It’s even worse for Germany - cornflowers are used as Nazi symbolism.

The difference is that you as the owner are in that case not actively financing an industry that’s slaughtering other animals in order to feed your pet.

That a cat while roaming outside will inevitably kill other animals is not unethical on the cats part. It’s debatable if it’s unethical on the owners part, which is why many people nowadays discuss only keeping cats as indoor pets anyway. It is however a completely separate issue to vegan cat food.

Maybe you think vegans ask for vegan pet food because they want their cat to “be vegan”? Because if so, that’s a misunderstanding. Vegan ethics are always about our own consumption decisions and behavior. Never about those of animals. (Which is why “dO yOu JuDgE LiOnS fOr KiLliNg ZeBrAs As WeLl?” is never a good argument. We don’t.) As caretakers for our pets some of their decisions naturally fall to us. You’re always deciding for them which brand of pet food your cat will get. For example I avoid nestle owned brands, wether my cat supports that decision or not. If he was an outside pet I’m sure he would at least try to murder something occasionally. That has nothing to do with my responsibility to honor the ramifications of my own ethical considerations though. My cat is too dumb for that - literally. It doesn’t release me from the responsibility.

(He gets meat btw, he has chronic digestive problems and needs special food anyway - before anyone here accuses me of murder and torture or something.)

we’re already doing that, and it doesn’t work.

We absolutely do, taurine is in basically every commercially available cat food out there. Chances are you are already feeding your cat synthetic taurine.

I feed my cats the food they need to survive, fortunately.

So do I, I’m just really annoyed at the intellectually dishonesty at play here. The position you’re arguing in favor of is almost impossible to verify. Can you prove that is is impossible to create a nutritionally complete vegan cat food? No, obviously you can’t. Even if every single brand currently available would be proven to be insufficient (which I seriously doubt) it’d still be a wild claim that it couldn’t be done. Does that stop you from harshly judging everyone with a different opinion? For some reason, no.

Feel free to correct me if you do have a reliable source that explains why it’s impossible to supplement vegan cat food while being perfectly fine for conventional ones.

Then look for a recent study yourself. I certainly won’t waste my time, since I hardly believe you would chance your mind even with the most robust data available. You’ve made up your mind.

There’s no reason why supplementation shouldn’t be possible. After all we’re already doing that. Obviously we can test for it (since so many people in this comment claimed that vegan brands were tested and found to be insufficient), so nothing stops us from putting taurine into the cat food to the point where it reaches the required amounts. It’s that simple. If you need to stay offended than for all means keep going. Just know that you behave just like the vegans you’re so annoyed about, and it’s showing.

Taurine should be the easiest to supplement, since it’s already widely synthesized to supplement traditional pet food with. Three decades old studies really shouldn’t be the only thing we’re looking at before we’re going at each others necks about something.

It’s this shitting on new ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.

And ironically this is exactly what vegans are often blamed for btw. People turn off their brain, get all emotional, and feel justified on hating someone for muder, abuse, and torture (all claims from this very comment section) without the slightest bit of nuance. I just searched for “vegan cat food nutrition study” and very randomly picked the first search result, which brought me to a study from 2023 showing that cats fed a vegan diet were overall even healthier. So at the very least we have to agree that this isn’t as clear cut as many here claim with utmost confidence.

I’ve seen this exact argument before and it was just as heated. Ironically the same people getting annoyed at vegans for being emotional and judgemental are incredibly fast to scream abuse and murder when it comes to cat food.

What should stop a company from supplementing the right amount of all the nutrients listed? The article simply claims it’s not nutritionally complete, but that would only be an argument against the brands currently available and tested, not against the idea in principle.

So they should simply start producing one that is. Problem solved. No law of nature prevents us from supplementing the right amount of taurine and b12, so there is no reason to be irrational about it.

Wtf is happening in the comments. Why are people getting so insane over this topic over and over again? If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what? The only two reasons to object are if someone is 100% convinced such a product doesn’t and cannot exist or if they’re entirely ideological about it. And if we have to apply the naturalistic fallacy that only the natural way can be morally okay, why of all things argue about pet food? I really, really don’t get it why people get so intensely emotional about it.

