History CarnivoreConfusion / WesternAnimation

** However, in another episode Heffer ends up living on a farm and gets put on a truck with a bunch of other cattle being sent to market. He things this means they're picking up groceries; one of his compatriots explains that no, they're going to ''become'' groceries. Heffer freaks out, while the rest of the herd think he's being weird about it. The farmer ends up changing his mind and brings the herd back to the ranch, now a resort.

** One episode begins with a chicken applying for a job at Chokey Chicken and coming out as frozen chicken meat. Admittedly it was all apart of Heffer's dream, but the end of the episode has her about to apply for the job for real. It's left ambiguous as to whether or not the dream will repeat itself in reality.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOctonauts'' typically prevent any sea creature from eating another creature, no matter how natural it is for eg sharks to eat tuna. When the carnivores are sympathetic characters, they'll typically get to eat "fish biscuits", which are apparently vegetarian but nutritionally balanced. The fact that several of the Octonauts are themselves animated vegetables doesn't get discussed...

** Actually, the carnivores do mention that they hunt and eat other dinosaurs. Some episodes even discuss predator-prey relationships.

** In "The Bumpkin", Idaho (a potato) ask Richard what the french fries he's eating are. Richard then throws them out the window.

** The excellent short "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpT1soJGxs Birds Anonymous]]" may be the earliest example of the "predators can just quit eating animals" trope. Sylvester joined the titular group, then suffered hard while going {{cold turkey|sAreEverywhere}} due to lack of bird flesh. In the end, the president of Birds Anonymous ends up chasing Tweety as well.

* ''WesternAnimation/AngryBirdsToons'': In the episode "Stalker", the pigs are seen standing in line at a hot dog stand. Hot dogs however, are made of pork but are also made with other meats such as beef.

** Heffer has been seen eating beef products. This gets lampshaded in "Heff in a Handbasket":

** One episode begins with a chicken applying for a job at Chokey Chicken and coming out as frozen chicken meat.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'': In both his [[WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM SatAM]] and ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' incarnations, Sonic has a prominent fondness for chili dogs. As non-sapient animals beyond some rats, birds, and fish -- and the terrapods, which are intelligent but not sapient -- are rarely portrayed in the series, where the meat comes from is a bit of a mystery.

** Fluttershy has to gather food for all the animals under her care, including fish for a group of otters. In an earlier episode she's seen waving to a bunch of smiling fish, indicating the fish have some variant of sentience. One wonders how [[FriendToAllLivingThings she]] manages that kind of dissonance. The IDW comics show she holds the "meat-eating is a fact of life" mindset and she doesn't really seem to mind seeing two packs of animals ''fight to the death in order to see which gets to eat the mane six''. "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS9E18SheTalksToAngel She Talks to Angel]]" muddles the issue further when, during a meeting between predators and prey animals in her sanctuary, she decides to put the carnivorous animals (including obligate carnivores like a wolf and a python) on a vegan diet -- despite, as said, having been shown to be entirely willing to feed meat to other animals in the past.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}},'' Third Earth's WorldOfFunnyAnimals depicts Thundera's [[{{Catfolk}} Cats]] not as obligate carnivores, but omnivores like humans. They eat meat, presumably non-sentient species, but the {{Fishmen}} sailors from "Ramlak Rising" have no qualms about eating other sentients...like the ''Cats.'' Indeed, the ship's cook has designs on stuffing the Thunderkittens, and when the Fishman Captain Tunar says he would have let the Cats eat his own first mate had he known they were such competent fighters, he's not entirely joking. In a subsequent episode, the Cats leave ''nonanthropomorphic'' fish-skeletons as food scraps, while an enemy LizardFolk muses on the idea of eating the Cats roasted.

* Rather horrific {{deconstruct|edTrope}}ion in ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'', which takes place in a world populated by humans and {{Funny Animal}}s. One episode shows a chicken farmer who is himself a chicken, and his livestock are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xytsouUYo just as anthropomorphic]] as himself, but as he explains they are injected with hormones at birth that make them no more intelligent than real, non-anthropomorphic chickens. In a previous episode, a cow waitress was shown angrily serving steak to a human customer.

* ''WesternAnimation/GeorgeOfTheJungle'':

* ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownThanksgiving'': The ending has Snoopy and Woodstock, the latter of whom is a bird, sitting down to have a turkey dinner. The bonus feature on the special's new DVD release has Bill Melendez admitting even he thought that scene was rather morbid. It ''really'' doesn't help that on several occasions in the comic, Woodstock and the other birds spent Thanksgiving hiding at Snoopy's place because they were terrified of becoming Thanksgiving dinners themselves.

