You have been lied to

Jun 1, 2026 Just Be Kind Dog Food Arielle

The only pigs that our dogs should be chewing on are stuffed toys! 🐷

If you had told me even just 8 years ago that I would be a vegan vet selling vegan products to feed the animals that share our homes and educating as many people as I can about the atrocities of the animal agriculture industry; I would never have believed it!!

For 52 years of my life and 25 years of those as a practising vet; I remained in complete ignorance of where our food truly comes from.

I had even visited an abattoir as a young vet student in the 80s and witnessed the horror, and still I did as everyone else does - I just stayed blinded by the media and stories of 'happy animals' and rosy cheeked farmers all brought to us by trillion dollar corporate advertising selling us something that should never be exploited for financial gain - our farmed animals.

I remember making my own chubby babies laugh as I did 'this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home...' and we giggled together at the little piggy that went 'wee wee wee all the way home and escaped the market'.

For 25 years of my veterinary career, I handed out dog food in vet practices from Hills, Royal Canin and Purina - all made with pig byproducts before I 'saw the light' and turned to a kinder and healthier life when Ruff and I went vegan in 2019!

Even that word 'pork' or bacon or ham or gammon makes my blood boil as these are all just parts of an animal, a highly sentient and highly intelligent animal and all should be called pig as that is what they are and we are being lied to and told it is nutritious and necessary in our diets and should be added to dog and cat foods........but we are all absolutely being lied to!!!

Should we be feeding pig byproducts to our dogs and cats?

Definitely NO when we have alternatives such as the boom in fermentation protein and pure plant proteins.

Should we be feeding fish to our dogs and cats?

Definitely NO when we realise the harm that fish can cause to the kidneys, hormones and health of cats!

YOU HAVE DEFINITELY BEEN LIED TO!

Dr Arielle stands alongside the amazing team running Project Slingshot launched in the summer of 2026.

Actress Diane Morgan, TV doctor Amir Khan and comedians Jen Brister and Shabaz Ali are just a few brave individuals taking a stand and exposing this industry.

Don’t Buy It. Together, with Project Slingshot, they uncover the truth about the pig industry.

Undercover footage shows pigs panicking, screaming and gasping for air as CO2 fills the gas chamber and suffocates them to death.

This is how 90% of pigs die. The meat industry calls it ‘humane slaughter’.

Posted on LinkedIn by welfare specialist vet Steven McCulloch, in association with Project Slingshot.

British pig farming is being exposed on the London Underground in 2026 for the second time.

The first time it was farrowing cages. Finally it is CO₂ gas stunning and killing.

Both cause severe suffering, and scientific advisory bodies have recommended they should be banned.

No institution with these responsibilities should permit or promote practices that cause such levels of suffering.

We are repeatedly told that consumers demand cheap meat and the cheap byproducts are needed to be added to dog and cat food.

Having published reports on British public opinion on farmed animals, consumers certainly do not support farrowing cages and CO₂ killing.

They do not know about them.

The gap between scientific recommendations, public opinion, and the cruel reality for pigs is sustained by widespread misinformation about welfare standards.

Consumers have been misled.

Factory farming is the greatest moral catastrophe of our time

Historian Rutger shown in the image below alongside Matthew Glover who started both the Veganuary movement and Project slingshot; has this to say:

“Factory farming is the greatest moral catastrophe of our time and also the most neglected one. The algorithm suppresses it, politicians avoid it, and corporations have spent decades making sure you don’t think too hard about what’s on your plate. Campaigns like Slingshot expose what factory farming would rather keep hidden, and that’s how moral revolutions begin.”

Matthew Glover and historian Rutger

If wanting to find out more about the pig industry, we have the hugely inspiring Dr Alice Brough who used to work as a pig vet in the early days of her career. Overwhelmed with ptsd, she exposes the horrors of this industry that has left its mark personally on her life, but such bravery in speaking out as she has.

What is the veterinary reaction to companies using pork in pet foods?

