The Vegan Vet Dr Lucy Claire McKinna
About Lucy
Can companion animals be vegan?
with compelling and delicious, natural flavours.
Dr Lucy Claire (LC) McKinna - Veterinary Surgeon, BVSc, MSc, MRCVS graduated from Melbourne University in 2007, and has been a small animal veterinary surgeon since then. LC founded and ran the Fat Salad vegan food stall ‘Get In, Get Fed, Stay Healthy’ at UK summer festivals from 2012 to 2017, also supplying independent health food shops in London. She has a lifetime interest in sustainability, corporate responsibility and animal welfare and has been vegan for 9 years now.
Yes dogs and cats can both be vegan. It’s very exciting actually - I remember sitting in a lecture hall many years ago as a vet student being told by a (rather old and probably well set in his ways) university lecturer that feeding dogs and cats a vegetarian diet is tantamount to animal cruelty - I imagine probably what he had in mind was bowfuls of boiled potatoes and beans, not sophisticated, nutritionally-complete recipes that tick all the boxes set by European Pet Food Standards Authority FEDIAF
Our knowledge has increased so much with the dawn of the internet- from the increased visibility and inherent cruelty of the meat trade, how animal protein from different species’ body parts goes through significant rendering and into many of the meat-based pet foods, our increased knowledge about the impact of farm animal production on the environment - to the increased knowledge of animal nutrition and sophistication to use plants and yeasts to provide the same amino acids found
52 I Plant Powered Planet
