Professor Andrew Knight (vegan), Part 2 of 4 - The Plant-Based, Healthiest Diet for Our Animal Companions

Professor Knight’s conviction stems from the knowledge that all our loving animal companions can be vegan and sustain healthy lifestyles. He has researched vegan pet foods extensively, to understand the benefits associated with our pets eating a balanced plant-based diet. “Now, I couldn’t actually find any evidence obvious in the scientific literature, except for one study where a diet that was already deficient in potassium, over time caused potassium deficiency in cats. But accidently, I found ten studies, and I’ve now found another one, so that’s eleven, demonstrating that cats and dogs maintained on commercial meat-based diets for prolonged periods of time developed a range of diseases. And they tended to be things like kidney disease, liver disease, heart disease, musculoskeletal diseases, neurological diseases, visual disorders, bleeding defects, birth defects, immunocompromised and increased rates of infectious diseases.”

“4D meats from animals that are diseased, dying, dead or disabled on arrival at the slaughterhouse are one of the ingredients of poor quality, not considered to be fit for human consumption, that traditionally have found their way into pet foods, as the meat industry tries to generate a little bit of money from products that would otherwise be thrown away.” “We see them as more valued members of our own families, and part of that means that we don’t want to feed them such junky diets anymore. But there’s another problem that this causes which is that now we’re getting into the realms of food animals being killed just for pet food, instead of the by-products of animals being killed for human consumption and going into pet food.”

“There’s been just a small number of studies very recently, looking at the environmental impacts of meat-based pet foods. And we’re discovering to our shock, that they’re much greater than we ever realized that they were. One of the most important studies was published just in 2017, and demonstrated that 25-30% of the environmental impacts of animal agriculture are attributable to pet food in the US.”

“Transitioning ourselves and our animals towards plant-based diets is one of the most effective things that we can all do to try to decrease the rate of destruction of our environment and the production of greenhouse gases, that are contributing to wiping out the other species that we share our planet with.”