Vegan dog food is less damaging to the environment, and to the welfare of animals processed into pet foods. But – are vegan diets good for cats? To test this, we collected data on 1,396 cats fed a meat-based (1,242 = 91%) or vegan (127 = 9%) diet for at least one year. We examined seven general indicators of ill health: unusual numbers of veterinary visits, medication use, progression onto a therapeutic diet after initial maintenance on a vegan or meat-based diet, guardian opinion and predicted veterinary assessment of health status, percentage of unwell cats and number of health disorders per unwell cat. We also considered the prevalence of 22 of the most common feline health disorders. Percentages of cats in each dietary group considered to have suffered from health disorders were 42% (meat-based) and 37% (vegan). The pooled evidence from this large-scale study, along with others in this field, indicates that the healthiest and least hazardous dietary choices for cats, are nutritionally sound vegan diets.
Knight A, Bauer A & Brown H (2023) Vegan versus meat-based cat food: Guardian-reported health outcomes in 1,369 cats, after controlling for feline demographic factors. PLoS ONE 18(9): e0284132. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284132.
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