For dogs, it is probably possible to feed a vegan diet, though sometimes these diets are still supplemented with amino acids or D vitamins from animal sources, so depending on how strict you wish to be you may have to check with the company. I would suggest contacting a veterinary nutritionist, such as the Clinical Nutrition Service at the UC Davis vet school or pediets.com for advice (or depending on where you are the nearest veterinary school will likely have a board-certified nutritionist).

Also, you might want to check out this site: http://skepticalvegan.wordpress.com/

Good luck!

As for the implication that veterinarians might not be genuinely committed to pet health because they “make a fortune on sick animals,” this is offensive nonsense, pure and simple.

First, what is a “toxin?” This is a word freely and sloppily used. Of course, nothing is toxic in small enough quantities (which is why you can get away with making homeopathic remedies out of poisons), and everything is toxic, including water and oxygen, if you take in enough of it. The word is most reasonably used of substances that cause ill effects at quantities one might reasonably be expected to be exposed to under normal circumstances. So, is beef from cows fed grain a toxin? No, of course not. Grain is a natural food for ruminant, and they eat it readily (no one is force feeding it to beef cattle, apart from the veal issue). Too much, however, can cause health problems, such as rumen acidosis. What domestic cattle might eat in the wild is, of course, a pointless question since selective breding over thousands of years have altered their physiology so far from wild ancestors that the notion of what is “natural” for a domestic cow is meaningless.

Finding the balance between maximizing growth and avoiding such problems is a big part of the job of modern cattle ranchers and dairy farmers. Now, I happen to be a vegetarian, and I don’t care for the practices of industrial agriculture on a number of levels, but the argument that beef from grain-fed cattle is toxic because this is an “unnatural” food for them is simply not true. Research on the putative health benefits of organically produced foods doesn’t support the claim that these are healthier, though there can be environmental benefits to such production methods.

As for antibiotics, growth hormones, and other medications given to beef cattle, there are definately some potential problems there, though I think most people who comment as you have on the health of these practices don’t know much about the details, or the extreme lengths to which regulators and most ranchers go to avoid contaminating the human food chain. The question of which parts of the cow are used for pet food manufacture is one I have dealt with in several posts, particularly Pet Food Nutrition Myths. The idea that some parts of the cow are toxic and others aren’t is irrational. Some may have more nutritional value than others for dogs, but even these arguments are usually a mischaracterization since the nutritional value of commercial foods as a whole are well-understood and documented, and the sources of particular nutrients doesn’t have the mystical “good” and “bad” value people such as the marketers of Evolution Diet like to claim.

As for your comments about your cat, there is too much nonsense in there to even deal with. Your cat gained weight because he was fed too much, not because there was chicken meal in the food. Chicken meal is just a description of the very parts of a bird that a cat east when they can catch one, so where you get this hysterical stuff about a “nuclear reactor” I have no idea. Food addiction?! Give me a break! We all have a food addiction. Ever try to go without food for an extende time. I see many, many lean healthy cats fed commercial diets of appropriate nutritional value and in appropriate quantity. The blame for the obeisity epidemic goes strictly on we pet owners and how much we feed our pets, not on the ingredients in the diets we use. And do you really mean to suggest you think people’s cats wouldn’t be interested in cuddling or happy to see their owners if they aren’t feeding this diet?!

As for interstitial cystitis and urinary tract obstruction, this is a poorly understood syndrome with lost of risk factors but no discretely identifiable cause, so unfortunately people are free to make up all sorts of things about it. Most of the commercial diets for treatment of this problem have pretty limited data supporting the contention that they prevent recurrence, but there is even less information to suggest alternative diets are beneficial, so you are essentially suggesting going from something that probably helps a little to something that might help, might do nothing, or might even make the problem worse.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. And the facts are not on the side of most of your opinions here. Still, I appreciate the detailed and civil disagreement, and I think it’s important for people to be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of argumetns on both sides.