Please read this article published by a vet in the Vet Record that highlights the abhorrent conditions in intensive pig farms and how the veterinary industry MUST condemn intensive pig farming and NOT encourage it as we have when we add it to dog or cat food!

Pork byproducts and pork fat is added to almost every veterinary prescription meat-based pet food (and even certain medications such as Apoquel palatable tablets!)

I spoke at the London Vet Show in 2023 to educate as many vets there as I could about the huge health benefits of a plant-based diet in our dogs. Very sadly, the symbol for the London Vet Show in 2023 was a pig (as shown in the image above)

Did you know that there is no word for 'welfare' in Chinese and why is this significant?

What a sad fact that I was only made aware of recently, that the word 'welfare' does not exist in the chinese language.

The image below is a 26 storey pig farm skyscraper.

Yes you read that right and the image came off a video showing the inside of one of these skyscrapers in China with thousands upon thousands of pigs being reared for the meat industry on a truly industrial scale.

The stress these sentient animals must experience being born into such a facility must be overwhelming which obviously affects their immune system as they undergo castrations (to avoid a 'pungent' flavour of pork), teeth trimming and tail amputations as they are in such close proximity with each other and cannot interact normally.

The amount of antibiotics and anti parasitics and growth hormone promoters that they must have pumped into them to keep the entire facility viable must be enormous as it would be too financially risky to have an outbreak of a disease.

It is a welfare issue beyond any imagineable in the UK, where dedicated teams are trying their hardest to expose our grossly misrespresented RSPCA welfare scheme that we have in place in the UK and the latest Project Slingshot in 2026. This is on another scale of cruelty.

The worst bit is imagining how these pigs are killed once they reach their growth rate at 6 weeks. Surely the vast numbers that are produced in such a building would not allow for them to be transported and killed individually (as I so harrowingly had to witness as a young veterinary student visiting an abattoir in the late 80's!)

Surely these millions of animals are gassed in one section of the skyscraper - maybe an entire room or section of the skyscraper dedicated to this?! Now I want you to imagine what is needed to kill a pig - a lot and a lot of carbon dioxide that must fill the room and enter their lungs, stinging their eyes until they are dead enough to not be able to struggle when moved to a different section of this skyscraper to be butchered?

Earthlinged says NO to pigs in gas chambers These are sentient animals with the intelligence of our dogs that are used to feed the animals we love when we have a perfectly kind and healthy solution - plant-based dog and cat food!

Quote from the late Dr Jane Goodall about why she stopped eating pork when she realised it represented pain and fear The late highly respected and terribly missed Dr Jane Goodall says it so well as to why she gave up eating animal products and when we feed meat products to our dogs and pork byproducts, we need to be reminded too that the very dog food would represent fear, pain and death as pigs are as sentient as our dogs!!

‘All beings tremble before danger; all fear death. A person, knowing this, does not kill or cause to kill.’

Why is the skyscraper pig factory in China relevant to this article?

Mars opened a pet food factory in Tianjin China

In 2024, Mars Petcare began production of their pet foods at a new facility in Tianjin China.

This would very likely mean using the very organs and fat from the pigs in these skyscraper pig factories nearby with no welfare requirements in place at all (so very likely an overuse of antibiotics, growth hormone promoters, heavy metals in fishmeal that they are fed for fast growth) then used in the Mars Petcare ranges to feed to our dogs as shown below.

With excretory organs and byproducts and fat being used in almost all of the corporate pet food range instead of pure plant-based ingredients with none of the build up of heavy metals from fish that occurs when chicken are fed fishmeal and their livers are then ground up to feed the pigs (a process called bioaccumulation).

Pork products are classified as a Grade 1 Carcinogen in people due to bioaccumulation, so consider how the excretory 'organ meat' of pigs may affect your dog or cat.

