On 24th July 2024, The British Veterinary Association (BVA) ended its opposition to (nutritionally sound) vegan dog diets by publishing a new policy position on pet diet choices.
Until recently, its opposition was regularly reported. However, the BVA also has a corporate partnership with Mars Petcare, which makes large sums from selling meat-based pet foods. After the exposure of this conflict of interest, the BVA paused its public statements opposing vegan pet food in 2023 and established a working group to review its position on companion animal diets, including vegan diets. Now, with the new policy position, the BVA’s traditional strong opposition to vegan dog food has ended, although it has fallen short of giving it full support.
The new policy states, “It is possible to feed dogs a plant-based diet, but owners should be aware of the difficulties in balancing these diets for nutritional needs, the lack of robust long-term data on their safety, and should monitor their dog’s health for long-term impacts”.
In a new article, BVA noted that 42% of companion animal vets reported they had clients who fed meat-free diets. The switch to such diets is being driven by concerns about the health, environmental, and farmed animal welfare impacts of meat-based diets. Considering pet health, by mid-2024, 10 studies in dogs and three in cats had demonstrated equivalent or superior health outcomes using (nutritionally sound) vegan or vegetarian diets. These included large-scale studies, studies using veterinary clinical examinations, diagnostic tests and laboratory data, and studies reporting veterinary health assessments, as well as owner opinions (which were recently found to be uninfluenced by diet choice).
Regarding the conflict of interest, Andrew Knight, veterinary Professor of Animal Welfare, said, “The Mars-BVA partnership represents a significant conflict of interest. Veterinary associations have a responsibility to ensure their positions are evidence-based, up-to-date and not influenced by conflicts of interest. Whilst it is commendable that the BVA has ended its prior opposition to vegan dog diets, its position remains overly cautious, and includes some outdated and incorrect positions. For example, there are now 10 studies in dogs and three in cats demonstrating equivalent or superior health outcomes when (nutritionally-sound) vegan or vegetarian diets are fed…Collectively, this constitutes an evidence base stronger than that supporting most other commonly-accepted diets or veterinary healthcare interventions. Yet the BVA missed literally all of these studies in its position paper, despite being informed of them well in advance. Instead, the BVA misreported the scientific evidence as ‘the studies are usually small-scale and usually based purely on owner-reported data.”’ This no longer reflects reality in this field.”
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