world has drug resistant bacteria in the processing rooms, packing rooms, and on the meat they produce. So you have to handle and cook poultry products carefully so you don't catch/ get contaminated by these drug resistant bacteria.

Regarding cancerous sores. Most cancers are not caused by viruses, they are simply mutated cells that the body doesn't recognise as being abnormal. So there isn't going to be cancerous viruses all through the chicken that in turn, infect us and turn into cancers in people.

You can eat cancers, although the idea of it is gross, it sometimes happens. As long as the food is cooked well and handled safely, there is no chance of you catching or developing cancer from eating chicken that had tumours removed from the body at the abattoir.

People with a high meat diet and low fibre and plant based diet, are at a higher risk of developing some cancers compared to people who eat a low meat diet and have lots of plant matter in their diet. But this is a completely different subject to eating chicken that has had tumours removed. So don't mix the two subjects up. One is about chickens with tumours and the other is about humans having too much meat and not enough plant matter. The quote I responded to is about tumours in chickens.

edited to fix a couple of spelling mistakes. shame, I'm bad :(
 
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Nowadays all meat is completely unhealthy as a food source due to contamination.
That's not necessarily true. In Australia kangaroos are free range and have high quality lean meat that is free of chemicals and contamination, (besides lead poisoning from being shot). Our cattle are all free range and we don't use hormones or anything bad in them. Our sheep are clean and pigs are pretty clean. Our poultry isn't so you get points for that.

In other parts of the world there is clean meat. It just depends on the government making laws to keep produce clean and safe.

I'm sure there's a few people on this forum that hunt and the meat they eat would be clean.

Yes some forms of meat (especially mince and poultry) isn't very clean and needs to be handled safely and correctly, but not all meat is gross and contaminated when you get it from the shop or out in the field.


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@CaptainBarnicles
Do you want to eat bacteria, viruses, and fecal matter? I don't
LOL, sorry you may not want to, but I bet you do :)

This is going to gross out everyone but your bodies are covered in yeast, fungus, bacteria, viruses and other things. If you wipe your nose, scratch yourself, rub your eyes, or just touch any part of your body, you will be picking up these microscopic organisms. Same deal with fecal coliforms and poop. Every time you fart, you leave traces on your clothing. You get it on your belt, button, zipper, pants, t-shirt, etc, when you do your pants up after going to the loo. You inhale the stuff floating around the air, you ingest it when you eat stuff. It is literally everywhere.
If you put your hand in your pocket and then eat something, you are ingesting bacteria and other things.

The body can tolerate it to a degree and most things are sterilised in our stomachs due to the stomach acids (pH below 3). We evolved with bacteria and are basically a high rise apartment block for bacteria and other microscopic organisms. If we were in an aquarium, our bodies would be filter media.

Going back to food that has bacteria on it, cook the food properly to kill off anything on and in it. And wash your hands with soapy water after handling raw meat products.
 
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