I think that Eric Weisman of Evolution Pet Food came across very poorly in this interview. Having no quantitative evidence to back up or to offer listeners and customers, to attest to the supposed nutritional soundness of his food, made him sound no more informed or scientifically grounded than those who were supposedly offering only anecdotal evidence (guests Mirha-Soliel Ross and Ida Fong). On a more personal note, I found his dismissal of MSR and IF’s experiences to be incredibly insensitive and patronizing (implying the death of their cats was due it their fault for having dirty floors or using the wrong type of litter!! Such unbelievable nerve!).

I have hope for the new food discussed on the show from Italy, and for the ability for cats to be vegan in general, but Evolution doesn’t seem the way to go.

I completely agree. Instead of offering even a morsel of sympathy or concern for Ida or Myrha, he blamed everyone (food distributors & cat parents) and everything (litter, pathogens, dirty floors, not soaking kibble long enough) else for the poor health and even death of the cats that were fed Evolution. His patent denial of responsibility was infuriating, to say the least. Plus, he didn't seem knowledgeable at all and even contradicted himself several times. For example, when he was bragging about all of the animals at (his?) shelter eating Evolution without incident, then later in the show stated that the problem with cats getting UTIs and subsequently blocking is because they come from multiple cat households. Wouldn't a shelter qualify as a multiple cat household?

There's no way I'd feel comfortable feeding my cats (or dogs!) Evolution food. However, I am very interested in hearing about the alternative vegan foods mentioned by Adam and I agree with Myrha... I still have hope that cats can thrive on a vegan diet.

I completely agree. I was enraged at his outright dismissal of the concerns voiced by Ida and Mirha. When people are telling you that your product is repeatedly antagonising the health of companions that they care about dearly, you have the responsibility to allay their fears -- not sit there and make it seem like they're incapable of being proper stewards to the animals. Dirty litter? Multiple cats? Come ON, man. The doctor JUST SAID that those particular forms of infections have been known to be dietary, and not cleanliness issues. A UTI for a cat comes from pathogens.

The crystallising of the urine comes from diet. They're two different things. If you're going to cite credentials about your ability to diagnose and treat cats (which you're doing without animal nutrition or veterinary certifications recognised by any scientists), at least have the decency to do your homework about basic pathological information that affect animals. It took all of two seconds for the doctor on board to completely deflate your vile little snivellings about poor care from the cat parents.

Meanwhile, using a snarky and condescending tone during an interview where you've essentially been nailed to the wall with your callous disregard for the safety of pet children makes you come off as exactly what you are -- a cold, heartless corporate shill. Thanks.

All I heard was "thousands," "tens of thousands," "ten-- uh-- thousands--" from Weisman. "We have a file." If he's not even going to publish the data collected from customers (as there have evidently been no *studies* to publish) about their animals and Evolution, why should I feel comfortable putting my cat on an Evolution diet? Sorry, anecdotal "evidence" isn't enough for me. Besides, I have a strict policy about not giving money to people who act like jerks on radio interviews.

(Animal Voices received this letter before the Vegan Pet Food show. We didn't get a chance to read it on the air, so here it is now, posted with permission. - Lauren)

Dear Lauren,

Here is my experience for you to draw from on your radio show if you need it.

Noodle, a 4 lb Chihuahua came to me in 2002 from a breeder who was retiring her. She was six years old and had been on a lamb and rice diet her whole life.

I knew that Chihuahuas had certain dietary needs due to their small size (hypoglycemia, etc) so the thought of converting my dog to a vegan/vegetarian diet was not a choice I made lightly.

I went through the normal process of phasing out her normal meat by-product food with three different brands of vegetarian foods. Since her age was a factor and previous owners had not given her much dental care, I ended up working with a soft canned dog food called Vegetarian Feast even though it is completely vegan. Normally I wouldn't recommend this food for people with large dogs, because it isn't cheap. It's 1.89 a can USD but a 4 lb dog makes one can last 4 meals. She has been vegan for over two years now with no negative changes in her health. She is full of energy for a 9 year old dog, and doesn't snub her nose at her food one bit (unless I'm eating something tastier in front of her :) ) She is crazy about carrots, popcorn, and of course vegan dog cookies. And the house is peaceful for both of us. My conscious is free and she is sated and healthy.

