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We have a moral obligation not to support  the animal agriculture industry and of  
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course when we purchase dog and cat food  made with meat that's exactly what we're  
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doing because this is a major income source  for animal agriculture. Factory farms are  
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breeding grounds for pandemics. That's one  of the many good reasons to stop consuming  
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products from factory farms but what should we  feed our cat or dog? We may well be vegetarian  
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or vegan but if we give meat to our companion  animals we're still supporting factory farms.  
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Is there something we can do about that? In  this video I talk to Dr Josh Milburn, who's a  
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philosopher at the University of Sheffield.  We talk about feeding our companion animals  
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vegan pet food, pet food made from invertebrates, and  pet food made from in vitro or so called lab grown  
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meat. We even discuss the option  of feeding them in vitro human flesh.  
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I'm Katrien Devolder, this is Thinking Out  Loud: conversations with leading philosophers  
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from around the world on topics that concern us  all. If you'd like to see more of my videos, don't  
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forget to subscribe to the Practical Ethics  Channel. For those of you who haven't seen  
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my video with Professor Jeff Sebo about how  our treatment of animals increases the risk of  
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a future pandemic arising, it may be useful  to first clarify the following. The current  
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animal agriculture system is extremely bad for  our health. The problems with Covid-19 have  
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really brought that to the forefront. So Covid-  19 is a zoonotic disease: it is a disease that  
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has spread from non-human animals to humans. In  that it is like most pandemics. Most pandemics are  
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zoonotic diseases and most zoonotic diseases  come from or can be attributed directly to  
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our relationships with animals in the food system.  If we want to prevent future pandemics and resolve  
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these other kinds of human health crises tied to  the environment, tied to antibiotic use, for example,  
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then = we want to change the food system. We  want to move the food system away from a food  
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system that relies heavily upon animal agriculture,  and the most straightforward way to do that, or it  
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would seem the most straightforward way to do that,  is to favor a plant-based food system. The first thing  
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we can do as individuals is change our own diet  because the food system as it exists reflects  
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the diets of us as individuals. So of course this  question is about our own food choices  
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but you're working on a really fascinating book  about how we should feed animals, and in particular  
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our companion animals, or what most people refer to  as as pets. So I think that's a really fascinating  
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question there. We can decide that we're  going to be a vegetarian or a vegan; my dog or my  
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cat, or my ferret,... I'm still feeding it meat. So is  that a problem? I think most people probably  
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haven't even thought about that, and if you ask  someone in the street, they probably would say 'well  
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obviously not' because the difference is that we  are humans; we can survive on plant-based food,  
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but our cat or our dog can't. Would that be  a satisfying answer? The cat and the dog needs  
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the meat, and we don't. Lots of people assume that  non-human animals or at least many non-human  
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animals cannot thrive on plant-based diets. Now  the reality is that's going to depend very much  
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on the companion animal in question. So to take  the classic example: there's a sharp division here  
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between dogs and cats. Dogs: very much omnivores,  like humans. Cats, they are carnivores. So there  
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are certain needs that they have. But of course  the mere fact that they are carnivores, that they  
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are classified as carnivores, doesn't mean that it  is somehow impossible for them to eat plant-based  
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foods. So there are a number of commercial dog  and cat foods available on the market and they're  
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becoming more sophisticated all the time. And  these pet foods, these dog foods, these cat foods  
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have been developed to be nutritionally complete.  Andrew Knight, who's a professor of animal welfare  
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at the University of Winchester... he runs a very  useful website where he compiles all this data  
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about the feeding of companion animals using  vegetarian vegan foods but also the health  
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problems associated with meat based pet foods.  So his website is a great source  
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of information on the science behind this. Some  argument that people might use to justify giving  
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meat to to their cat or dog is that the  meat that they're giving is just a byproduct  
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of meat made for humans. So it's not the case  that animals are especially killed to produce  
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meat for cats and dogs. Do you think that's a  good argument to justify giving meat  
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to their pets? So the first thing to know is that  it's not always the case that no animals have been  
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killed especially for the companion animal's food.  There's been a huge rise in recent years with  
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so-called premium or human grade pet food. This is  often meat that could otherwise have been fed to  
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humans or would otherwise have gone into the human  food chain. And of course a lot of people do  
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purchase meat, say from butchers to feed to their  companion animals. Now the second thing to say  
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is that we can then start to distinguish again the difference between our collective  
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obligations and our individual moral obligations.  So when it comes to individual moral obligations  
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certain people, certain vegans and vegetarians for  example, might argue, and I think they have good  
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reason to argue, that we have a moral obligation  not to support the animal agriculture industry.  
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And, of course, when we purchase dog and cat food  made with meat that's exactly what we're doing  
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because this is a major income source for animal  agriculture. Third if the world went vegan in  
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20 years time and all humans in 20 years were  vegan there would still be dogs and cats to be  
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fed but there wouldn't anymore be this animal  industry that was producing these by-products.  
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So we would still have ethical questions to  ask about the feeding about companion animals.  
