[Michelle B]

Okay, so the cases above are examples of ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE. Evidence of that sort does not give you a strong case when you are trying to prove a point.

Let’s keep in mind that most dogs that eat meat are being fed crap foods such as Beneful, Science Diet, Pedigree, or Purina which contain lovely ingredients such as animal byproducts, mystery meat, ingredients from China, and loads of corn. And which are notorious for having frequent recalls.

And perhaps people that feed their dogs vegan diets are more health-conscious than the average dog guardian (who feeds their dog the above brands). So maybe this means that their dogs often eat fresh veggies such as kale, broccoli, bell peppers, etc, which are shown to reduce a dog’s chance of cancer. Cancer is a common cause of death for dogs over 10 years of age, so the inclusion of fresh fruits & veggies would skew any outcome.

What you need is a long-term (10 years or longer) study that follows three groups of dogs (you need a large enough sample, 100,000 dogs per group would be best). One group will eat a meat-heavy quality kibble such as Orijen. The vegan group will eat a comparable quality kibble such as…? The third group, which is your control group, will eat the most commonly fed kibble, which will probably be something like Pedigree. Then follow those dogs for their entire lifespan. But don’t just look at how many years they live (their date of birth must be DOCUMENTED), also look at their health, well-being, and overall quality of life. You also have to look at factors such as breed of dog (or whether they are mutts), whether they were neutered or spayed (and how old they were when it happened), how much and what types of physical exercise do they get, etc. All of these factors need to be controlled so that you can determine the effect of the diet without making conclusions based on correlations. And the study must be unbiased (not conducted or financed by a group that has a political or financial interest in pushing meat or a vegan diet). If there was some way to make the study double-blind (such as reformulating the kibble so that the owner or the scientist could not recognize which kibble the dog was eating), then that would increase the validity of the study.

Completing a study of this magnitude would give us the clearest idea of which diet is the healthiest for DOGS. I put dogs in caps, because you can’t apply nutrition studies done on HUMANS to dogs. Canines are primarily carnivores, while our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, are primarily herbivores; although they eat small amounts (5% of their diet) of animal protein like monkeys and termites. The average human diet is so far from what is biologically appropriate for us.

This is what I like to call SCIENCE!

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Michelle B.