I don't know if you knew this but the record holding oldest dog in the world is vegan. Here is a link to her information. Well, unfortunately the dog died of an un-vegan related incident in 2000 but lived to be 27?!??!

http://www.gnn.tv/threads/1954/World_s_oldest_Dog_is_a_Vegan

Stacy Porter

(Here's another letter we received prior to our last show. We didn't get a chance to read any letters on the air, so we asked if we could post them here instead. - Lauren)

Hi,

I’m a vegan and animal rights activist. I also have 4 companion animals that are all vegans – 1 dog and 3 cats (2 females, 1 male). They have been eating Evolution Diet for about 6 months now and love it! When I was making the transition, my dog would actually push his old kibble out of the way to get to the vegan kibble. I call him my little AR doggie! I’ve also read the book “Obligate Carnivore” which talks of the health issues and that as long as the food is nutritionally balanced and has the amino acid taurine in it, which ED does, it’s perfectly fine to feed your cats and dogs vegan food. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Any way I can stick it to The Man, I’m gonna do just that.

Eric Weisman, founder of Evolution Diet, also offers free veterinary advice, which I have taken him up on several times, always with great results. My 5 year old dog, who is not neutered, only because I think he has the cutest “puppy sack” I have ever seen (I will never ever breed him and he does not roam so he will never contribute to pet over population in any way), had blood in his urine. The vet examined him and found out he had a bladder infection and an enlarged prostate. She put him on an antibiotic and Rimadyl (which I did not realize till I got home). Well I’ve heard horror stories about Rimadyl and did not want my dog on that stuff. So I called Eric and he suggested flax seed oil, Xango juice and noni capsules. So I put him on that stuff and his prostate has gone down and the vet said we may not even need to neuter him now. Yeah!

I’m all about veganism, wholistic healing and animal rights.

Kind regards,

Cheryl

Wow. Sounds like I missed an interesting show...unfortunately I had to miss this one live, but will listen to it archived soon...anyway...I forwarded a letter to the show that I understand didn't make it on air. Lauren wrote to say I might want to post it here and I do, especially after reading through all the other posts!

Original email:
Hi there,
I'm looking forward to catching your show on vegan cats and dogs. I got turned on to vegan cat food when working for the first animal rights store in Canada, Animal Free Trade, located in Vancouver back in the early 90's.

I've been feeding my cats homemade vegan catfood made with the supplement called VegeCat from Harbingers of a New Age for the better part of a decade, and all have not only done well on this diet, they have thrived.

Unfortunately, I can't claim to have conducted a scientifically valid experiment all these years, since two of our three current cats have always been able to go outside in our rural island environment, as all were strays to begin with, including one that we know is definitely a hunter and probably survived that way for up to a year before he trusted us enough to become domesticated. But the most recent edition to our family, another rescue kitty named Mandy, was a scrawny siamese who had lived inside most of her life eating regular canned, and dried commercial cat food. We took a year to wean her off of that stuff, and onto the homemade supplemented vegan diet enjoyed by our other cats, and she is doing fantastically well.

All our cats have beautiful silky coast, rarely have fleas, even when the neighbours are complaining about the problem their own cats seem to have, and have never had shots or any serious health problems. Two are around ten years old and so have been enjoying our homemade diet for nearly this long with absolutely no sign of any nutritional deficiencies.

We buy big bags of organic chickpeas that form the basis of the recipe for our cat food, along with organic, non gmo tvp, olive oil, animal grade yeast from Harbingers and their VegeCat brand supplement. We are always explaining to people that because amino acids and taurine are so critical for cats that it is important to include the vegecat supplements carefully in the exact measurements laid out in Harbingers' veterinary approved recipes.

