At the intersection of food policy, animal ethics and political theory is the often-overlooked issue of slaughter to feed non-humans, especially cats and other carnivorous animals kept as companions. The keeping of companions is a practice from which many people derive great meaning and happiness, but, in 2011’s Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka called for an end of animal slaughter for food, be that food for humans or for companion animals. The problem is this: Given the importance of companionship for many people, can carnivorous companions be fed without the need for rights-violating practices of slaughter? In this paper, I will examine a number of possibilities the state could fund or endorse, such as ultra-humane farming practices, technological solutions and the scavenging of corpses, before arguing that the answer is to be found in foraging for or farming non-sentient invertebrates; a possibility which is generally overlooked in the literature.