Well now I’m wondering if you ever had an actual conversation with a vegan, because they actually have good reasons for this. A vegan diet is simply the most consequential idea if you want to minimize the necessity for animals to die, at the very least (even if we ignore the various ways of exploitation) because male chickens and calves obviously have to be killed in order for these industries to function.

Youth corrections staff is still a whole other story than doctors though. A physical examination is probably one of the most vulnerable positions one could be in. These cameras would record people getting naked, multiple orifices being examined, and patients talking about symptoms or things they are unsure and often ashamed about.

The cost would be enormous. I imagine many people would be even more reluctant to go to the doctor than they are now.

And the benefit, in my opinion, would be very slim. Medical malpractice is far more subtle than the examples from the article. As patients we’re rarely worried that our doctor will physically assault us, we’re worried about errors in judgement, delays in care, and prejudices based on gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and so on. And those aren’t directly observable most of the time. Even if you get the moment on camera where your doctor decides to trivialize your symptoms you mostly wouldn’t be able to prove it happened for discriminatory reasons.

Why doctors? Filming patients would be a nightmare in terms of privacy and data policy.

In my line of work (psychotherapy) it would be equally impossible. People are having a hard enough time as it is opening up to medical professionals, I don’t think that the additional barrier of being actively filmed would help anyone.

It asserts a paradox of infinities, rather than a non-existence of God.

It never attempted to prove non-existence. This is what you misunderstood from the beginning.

The paradox assumes a much more substantive understanding of philosophy in its axioms.

How is that an counterargument? Epicurus says: Those axioms create a paradox, they must be wrong. You’re saying: Yeah well your axioms are too substantive. You are agreeing that the three premises can’t be true. Everything else you’ve talked about was simply missing the point.

The Epicurean paradox does nothing else than to discuss if the premises as phrased can be true. If you talk about an idea outside those premises you’ve already missed the mark.

The premise written from the perspective of a bunch of Bronze Age shepherds, yes.

Which is precisely what the Epicurean paradox is about.

Mate I’m sorry but if you still don’t understand what the paradox says in the first place this is a waste of time. Obviously you want to talk about something that hast nothing to do with the paradox itself. I’ll leave you to it.

You don’t need to be omniscient to appear to be to a sufficiently limited observer.

Yeah, but the premise of the abrahamic god says he is, that’s the point.

The insistence that nothing should ever be unpleasant at any time for any reason is the mentality of a toddler.

Back to the insults? That’s weak. Maybe you’ve never experiences anything truly horrible in your life. Good for you! Bad for you for forgetting about the rest of us though, really, that’s actually pretty rude. You’re reinforcing the notion that the only way christians can get out of the paradox is by becoming very, very ignorant.

Imagine a young child that painfully dies of cancer. The parents ask: How could god let that happen? How can he be all powerful and not save our sweet child from all this unnecessary pain?

What would you answer them?

And that’s where you get into questions of degree.

Not at all. The premise is “all-knowing”. That is in fact a mechanic who’s able to account for every particle within the engine block.

I wander carelessly through the yard.

You are not all-powerful. The premise says: god is. If you were easily able to spare all those small insects, deciding to kill them anyway would make you a psychopath.

Suffering is a consequence of our human condition.

Our human condition, within the scenario of the thinking exercise, was very consciously created that way by god.

I would not consider a world devoid of feeling one that was compatible with an all-loving god.

An all-powerful god would have been able to create a reality with feeling, but without suffering. And religion already claims that he can - that’s the idea of heaven or paradise.

We’re talking about a concept of god who’s omnicscient, don’t forget that. In your metaphor I knew perfetcly well beforehand were you would build your house and consciously put my bulldozer there, knowing it would one day destroy your home.

Using my power and knowledge to so something that will harm you is mean spirited. The same must be said for god. Exceptions would be if god didn’t have another choice or didn’t know better. Both of those are addressed in the Epicurean paradox.

An omnipotent god would have been able to build a world without suffering. His volcanoes would maybe spray rainbows.

God didn’t build a world without suffering. Therefore we can conclude: It is not possible for him to be at the same time fully able and willing to do so. Or to put it more formally: A omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving god is incompatible with a world that includes suffering.

If I suddenly acquired a million dollars and your home address and use them to bulldoze your living room, would that be evil?

It doesn’t seem to work on the German Wikipedia. Super weird decision to tie display settings to a language.