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.
Historically I still "lose" these types of arguments as my willfully ignorant interlocutor spams potential strawman and ad hominem "arguments" until they feel sufficiently convinced that my pesky facts and I are safe to ignore.
In my experience there are very few people worth arguing with, as there are very few people willing to argue in good faith. Most people see arguing as a battle to be won or lost rather than a mechanism by which to vet assumptions. How can you expect to argue with a person who is unable to argue with themselves?
I feel like a lot of these posts are people just "poking the bear" and others end up taking them seriously. I understood this concept fairly early because of my family's heavy use of sarcasm and seeing Calvin's dad (of Calvin and Hobbes) explain things. Sometimes your best bet is to just not give the lesson and leave it alone so it doesn't get unnecessary attention.
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.
First, let me agree that everything in the kingdom Animalia is, in fact, an animal.
But now let me point out that many of the people who say shit like this might not speak english as their first language. Many languages have different words for animal for different types of animals. I tried to find out what I'm half remembering but I can't find it quickly and I have to get to work. But I vaguely remember that some word that's usually translated as animal into english actually doesn't include insects. Just like the english "deer" at one point in time refered to all wild beasts (but not fish or fowl) and now only refers to Cervidae.
I'm referring to arguments I've had in person against native English speakers. If they were online arguments, the ability to use mobile data to show someone a citation wouldn't be a new development.
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.
I think "exploitation" is the wrong word to be used. I'm not vegan, so I really have no bearing on this, but exploitation doesn't equal harm.
This post for example is about bees. They're being exploited (in that we're using them to get resources), but is it harmful? I have trouble saying yes. It seems somewhat ideal for them. They get to go about their lives like normal, though usually in a place with a lot of flowering plants, and they get taken care of. Occasionally honey is gathered from them, but this doesn't actually harm any bees.
I think vegans follow dogma too much. They should consider their reasons for themselves, and consider what food sources fall into that. The dogma is useful for quick communication and sharing of information, but I would suspect honey farming is a lot better for the living things involved than even a lot of plant farming, which requires large swathes of land to be dedicated to farming, which certainly isn't good for native species and arguably plants can feel too.
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.
Potatoes are kinda OP imho.
(I also agree with you btw).
Yeah exactly, people arguing whether dragon fruit or some shit is a "super food". The super food is right in front of us, potatoes (and onions).
What other food has been so vital to our survival that its disappearance could ravage a population (Irish potato famine)
No offense to dragon fruit, blue berries or whatever exotic fruit, but if they went extinct, not that much could change.
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.
I'd say the issue is that if honey isn't vegan because you're causing harm to bees, isn't most of modern vegetable agriculture at least equally harmful to bees & other insects due to all the pesticides being used?
Or is it just if we directly involve bees, it's bad, but if we inflict greater harm in a less direct way, it's acceptable?
We do need bees, but that doesn’t mean the honey industry is sustainable.
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/how-honey-industry-affects-environment
Turns out that what's sustainable is often what is vegan. Vegans are constantly discussing the edges of all this stuff trying to come to a better understanding, its somewhat natural that they would provide some of the most well-reasoned and substantiated arguments.
Honey and tilapia are not sustainable currently. Its a demand issue. Rules and regulations will never prevent an industry from meeting demand. Thats why we currently use practices at large scale we never would at small scale.
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
Beef and dairy? Causes huge amount of greenhouse gasses and with current methods of production, it is not sustainable
what makes you think this?
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.
Best friend's a vegan who raises bees. He doesn't clip wings or use smoke. From what I gather he basically just maintains their boxes, feeds them sugar when it's too cold for em, and collects honey when it's time. Someone is about to come along and say "he's not a vegan. Sounds like a vegetarian" and then I'm going to think "sounds like you're gatekeeping a lifestyle like it's a religion, and not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey" but I won't, because I don't wanna get wrapped up in the nonsense.
But either way, yes, some vegans do use honey. And some, like that theoretical commenter, don't eat anything that casts a shadow.
Personally I’m not sure the gate keeping you’re observing is all that much of an issue. I think it’s useful to remember many vegans are also public advocates for veganism. It’s important to them that people generally know what they mean when they advocate for veganism.
However, the definition of all words are always in flux. It’s not uncommon to see people call themselves vegan when a more apt description of their lifestyle would be plant based, flexitarian, vegetarian, etc. As such, I think edge cases like your friend take on an outsized importance that goes beyond the morality of your friend eating honey.