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So it is possible that we are moving more  and more towards a vegetarian and vegan  
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food system but at the same time there are  also further developments in the production  
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of so-called in vitro meat. I wonder whether we  could talk a little bit about that and whether  
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giving in vitro meat would also be a good option  for companion animals. We can produce meat  
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using technologies very similar to technologies  that have been used in the medical space for  
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many decades. We can take cells from living  animals and then use those cells to grow muscle  
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cells- meat - in a laboratory environment.   Sometimes this is called lab-grown meat. That has  
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this kind of slightly unfortunate consequence of  us imagining scientists in white lab coats,  
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when in reality, if this has been produced for  food, it's something that looks a bit more like  
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a brewery. It was only last month, that is, December  2020, when in vitro meat was commercialised for the  
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first time. So now consumers in Singapore can visit  a restaurant where this stuff is being sold: meat  
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that tastes, looks just like meat; for culinary  purposes it is meat, however, it's never been inside  
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the body of an animal. It seems like at first  sight this could only be a good thing because  
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it doesn't really harm any animals, but still,  some people, and in particular vegans, have  
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objections to it because they think it  still keeps the idea alive that there is  
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us humans and then maybe our companion animals who  cannot be eaten, who are the ones who eat meat, 
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and then there are other types of animals  who can be eaten.And the production of this in  
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vitro meat, even though it doesn't directly  harm animals may indirectly harm animals by  
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keeping this disturbing idea alive that there  are these two categories of animals: the ones  
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that we can eat and the ones that we can't eat.  The first thing to say is that it might be the  
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case that drawing that line doesn't actually  create a kind of hierarchy of value at all.  
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The fact that we recognize some beings as edible  and some beings as inedible might not mean  
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that we think that the inedible beings are less  valuable in some way. So let me draw a comparison. 
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We currently think of other humans as good sources  for organs for organ transplants in a way that  
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we're quite disturbed perhaps by the idea of using  pigs as sources of organs for organ transplant. Now  
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that doesn't mean that we think that the humans  are less valuable than pigs. In most cases it means  
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the opposite. But that leads us to a kind of second  response we could go down. Why should we take it  
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for granted that we wouldn't be producing in vitro  human meat? What's very interesting is that in  
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vitro meat gives us a chance to reassess questions  about the ethics of cannibalism, or the ethics of  
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producing human meat, that could be interesting when it comes to particular human individuals  
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who maybe want to try human flesh for whatever  reason. There're some very interesting cases of  
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people being offered the chance to try human  meat and taking it up. But let's remember that  
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I'm also talking primarily in this interview, not  about human food, but about companion animals' food.  
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Might there be a good reason for creating human  flesh to feed to companion animals. A group of  
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Dutch philosophers, including Eva Mayer and Bernice  Bovenkerk, have argued in a Dutch publication that  
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perhaps we should be creating in vitro human  flesh in order to feed to companion animals,  
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and I found very anecdotally that a lot of animal  activists who maybe are quite reluctant to support  
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in vitro meat when it comes to the feeding of  humans, are more willing to support in vitro meat  
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when it comes to the feeding of companion animals. And strikingly, they're more willing to support it  
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still when we are potentially exploring creating  in vitro human flesh to feed to these companion  
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animals; because then we are breaking down that  barrier, we're breaking down that us and them,  
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we're breaking down the idea of those animals  as inferior and these animals, that is, humans, as  
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superior. So maybe just to end, for people who are  watching the video and who have companion animals,  
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what can they do now? What would be a good thing  for them to do now? The most important thing  
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that they can do, regardless of the companion  animals, is to go vegan themselves. The next  
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most important thing, perhaps, we might think, is to  look at changing the diet of the companion animal.  
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There's a lot of information out there. Have a look  around online. Have a look at, as I mentioned before,  
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Andrew Knight's website. There're a lot of social  media groups. There's a lot of misinformation as  
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well so it takes a bit of skill to sift through  these things. But there's a lot of information out there  
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about the ways that we can adjust our companion  animals' diets. What's really exciting is that there  
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are moves in the pet food industry towards  other kinds of alternative pet foods. So I've  
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talked about in vitro meat. There are also moves  coming from small startups, but even large pet food  
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manufacturers - Purina owned by Nestlé has recently  made some changes in this area towards pet foods  
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that contain invertebrate animals. This offers  another kind of interesting avenue that we could  
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explore as a more sustainable, more environmentally  friendly, more health-friendly more animal-friendly  
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route towards feeding companion animals. So  while in the short-term plant-based food might  
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be the best option, that's not always available to  everybody for various reasons. But on the horizon,  
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we have in vitro meat-based pet foods, and  here and now, we have some pet foods which  
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incorporate alternative proteins based upon  invertebrate animals as well. So there're lots  
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of interesting options out there. Have a look  around, explore. If you liked this video, don't  
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forget to subscribe to The Practical Ethics  Channel and the Thinking Out Loud Facebook Page.