It is understandable why pure plant-based ingredients are found to be much healthier than meat-based byproducts from a published study. (Zafalon et al)

Faba bean protein wet food trays - just one of the many solutions to feeding our dogs a healthy diet

The pure non-GMO wholefood ingredients in our Give A Dog A Bean, Gentle Rosie and Jumping Jack minimally processed wet food trays provide a perfect alternative to the keep pork fat and pork byproducts OUT OF OUR DOG FOOD completely with the use of these highly nutritious plant-based ingredients:

COMPOSITION PURE GENTLE ROSIE WET FOOD TRAYS

7% Sweet Potato, Carrots, 6% Faba Bean Protein, Parsnips, 4% Beetroot, Amaranth, Safflower Oil, Lupin, Courgette, Cranberries, Papaya, Rosehip, Minerals, Tomato Powder, Chicory, Sea Algae

What alternative do we have to these extensive skyscraper pig farms in China?

Thankfully the Chinese are enormously innovative and we have growth in the fermentation protein sector taking place at a rapid rate in China.

This article and growth in biomass fermentation gives us overwhelming hope that these intensively farmed pig factories will eventually ALL be replaced by biomass fermenters offering a kind and healthy alternative to the use of pork byproducts with a fermentation protein BOOM.

Calysta CTO Dr. Geoff Bryant at the fermentation plant in Chongqing, China. Image credit: Calysta

This is my absolute dream for every one of these enormously powerful corporate pet food companies to use this biomass fermentation protein that we are already using in so many products as shown here.

Not only is the fermentation factory shown above in China far more sustainable and 100% kinder than the 26 storey pig farm skycrapers; but instead of adding potential harmful antibiotics, antiparasitics, growth hormone promoters from the excretory organs of these intensively raised animals; we have studies to show that clean, healthy bacterial fermentation biomass protein actually enhances the gut health of our dogs and cats - how amazing is that!?

According to the study, the research demonstrated protein and energy digestibility rates consistently exceeding 80%, while fat digestibility exceeded 90%.

Additionally, the study revealed positive shifts in the dogs' faecal microbiome, including increased alpha diversity in the gut microbiome which promoted healthy bacteria populations, suggesting potential gut health support benefits.

Click on this link to read the full study -

What product is available containing Feedkind Fermentation Protein in the UK

The ultimate solution is using these alternatives and STOP pig farming

People are so very clever and when faced with problems, we CAN adapt and find solutions. How perfect is this solution called transfarmation (brilliant!) - an intensive pig farm changed into a mushroom farm!

I spoke about this at Vegan Campout in 2026 in front of hundreds of you (and your dogs)....yes we can ALL dream!!!

“ Make sure that what you feed to your dog never had a face! ”

What an enormous privilege it was to visit the Surge Sanctuary in Nottinghamshire this year, and meet Matilda - the darling Mummy pig who had escaped from a nearby pig farm 4 years ago. She produced 5 babies in the bushes and was found by dog walkers and taken back to the farm amidst a national public outcry at how cruel the entire industry was.

She was found with a bullring in her nose and her tail docked - the normal procedures done on farrowing farmed pigs so that they cannot bites each other's tails or exhibit normal rooting behaviour as the bullring in the nose makes it extremely painful on their soft noses!

Thank goodness for the kindness of the staff at the Surge Sanctuary where she was rehomed along with her 5 babies.

How lucky was I to meet them all and feed them pumpkins (yes they eat the whole thing - seeds, flesh and skin as ALL so nutritious), and the joy of watching Mummy Matilda eat first and her 5 enormous 'babies' respecting her fully and not trying to eat what she had - she is such an inspiration for freedom, motherhood and sentience.

I was filmed with Matilda, the chickens, the other pigs (who adored being fed Marshmallow Bites and Give A Dog A Bean), and my favourite of all - the gentle turkeys who got to eat some remaining Green Crunch biscuits in my coat pocket from the morning's dog walk!!
I loved it all and it makes everything that we are all doing feeding our dogs plant-based just SO right seeing these amazing happy free animals! 💚