I feel like instead of a giant push for veganism, there should just be a push to eat what’s sustainable.
Beef and dairy? Causes huge amount of greenhouse gasses and with current methods of production, it is not sustainable
Blue fin tuna? These things have been way over fished and are endangered. Not sustainable, just try it once and move one with your life.
Tilapia ? These things grow like weeds and can be fed efficiently. Go ahead, good source of protein for your diet.
Honey? We need bees and they are an important pollinator for crops. Go nuts (just watch your sugar intake}
Almonds? Takes huge amounts of water to grow and exacerbates droughts in the areas they are farmed. Eat less of these.
Potatoes? Grow stupid easily in all sorts of conditions. Go nuts.
I’d already be very happy if everyone took your approach, but it’s not the entire story for veganism. Sustainability is an important factor for myself and many others, but so is animal welfare.
It’s a bummer that animal welfare is pretty much inversely correlated with emissions. Packing chickens together and making their lives miserable is much better for the environment than having them roam free.
Veganism happily aligns with environmental sustainability. But when you believe we shouldn’t exploit animals at all, just pushing to eat what’s sustainable ignores a lot of pain and cruelty.
This is probably a hot take but I have the opinion that nature isn’t any more merciful than we are. Existence is suffering and every animal ends up as feed for another.
Is it better to be raised in horrid conditions in a farm, or to spend every moment of your life scavenging for food, running for your life, while probably infested with parasites just to be torn to pieces, alive, by a wolf or other predator?
Humans at least have the decency to sedate or knock unconscious our food. Wild animals have to experience being eaten alive.
This is a false equivalence; the answer is “neither”.
Veganism doesn’t seek to end all animal suffering, but not to exploit animals for humans’ sake. We don’t need animal products to survive, so we shouldn’t add to whatever misery already exists naturally.
In the case of livestock, we should just stop breeding them. No vegan is arguing for dumping all cattle in the savannah to be hunted by lions.
False equivalence is the anthropomorphism, animal farming misinformation agendas and generalisations being thrown like it has meaning…
This guy would own slaves
About honey: we do need bees. But taking away their honey which they work really hard for to sustain their colony during the winter and replacing it with sugar water is really bad for them and makes their colony weak. They can get viruses, bacteria and fungi much faster, which they can spread to other colonies or when splitting up when their queen dies.
Next to that, bees we use for honey are a very aggressive territorial species. They claim their territory and all the other bee and whasp species are killed and pushed out. There are many bee and whasp species who do not live in colonies but are very important for the biodiversity. Replacing them with our bees, which will die and get sick faster because we take away their nuteician rich honey, is a bad idea.
We do need our bees, but in reduces quantities to keep the balance. But we shouldn’t take their food.
We do need bees, but that doesn’t mean the honey industry is sustainable.
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/how-honey-industry-affects-environment
I agree for the most part. I would like to point out that fish farms are actually very damaging to the ecosystems that they sit in. The excrement ends up dropping down in single locations, burying the seafloor in it. IIRC, this often leads to the oxygen levels in the water dropping, which further kills off the surrounding aquatic life.
EDIT: more context
Stupid discussion. It does not matter whether something is in the box “vegan”. Ask yourself why you would or would not eat something. If you don’t want to eat(/drink) dairy because of the way the animals that produce the dairy are treated, would you be ok when they are treated differently? Are bees treated in the same way? Does it matter if you treat them in this way? Those should be your questions, not “does it belong in this box?”.
I’ve had an unreasonable number of arguments against people who seemed to think animal was a synonym for mammal. Thankfully, we’re now in an era where you can look it up and show them now mobile data is cheap, so it’s become a winnable argument.
Except they still don’t care, and resent you for edumacating them. Whatever you say, they “win”. Welcome to the post -information age.
Sure, but remember that there’s sometimes a scientific term used incorrectly, but it’s so widespread it has non-scientific definition in dictionary. Although thinking that insects are not animals is indeed stupid.
I feel like bees are a bit of a grey area. We’re not eating them, we’re kind of like landlords that give them a nice place to stay and they pay rent in honey. I’m not vegan so I’m not quite sure what the rationale is for bee stuff.
I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with my landlord harvesting my vomit as rent.
“I’m eating it, I promise it’s not a sex thing.”
Not just vomit but a snowball train of vomit.
I don’t think many would accept their gardens being pilfered either, though they might be more accepting if that’s how they paid rent.