Basically, the goal may not be the social exclusion of your friend which is what I think is usually the problematic aspect of gatekeeping.
also - does this distinction matter? Is someone who runs 100m dash vs an ultra marathon runner both runners? When I run for the bus I'm also running. Sonic the Hedgehog also runs. They have distinctions in context that make sense - but they are all running.
not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey
Exactly this, veganism is ethical choice, and ethics is not science. You can't 'prove' that something is acceptable, nor vice versa. There are guidelines and discussions but that's pretty much it.
So this is really not about whether bees are animals or not.
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."
If my bank accepted vomit as mortgage payments, they could smack my ass and call me bulimic, I don't care what y'all do with my vomit, let's talk about pool house options and a second car.
I'd be cool with creaming their coffee twice a week if it meant I got my house for no money.
Idk....how much 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.
Not just vomit but a snowball train of vomit.
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.
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.
I don't think comparing beekeeping to landlordism makes it sound very ethical at all
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.
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.
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.
I mean I think it can be boiled down pretty simply: cause the least harm to living things that you can personally manage, according to your definition of harm. Having impossible goals isn't necessarily a bad thing. If your impossible goal is to make a billion dollars ethically, and you get to 50 million being 95% ethical, you could still consider that a win, even though you didn't reach your impossible goal.
Even the simple goal of "always being a good person 100% of the time" is probably impossible to achieve over an entire lifetime while meeting every person's definition of it. That doesn't mean it's useless for someone to strive for that within their definition of "good person".
In fact I'd say the vast majority of meaningful, non trivial goals could be considered "impossible".
ethical vegans (and not people who eat plant-based for nutritional reasons, and often get conflated with people doing it for ethics reasons) generally agree on one very simple rule:
To reduce, as much as possible, the suffering inflicted upon animals.
That's it.
Where that line is drawn of course depends on your personal circumstances. Some people require life-saving medicine that includes animal products, and are generally still considered vegan.
I'd like to see what about this confuses you and your epistomology [sic, and that word doesn't mean what you think it means]
It's easy to judge down from that high horse of i-dont-care.
I'm no vegan (nor vegetarian), but the mission of an animal-rights-activist (that is also logically vegan in consequence) is surely to minimize any harm (s)he knows of. It's very simple. The limits of a dietary or fashin-trendy vegan is not so clear. As they usually don't really have spent a lot of time reflecting about it, but just follow some basic idea they've found somewhere. And maybe try to "adapt" it a lil.
Also your plant-argument was had like 30yrs ago already. Makes you sound super-intelligent, having figured out their major flaw all on your own :-)
The goal is not impossible. The goal is (or probably just should be) to minimize suffering if its existence is not unbeknownst to us. That's really a very basic logic that doesn't require much computing power.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Same reasoning like in fish and christianity.
Bees produce honey. Chickens produce eggs. Can't eat eggs. Can't eat honey.
Idk I'm not a vegan either.
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.
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?".
But it will ruin the achievement badge I want to show in my profile!
Animal ethics isn't just about whether other animals are being harmed or killed, it's also about being against exploitation. They might not be able to think in quite the same way that we do, but it's still clear that they have their own wills and lives of their own that they want to live. It's worth asking ourselves if we really want a society that's willing to exploit and turn other thinking beings into commodities, even the ones whose thinking appears to be so much more rudimentary than our own.
It's easy to dismiss them because they're "just bugs", but presently bugs of all species are facing radical population declines with all the ecological instability - maybe even looming collapse - that brings. Maybe we collectively might be more willing to protect bug populations and do more to protect our environments if more of us stopped to analyze our anti-bug bias and considered that they have a natural right to life like we do. The planet does not exist solely for us.
Also, honey is essentially a refined sugar that's no better healthwise than table sugar. Date sugar/powder is a sweetener made of whole fruit and is a much better choice. Plus, it's just weird to want to eat the vomit of other species anyway.
As for the exploitation, all living things have their own lives. Even plants seem to be able to communicate to some degree and can be stressed and stuff. Either you're OK exploiting living things to some degree or you die. The level of exploitation is what should be discussed. Is beekeeping harmful to bees? I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it.
