Can you love animals, care about the planet, and still feed your dog meat?

In this listener-requested episode of our FETCH First Friday series we have a grounded, grace-filled conversation on the vegan and lab-grown meat dog food debate—sparked by a recent Dragons' Den episode that funded a vegan kibble brand.

Together, we explore the complexities, contradictions, and sacred responsibilities of feeding a carnivore in a world increasingly uncomfortable with the realities of nature, death, and biology.

This episode isn’t about shame or sides—it’s about curiosity, critical thinking, and compassion as we examine the deeper stories at play behind the marketing, science, and ethics of what we put in our dogs' bowls.

✨ Topics We Explore:

• What is a dog, really?
: Reconnecting with biology over belief, and why understanding your dog’s physiology matters.

• The illusion of "clean" food:
How modern marketing disconnects us from the sacredness of death and the truth of nature.

• What wasn’t said on Dragons’ Den:
The missing context in the vegan dog food pitch—and why it matters.

• Bioavailability and the myth of macronutrient math:
Why feeding isn’t just about numbers, and what gets lost in lab-based logic.

• Technocracy, control, and false saviours:
Questioning the rise of food technologies that promise utopia but often serve profit and power.

• Ethics without biology is ideology:
What happens when good intentions override physiological truths.

• Re-sacralising the bowl:
How to return reverence, relationship, and grounded ethics to the act of feeding your dog.

• Insects—innovation or industrial illusion?:
The hype vs. the harm behind insect-based dog foods.

We’re not here to preach—we’re here to hold paradox with grace.

TIME STAMPS

00:22 Introduction

02:33 Meet Stacey Renphrey and Dr Alexia Mellor, the team behind Learn FETCH

05:35 Overview of the discussion - the Dragon’s Den episode that backed a vegan ultraprocessed kibble— what is this teaching us about our values system and food system

09:30 Looking at feeding through biology and not just philosophy and ethics 

13:35 Dogs tolerate carbs but don’t thrive on them 

15:45 Our disconnect from the reality of death as a core part of the life cycle 

20:00 A breakdown of The Dragon’s Den episode

22:30 Vegan kibble: Innovation or just replacing one UPF for another

25:50 The Myth of Macronutrient and Micronutrient Math - what are the guidelines shaping the dog food industry

41:45 What are the implications of a technocratic food system?

48:45 Ethics without biology is ideology

57:25 Embedding ceremony and sacredness in feeding

59:40 How we change the industrial food system

1:04:35 Insect protein for dogs?

1:10:00 Some of the bigger questions we need to ask when thinking about feeding our dogs

1:13:30 Why Dragon’s Den missed the point

1:16:50 An inivtation to Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden, a call for new metrics of what the ROI could be

🐕‍🦺 Keep the Conversation Going: Join our free Facebook group FETCH First Light where dog mamas like you are asking the big questions, exploring ancient wisdom, and nourishing their dogs (and themselves) in more conscious, connected ways.

👉 Join here https://facebook.com/groups/fetchfirstlight

Things we mention:

🎙️ Taking the Fear & Complexity out of Fresh Food Feeding with Kay Stewart, Feed Real Institute: https://youtu.be/4P8W-s6gh8Q?si=s6_-9q_wbBNExE-v

🎙️ Honoring Our Animals + Ourselves: Normalizing Pet Loss Grief with Beth Bigler https://youtu.be/9abmuDAosro?si=QT0mM9LNO2FsJF74

🎙️ F.E.T.C.H. First Friday: Turning the Tables on Parasite Prevention https://youtu.be/69Q02shCEwE?si=WfR2AgKHqYuMkHXm

And grab a copy of our FETCH Fact Check Guide Vegan Dog Food PDF on the studies mentioned!

https://bit.ly/Fact-CheckGuide_VeganDietsforDogs

Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/learn.fetch

Website: https://learnfetch.com