Couple of reasons. One, honey is made not from local pollinators but from European honey bees. Two, European honey bees are really good at producing honey, which means they’re more efficient at removing pollen and nectar from flowers, denying food for native pollinators. Three, while only a few bees are directly harmed during honey harvesting, the need for their honey to be harvested means that they’ve been bred to make big, uniform honeycombs and a glut of excess honey. This makes them more susceptible to diseases, even before you factor in the monoculture nature of their existence.
Essentially, it’s not that eating honey is harmful to bees. It’s that the creation of honey at scale is cruel both to the bees producing the honey and the native pollinators who get pushed out by them. We (my household) do have honey on occasion, but only from local, small scale honey producers.
So my wife went vegan for a bit and the logic is basically any living thing we take advantage of or make their lives more of a labor. So eggs, honey, milk aren’t vegan because companies put those animals in situations they normally wouldn’t be in in the wild to take advantage and harvest products from them.
Yeah, some vegans draw the line at the animal kingdom. (Plants, algae, mushrooms - these are all living things as well, but one has to eat something.) Some vegans I know do eat honey though. It depends on what feels like animal exploitation to the person.
One of my best friends is vegan. They won’t use anything that comes from animals. Nothing. That includes wool, even though the sheep is harmed in the process. They’re absolutely opposed to any animal products or bi-products.
even though the sheep is harmed in the process
This is such a funny typo
The dark vegan. Eats only food that causes as much suffering as possible.
As long as we canot ask them, if it’s ok if we take their honey (consent), it’s not vegan. For an counter example, it’s fairly easy to get consent from a dog to touch them. Most people are able to tell if they are fine or not.
Eh, I doubt most people care about being vegan for the sake of being vegan, but as has been said, honey bees are bad for pollinators, so from a moral viewpoint, you get to the same conclusion.
Ultimately, though, honey isn’t hard to give up. Certainly nothing that I felt was worth contemplating whether it’s grey area or not.
At best, it’s annoying, because the weirdest products will have honey added. One time, I accidentally bought pickles with honey, and they were fucking disgusting.honey bees are bad for pollinators
Hm? What do you mean?
From this paper:
A. mellifera appears to be the most important, single species of pollinator across the natural systems studied, owing to its wide distribution, generalist foraging behaviour and competence as a pollinator.
This is a genuine question btw.
Most honey bees are of the European variety, they have a habit of displacing native bees when they are farmed
I’m no biologist, but as for why they’re bad for other pollinators, yeah, what @frosch@sh.itjust.works said sums it up quite well.
I’d like to add that, to my understanding, they’re actually relatively ineffective pollinators, too. They might do the highest quantity in total, but I’m guessing primarily because of how many honeybees there are.
I believe, the paper you linked also observes this, at least they mention in the abstract:With respect to single-visit pollination effectiveness, A. mellifera did not differ from the average non-A. mellifera floral visitor, though it was generally less effective than the most effective non-A. mellifera visitor.
…but I don’t understand the data. 🫠
As for why this is the case, for one, honeybees are extremely effective at collecting pollen, with their little leg pockets, which reduces the amount of pollen a flower has to offer.
But particularly when they’re introduced into foreign ecosystems, pollinators that are specialized for local plants get displaced.
This may mean just a reduction of pollination effectiveness, or it could mean that the honeybees turn into “pollen thieves”, i.e. they collect pollen without pollinating the plant.
Here’s a paper, which unfortunately no one may read, but the abstract describes such a case quite well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20583711/
I find vegan intellect fascinating. I love hearing their responses to my epistomology. They all make it up as they go along. It’s very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not.
My personal understanding of the world is that plants aren’t so different from animals that they can be classified separately from other food sources. For example, how much different is r-selected reproduction from a fruiting plant. Plants react differently to different colors of light and so do we.
It helps to understand the goal of a vegan. The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.
Just fascinating.
What a word salad. Your comment can be applied to anything because people are different lol. All my friends who are dads have different ideas on how to be a dad. Fascinating. It helps to understand the goal of a parent. All my friends with jobs define success in different ways. It’s like they’re all making it up as they go along. Fascinating. It helps to understand the goals of a worker.
It’s ok to set “impossible” goals if you view them as directions rather than destinations.
Fascinating huh?
I feel so kindred with the way you see things. You’re making an observation and you’re curious about the “why” of everything. I feel people often read my similar interest in a subculture as critical. Kind of like how bluntness can be perceived as rude, I guess. Do you ever have a similar response happen to you?