* ''WesternAnimation/DinoTrux'' plays this a little weird, given that all animals are animal/vehicle hybrids. Almost all of them simply feed on ore, with the T-Trux being feared mostly because they are usually powerful territorial jerks. The show also features scavengers that like to collect scrap metal (so, the flesh of other Dinotrux), but seemingly just to build their nests out of as they are never seen eating it. So that getting replacement parts does not have to involve our heroes killing other dinotrux for their parts, an acceptable target is given to them in the form of bitbugs; literally just replacement parts with insect wings that certain kinds of reptools can harvest by eating them and spitting them back out sans wings.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'' ' "Crash Nebula" episode has the hero, Sprig Speevak, tell his alien classmates a story about the time he rescued an alien princess, which included a part where his kid sister Sprout calls him in for dinner, which is turkey, and it makes the alien turkey mad, so Sprig revised that part to Sprout telling him that their mom made the turkey a sweater.
* ''WesternAnimation/FatherOfThePride'' plays with this. The main character is a lion who's best friend is a Gopher who's name is "Snack". At one point, Snack's girlfriend (also aptly named "Candy") dumps him, and to protect his feelings, tells Snack that he ate his girlfriend instead.

-->'''Peaches:''' This meat product, when ground, becomes the all-American hamburger.\\

** {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in one episode; Dog tries to answer the question of where meat comes from. He explains how there's a guy who plants ''meat plants'' -- meanwhile, Cat just explains slaughter. Dog goes crazy at the idea of eating sapient beings, who he thinks are friends, and turns vegan. Then, Dog starts to become delusional as he imagines that vegetables ''are'' his friends. After all that, Dog then tries to eat Cat, [[InsaneTrollLogic because he's not his ''friend'' but his ''brother'']]. Fortunately, [[TheCuckooLanderWasRight the guy who plants meat plants]] appears and solves the problem. To make things more horrifying, Cat and Dog share bodies. So if Dog eats Cat, he eats his own body. Although they only feel pain in their half, so they have their own bodies, but they meet in the middle. So Dog would have only eaten Cat, which just leaves Dog and his half of the body...

* Rather horrific {{Deconstruction}} in ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'', which takes place in a world populated by humans and {{Funny Animal}}s. One episode shows a chicken farmer who is himself a chicken, and his livestock are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xytsouUYo just as anthropomorphic]] as himself, but as he explains they are injected with hormones at birth that make them no more intelligent than real, non-anthropomorphic chickens. In a previous episode, a cow waitress was shown angrily serving steak to a human customer.

** {{Deconstructed}} in one episode, Dog tries to answer the question of where meat comes from. He explains how there's a guy who plants ''meat plants'' -- meanwhile, Cat just explains slaughter. Dog goes crazy at the idea of eating sapient beings, who he thinks are friends, and turns vegan. Then, Dog starts to become delusional as he imagines that vegetables ''are'' his friends. After all that, Dog then tries to eat Cat, [[InsaneTrollLogic because he's not his ''friend'' but his ''brother'']]. Fortunately, [[TheCuckooLanderWasRight the guy who plants meat plants]] appears and solves the problem. To make things more horrifying, Cat and Dog share bodies. So if Dog eats Cat, he eats his own body. Although they only feel pain in their half, so they have their own bodies, but they meet in the middle. So Dog would have only eaten Cat, which just leaves Dog and his half of the body...

** "The Potato" has Darwin giving up eating potatoes due to thinking it is offending Idaho. It turns Idaho didn't mind because apparently potato-people are not the same as edible potatoes.

-->'''Finn:''' What kind of meat is that?\\

** Heffer has been seen eating beef products.

** It is discussed in

-->'''Mickey:''' I need to make a living too, ya know! We didn't even know what residuals were back then1 Ask Series/TheBradyBunch!

* ''WesternAnimation/BackAtTheBarnyard'': The fact that some of the cast of barn animals include a dog and a ferret, tends not to bother the others at all. However, Freddy the ferret does very frequently fantasize eating his best friend, Peck (who happens to be a chicken), but tries to maintain a vegetarian diet (the producers seem to disregard the fact that ferrets are obligate carnivores and completely lack the ability to derive nutrition from plant matter). In one hilarious scene, Otis the cow is seen eating a salami sandwich, but later turns out it's just veggie salami.
** The fact that the cast are intelligent, talking animals raises the further question about the morals of human meat consumption, and why other equally intelligent barn animals don't try to avoid this fate.
*** The farmer is a vegan.
*** There's even an episode where Freddy, who can't remember the night before, is put on trial and banished for allegedly eating Peck. [[spoiler:He didn't. Peck was just laying in an aloe patch because he had molted and needed lotion.]]
* Rather horrifically {{Deconstruction}} in ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'', which takes place in a world populated by humans and {{Funny Animal}}s. One episode shows a chicken farmer who is himself a chicken, and his livestock are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xytsouUYo just as anthropomorphic]] as himself, but as he explains they are injected with hormones at birth that make them no more intelligent than real, non-anthropomorphic chickens. In a previous episode, a cow waitress was shown angrily serving steak to a human customer.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'': In both his [[WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM SatAM]] and [[Comicbook/SonicTheHedgehog Archie]] comics incarnations, Sonic has a prominent fondness for chili dogs. As non-sapient animals beyond some rats, birds, and fish -- and the terrapods, which are intelligent but not sapient -- are rarely portrayed in the series, where the meat comes from is a bit of a mystery.