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The notion of a holistic approach that gives pet owners more control over their pets' diet has been gaining ground since 2007, when a melamine contamination of commercial pet food caused people to take a closer look at what they were feeding their pets, says Donna Spector, a veterinary internal medicine specialist who runs SpectorDVM, an animal nutrition consultancy.

"That was a turning point that led to more home-cooked meals and raw food diets. Vegetarianism is another subset of that backlash," she says.

Spector and six other pet experts who spoke with CNN conceded -- some more reluctantly than others -- that most dogs could biologically live on a vegan diet. But doing so requires substantial attention to creating a balanced diet that makes up for the loss of animal protein with substitutions of beans, soy and, to a lesser extent, vegetables and grains.

The Obama administration sided with pork producers, a move criticized by a number of animal rights groups.

Pork producers in their legal brief estimated that about 3% of swine are non-ambulatory when they arrive at the slaughterhouse.

The meat industry argued being forced to immediately euthanize all downed animals would hurt its ability to detect and fight one particularly virulent disease: foot-and-mouth, which is highly contagious.