Just look at the other responses to my comments.
In real life it can be better or worse. Some of the closest people in my life get immediately defensive. It’s sometimes easier to talk with strangers. More often than not, I will find a passion point that is the limit of conversation. At those times I just listen as much as possible. How much I engage depends on how they rect to my questions.
Veganism has and always will be just dogma. I find it quite annoying how individuals can so freely push their moral philosophy onto others. Veganism should always be a personal philosophy.
Also, there are now many vegans (considered bottom-up vegans) taking the communist route and basically advocating for revolutions in order to cease animal food production.
I have conversed with quite a few vegans and none of them have pushed their morals on others. Some of them have been very upfront about their veganism. I am wondering where you are that you see vegans being so revolutionary.
When i speak of ones that push their moral philosophy on others (rather aggressively i might add), I’m talking about the vegans that walk into restaurants to cause a fuss. I’m talking about the ones that criticize and talk down on meat eaters for their habits. There are many who do practice veganism as a personal philosophy. I guess dogma always attracts “bad apples”
Also, i never claimed all vegans were revolutionary. I’m specifically referring to “bottom-up vegans” who advocate for more aggressive and hands-on methods in preventing animal farming rather than waiting for government reforms akin to a revolution.
Don’t you feel that you just see it that way because you’re on the opposing side on this? This sounds to me exactly the same as how a homophobe for example would describe gay rights activists.
Just go through all the points you mentioned in this and your previous comment, and replace those scenarios with the issues of various types of bigotry and ethical issues like transphobia, racism, child labour, slave labour etc.
Don’t get hung up on how bad these are in comparison to each other, that’s not the point. Just look at how they’re all ethical issues where a group of sentient beings are being harmed, and what kind of advocacy you’re in favour of to prevent that harm. And why you would see the one issue you might be on the side of the harm being carried out so differently.
Your analogy makes perfect sense, and i can understand from a vegan point of view why they would advocate in such manners even though i don’t agree on the equivalence of human rights issues and animal rights issues.
Reacting to stimuli like the colour of light is irrelevant. My phone camera would fall into the same category, then. A light switch reacts to getting pressed and turns on a light, it’s reacting to a stimulus.
What matters is sentience, which plants cannot possess, since they don’t have a central nervous system. And even if they did, a diet that includes meat takes more plants, since those animals have to be fed plants in order to raise them.
They all make it up as they go along. It’s very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not
The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.
Regarding these two, is this any different from human rights? Where people draw the line regarding slave labour, child labour, which type of humans they care about (considering racism, homophobia, trans phobia, ableism etc). I’m sure lots of people have impossible goals regarding human rights, but working to get as close to those as possible is still sensible.
The response to light color does not stand on its own. That is merely one parallel from many. It is true plants do not have a nervous system like animals, but they do have similar responses to stimuli. Parallels can be drawn to sight, sound/touch and smell/taste.
Sentience is another topic that is defined subjectively. From context it is clear you make a central nervous system a foundational requirement. I could also apply this to technology, so I would need clarification from you to understand what it means to you. I do not hold to a personal definition for sentience because I have found neither a universal nor scientific understanding of the idea.
As for the last paragraph: yup.
Again, all of these reactions to stimuli can be explained as direct, chemical reactions, not signals that get sent to a central unit, are processed, being “felt”, and then being reacted to. There is no one thing or being in plants like the central nervous system of animals that is capable of feeling something.
Regarding the topic of sentience, I propose looking at it like this:
There’s a range of definitions that is somewhere around it being the capacity to perceive, to be aware, to be/exist from ones own perspective. However you define it, a central nervous system or other type of similar central unit would have to be a requirement, because that is what would actually be sentient. You are your brain, your hand is just part of your body, if it was chopped off, it by itself is not sentient.
And whatever vague definition of it you go with, there’s two options: Either sentience is real, or it isn’t. If it isn’t real, literally nothing matters, gg. If it is real, non-human animals with central nervous systems, and therefore sentience and the capacity to suffer, deserve ethical consideration, and we should do what is reasonably possible to reduce their suffering and death.
Since we don’t know the answer to the existence of sentience, we should err on the side of caution. If we’re wrong, and we’re all as sentient as a rock, the inconvenience we’d have suffered in our efforts to protect fellow sentient-but-actually-not beings can’t be felt by us, no harm done. If we’re right, the suffering we’ll have prevented, in both scale and intensity, is indescribable.