After all these years, I am happy to say I am completely convinced that not only do our cats enjoy and do well on their diet, that they actually appear to be far healthier than many other cats we know. Maybe the odd mouse rounds out any possible nutritional imbalance for our forest and farm field hunter Mr. E, I just don't know.

But here's one thing I'm absolutely sure of...nobody should be allowing their cats to produce offspring in this overpopulated world, so the fear of 'gene weakening' from one generation of cats to the next as a result of a plant-based diet, is a non-issue for those of us that believe in spay and neuter. As long as my cats live 'one' happy, 100% healthy life on a nutritionally balanced, veterinarian approved diet, then I am confident that we have done the right thing by opting out of the mainstream, commercial pet food world.

There is no need for anyone who cares for, and loves cats to be feeding them the body parts of animals no domestic feline would ever consume independantly in the first place, and which only helps subsidize the brutal slaughterhouse industry we are so right to abhor.

Rather than argue with people that they shouldn't be concerned about a vegan diet for cats, I applaud them for their concern with I assure them I share absolutely. Then I explain what I know from personal experience, and how liberating it is to be free from any necessity of compromising my vegan values for the sake of the quote unquote,'natural carnivores' , that are also such an important part of our family here on Denman Island. -Fireweed
(British Columbia) www.fireweed.ca

I tried Evolution on my indoor-only, 10 year old neutered male cat, who had no history whatsoever of UTI's. I followed the instructions, such as they were (ignoring dubious claims about longer life by feeding your pets 1/3 less food), and *always* fed him the food mixed 1 to 1 with water. This was far moister than the dry kibble I had been feeding him for years. After 4 months he developed horrible UTI issues and had to be catheterized. I wish this product worked, it does not. I suspect its hit or miss depending on if your animal is male or female and their own body chemistry. In retrospect, I consider myself a fool for trying it without any published data to back up its safety.

Thanks for this show, and for bringing together such a diverse group of folks.

In our book, _Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World_, we recommend Evolution brand food, though hearing from folks like Ida and others has made me reconsider this recommendation for the coming revisions of our book. In addition, we had our dog on Evolution for some time (probably about a year), but he began to develop allergies to some of the ingredients, so we switched his food (and saw his problems go away). While this isn't necessarily a problem with Evolution, we also did notice that the batches seemed to vary in terms of color, consistency, and smell, and this worried us a bit. Perhaps this is a natural result of the manufacture of this food, but I don't feel comfortable with this kind of variation that we experienced.

Hearing the experiences of some of the guests on this show doesn't make me feel any more certain about taking our dog back to Evolution, and I find Mr. Weisman's dismissive tone worrisome. If some folks have had problems, these problems need to be addressed and dealt with honestly.

As someone who has tried Evolution on my group of six inside kitties and experienced some troubles (3 UTIs in this group), I was interested in hearing this interview. I feel that for me to have any confidence in vegan cat foods, there needs to be an independent survey of households where these foods are being fed. This would be something like the Framingham Nurses Study which reveals that certain diets/exercise levels/vitamins seem to point to certain health outcomes--it is not a dietary study where you feed a caged colony of cats a certain type of food and see how many die, instead it's a study where you send a survey to all households that have purchased the food and you ask how things are going. Then you can statistically analyze what is going on in a population. None of the guests on the show were qualified to address this kind of knowledge gathering. There is no way that just meeting the dietary numerical requirements of protein, fat, ash, magnesium, etc. in a formulation can be adequate--the formulation has to be ground-truthed by real-life experience.

I think that Weissman was obviously being very careful regarding what his observations have been and this radio show was never going to be a place where he would reveal any of his doubts on the product.

No one addressed what I find to be a fundamental problem, which is: why do cats seem to develop problems eating Evolution when they do not develop problems eating regular "cruel" kibble. If Evolution is so much healthier, then why did my UTI problems disappear when I returned them to their ordinary diet? Why is Evolution not formulated so it has the same success rate as ordinary kibble? Is this a perceived problem or a real one? Is there, as someone else posted, a problem with consistency from batch to batch?