Can dogs be vegan? What Tufts, the FDA and the studies say

Yes. Most dogs can do quite well on a carefully designed vegan diet that meets all of their nutritional needs, a Tufts veterinary nutritionist wrote. The evidence is mostly owner surveys and small feeding studies, and none of the feeding studies we read enrolled puppies.

Natural Balance says its vegetarian dog food is made with added taurine “to support a strong heart”, and the guaranteed analysis for the same food footnotes taurine as not recognized as an essential nutrient by the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profiles. The June 2026 update from Tufts on diet-associated dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM, a disease of the heart muscle) says it does not appear to be caused by a deficiency of taurine, and appears to be associated with diets high in pulses: peas, lentils, chickpeas, beans. Now read the first three ingredients of the eight plant-based foods we compared for our roundup. Five have a pulse there, as peas, pea protein, chickpeas, fava beans or lentils (our count). Soy, the legume vegans get teased about most, is the exception: the FDA says that although soy is a legume, it did not see a signal for it.

None of that shows that a particular vegan food damages a dog’s heart. The FDA says it does not know the specific connection between these diets and the cases reported to it.

What to check on the bag before the taurine

Start with the word vegan, because a dog food can carry every claim AAFCO allows and still not qualify. Vitamin D3 is typically made from lanolin, the grease on sheep’s wool, although a lichen version exists, and three of the eight foods list vitamin D3 without naming a source (our count). Our answer on whether vitamin D3 is vegan goes through what a label has to say before it counts.

Then the claim itself. AAFCO, which sets the model standards for pet food in the US, defines complete as containing all the nutrients required and balanced as having them in the correct ratios. A food earns the claim in one of three ways: it is formulated to meet the nutrient levels in AAFCO’s Dog Food Nutrient Profiles, it passes animal feeding tests run by AAFCO’s procedures, or it is comparable to a product that did. The statement also names a life stage. AAFCO lists gestation and lactation, growth, maintenance and all life stages, because different stages need different quantities and ratios of nutrients. A food marked for intermittent or supplemental feeding only does not meet the complete and balanced standard at all.

On vegan dog food the choice turns out to be narrow. Every adequacy statement we found on the eight foods is the formulation kind, and every one is for maintenance (our reading). v-dog’s kibble page prints no statement in AAFCO’s format, though it says the kibble was formulated to meet all AAFCO standards, and the 2024 study describes it as formulated for adult maintenance, so the bag may say more than the page we read. None of the eight says it was feeding-tested, and none is labeled for growth.

What the studies on vegan dogs measured

The biggest one is a survey. Knight and colleagues asked 2,639 guardians about one dog each and analysed 2,536 dogs, 336 of them on vegan diets, using what the guardians reported, including what they said their vets had found. They concluded that nutritionally sound vegan diets are the healthiest and least hazardous choice. ProVeg International, a food awareness organisation, paid for the research. A 2024 reanalysis of the same 2,536 dogs controlled for age, sex, neutering, breed size and unusually high exercise and still found the best outcomes in the vegan group. The same paper reports that 76% of the dogs also got treats once or more a day, so they were not eating only the diet being compared.

The feeding studies are small. Cavanaugh and colleagues moved 34 client-owned dogs, all at least a year old, onto v-dog’s kibble, which the maker donated, and kept 4 on their usual food for 12 weeks; 4 of the 34 did not finish. They saw no essential amino acid or taurine deficiency, and their echocardiogram changes were small and within normal day-to-day variation. Their own list of limits is candid: no randomized control group, nobody blinded, nutrient figures supplied by the manufacturers, and a short run. Linde and colleagues fed 15 adult dogs v-dog Kind Kibble, bought with research funds, for a year, and the dogs maintained health on exams and blood work, cardiac biomarkers included. Its troponin results are worth knowing too: levels consistent with active heart muscle injury showed up in 3 dogs at the start, 4 at 6 months and 1 at 12 months. The study took no echocardiograms, did not measure taurine in whole blood, and was paid for by the Plant-Based Dog Food Health Study Initiative. A third fed 12 adult beagles, 11 of them analysed, two fresh vegan foods and a chicken-based kibble, and found all three highly digestible. The foods were Bramble’s, and Bramble paid for the study.

A 2023 systematic review pulled together 16 studies of vegan diets in dogs and cats and graded the certainty of the evidence low or very low for every outcome except body weight and condition in dogs, which it graded moderate. Its advice was a cautious approach, with commercially produced diets formulated for the species.

The case against, at its strongest

The Tufts post that says most dogs can do well on a vegan diet is also the best argument against trying it casually. It says these diets are not easy to design, that one designed without considerable dog nutrition expertise can cause numerous health issues, and that the vegetarian and vegan diets owners make at home typically have the usual home-cooked deficiencies plus extra ones, protein among them. It adds that commercial vegan foods are not all equivalent in quality, and that diets including eggs or dairy are less worrisome than diets built only on plant proteins.

Tufts is firmer than the FDA. Peas and other pulses appear to be the ingredients central to diet-associated DCM, its June 2026 update says, though the specific cause of the injury has not yet been identified. It also calls DCM a potentially deadly disease. When the FDA opened its DCM investigation in July 2018, it described the reported diets as high in peas, lentils, other pulses or potatoes, and by its June 2019 update 93% of the reported products had peas or lentils. In December 2022 it said it would publish no further updates until there is meaningful new scientific information. Put that beside the research money, which in the survey came from ProVeg International, a food awareness organisation, and in one feeding study from the company whose food was tested, and a skeptic has a fair case that the evidence is thin and partly paid for by people who want a particular answer, with the open question about pulses sitting in most of the bags we compared.

Where I land

For an adult dog, the site’s line is a commercial vegan food whose label carries an AAFCO adequacy statement for maintenance, not a home recipe and not a food marked for intermittent or supplemental feeding. Talk to your vet before you switch, which is the FDA’s advice for any change to a dog’s diet. For a puppy, not yet. None of the eight foods we compared is labeled for growth, and none of the feeding studies we read included one.

Before you pick a brand, ask it the questions the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) suggests: whether it employs a nutritionist, who formulates the diet, what research it has done and whether that research is published. If a maker cannot or will not tell you, WSAVA says owners should be cautious about feeding that brand.

The old version of this page suggested ground eggshells for calcium. I have taken that out, and I would like the record to show it was on a vegan website.

The part I am least sure of is the pulses. Tufts links diet-associated DCM to diets high in them, five of the eight plant-based foods we compared have one in their first three ingredients, and in December 2022 the FDA said it would publish no further updates until there is meaningful new science. If your dog eats one, that is a fair question for your vet, and our roundup of vegan dog foods puts the first three ingredients of each one side by side.