However you define it, a central nervous system or other type of similar central unit would have to be a requirement, because that is what would actually be sentient
Without CNS there would be something else sophisticated enough to show sentience that would have been sentient. So to me it looks like this is not really a requirement, albeit it’s simpler to say that it is.
As a side note, I think that given how human-centric humans are (which is to be expected, really) even if we were living with another sentient species on the same planet we would argue they are not sentient for whatever reason we could come up with, and change sentience definition accordingly
Same reasoning like in fish and christianity.
It’s not like that bees are being strapped down and milked. It’s silly to not eat honey cause of veganism. If you’re that vegan move to the woods cause every product or archive you use in life has involved an animal in some way.
Bees produce honey. Chickens produce eggs. Can’t eat eggs. Can’t eat honey.
Idk I’m not a vegan either.
Chickens. Google what happens to male egg-laying chickens and you probably can figure out why it’s not vegan.
Usually things aren’t vegan due to the horrors of factory farming practices, even before any potential death occurs.
I mean anything commercial comes out to be pretty inhumane. They cut off the queens bees wings in commercial honey harvesting.
I guess bees aren’t as animal as chickens are?
fungi?
Non vegan here. 🤔
Soooooo honey is not extracted directly from the bees, so that would be an argument to declare honey vegan.
On the other hand, even with modern beekeeping tech and modular hives, one could argue the act of taking honey to be a serious intrusion on the bees’ life, so that could be an argument that honey is not vegan.
One could argue where the line lies with eusocial organisms. Do you consider the individual bees or do you consider the whole hive? Whole hive? Honey may not be vegan. Individual insects? Honey could be vegan.
It really depends on your standards. One vegan friend of mine does drink mead (honey wine, for the uninformed) for instance.
Can you milk a bee? I didn’t think so!
Bees have a nipple, Focker…
Let me get my milking gear. For the tiny udders.
Does mother Focker have nipples?
You can milk certain types of bees. Boo bees.
Wait, it’s Halloween soon. What kind of spooky scary bees make milk?
BOO! bees.
Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn’t an animal body part, it isn’t produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?
Bees make honey for their hive. Honey also does indeed contain bodily fluids from the bees.
The bread making human consents to you taking the bread (presumably). Breast milk and other human bodily fluids can be vegan for the same reason.
And insects pollinate plants not because they use the fruit, but for the nectar. They don’t care what happens after they leave the flower.
it isn’t produced by animal bodies
Sure is, it’s concentrated bee spit with sugar. And spit is made of water and body cells.
Honey can be vegan. I have a friend who keeps endangered bees and as an unintended side effect of fostering their growth has honey that she has to give away because she doesn’t want it
Playing devil’s advocate, this could be sidestepping the issue, because the honey is only an unintended side effect from your friend’s POV, not the bee’s.
So, if they were endangered cows and your friend didn’t like milk, the milk would be vegan…?
Well veganism is about reducing suffering. If the cows didnt suffer to produce that milk, like no forced insemination, calfs aren’t separated from their mother, male calfs aren’t slaughtered, the cows don’t have unnaturally large udders, you only take the over production and not steal the food from the calf and the cows live a good life then you could argue that the milk is vegan. But milk is not produced like that so milk is not vegan.
How is there 4 posts but one reply? Who said something first, the “bees, not animals” thing?
the opened reply is “bees, not animals” and the replies below belong to that
Well since we’re constantly digesting our own dead microfauna, I’d say that it’s literally impossible to be fully vegan, so they might as well stop trying and spare us their obnoxious bullshit.
What the fuck? Does she think honey composed of dead bees?
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Uh, that’s not the definition that biologists use. Kingdom animalia includes humans. (along with fish, birds, reptiles, insects, etc.) We’re mammals.
Also, a vast majority of people use this definition of the word “animal” when referring to the animals themselves and only tend to use other definitions (which typically ends up referring to non-human mammals or sometimes humans the speaker find distasteful for whatever reason) specifically when contrasting them to so called “civilized” humans.
You can look up the word “animal” in a dictionary and I garuntee you the kingdom animalia style definition will be the first one you see under the noun form of the word with all other definitions (the ones that exclude humans or insects) coming later. Dictionaries typically order their definitions by usage when there are multiple definitions of the same word.
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