As for it being sugar, sure. Sugar isn't bad though. Sugar is bad when consumed in the quantities the average American consumes it. It also has other properties that make it pretty good for your health. For example, I think it's good for preventing allergies because it contains pollen (I might be making this up, but it seems like I've read that somewhere).
Plus, it's just weird to want to eat the vomit of other species anyway.
Do you realize that fruit is the ovary of a plant? Life is weird. Get over it. Weird is not a word that should come into a discussion of ethics.
Entirely true. My favorite stupid argument is about lab-grown meat. People don't seem to understand that veganism is practiced for a variety of reasons. Is lab-grown meat vegan? It depends on the vegan.
My rule of thumb is that I'll eat it as long as nothing was permanently injured or killed to make it. Factory farmed eggs? Nah, I've seen videos of macerators. My neighbor's chickens' eggs? Hell yeah, I'm friends with those chickens
ETA: then there's the breast milk "debate." Can't tell you how many times I've seen numbskulls try to argue that breastfeeding isn't vegan because "milk is an animal product"
Like all ideologies idiots stick to the rules while forgetting the actual meaning behind them. Compare how Christians act to what their Christ taught.
Sorry, is this post satire or are you talking about satire you did not recognize? NEVER seen a vegan call breast milk non-vegan and have in fact actually seen more discussion about whether vegans should be breastfeeding children at all, I.e. is it healthy to do so with their diet.
You've put the word debate in quotation marks flippantly like there's an obvious answer, but I'm pretty sure you just misunderstood a conversation rife with sarcasm or taken out of context (or straight up made it up).
I'm no vegan, but I think a large incentive for veganism or at least being vegetarian is the carbon footprint as well. A plant-based diet is much more sustainable than with meat, as in vertebrates. I think invertebrates would be great alternatives but the west-influenced culture is not very fond of eating invertebrates except for crustaceans.
This question is still valid from a marketing standpoint. If you're selling honey, are you able to advertise it as vegan?
True. Though marketing is a cancer in itself. But I guess that's a different discussion 😬
If you can explain a vegan way to get milk, meat, or honey then I'm all ears. You seem to be implying there is some gray area here.
No he's implying that eating something just because it is "Vegan" is not understanding the point. Vegans usually don't eat stuff because it's bad for the environment or because they see animals as equal lifeforms and don't want to cause them harm. If you don't eat most animal products because of the environment then you might be ok with eating oysters on occasion. They have a similar co2 footprint as most vegetables. Similarly honey has an even smaller footprint.
My point is that there is no real way to explain what "vegan" really is, since it means different things to different people and all of these people have the best intentions. And actually there is no real need to define "vegan" either. Instead of focussing on what to call "vegan" and what not, the discussion should be about bees.
For instance, do they care if you take their honey? Are they harmed? And should I care about whether they are harmed?
Some folks believe that fish aren't animals, either.
Someone once told me "meat is murder, but fish is justifiable homicide". I hope that helps.
Ever since a chicken killed my pet hamster, my name has been vengeance and Popeyes has been my hunting grounds.
You’ve summed up my position as a pescatarian quite well
Does that mean that goddamn tomatoes are sea creatures??
I dunno but sea's got cucumbers. 🤔
Reasons that I, as a vegan, do not use honey:
-
I cannot guarantee that the bees consented to their product being harvested. Some beekeepers clip the queen's wings, which can prevent the colony from leaving.
-
I cannot guarantee that bees were not harmed in the process of harvesting (potentially getting crushed by the honeycomb frames, for example) or in the process of controlling the colony (like clipping the queen's wings).
Regarding your second point, you also cannot guarantee that small animals like rodents are not harmed in the process of harvesting plants.
Bees can kill their queen and make a new one no problem.
If the colony would want to move away they would just do that. I don't think clipping the queen wings would do nothing.
But I doubt any beekeeper colony would want to move as they are keep at a perfect environment so they can produce more honey that they would actually need to survive. Even industrial ones. It's part of basic beekeeping that bees must be in a good place so they produce the most honey.
Hurt of mistreated bees would not produce honey. If they are mistreated the try to leave (and as stated they can just kill their Queen if she is crippled), they eat all the honey, or just die.
Bees are really complicate to get advantage of. Our relationship with them need to be symbiotic to work.
Not trying to convince anyone to consume honey if they don't want to. As it's basically just sugar so whatever.
Bees can kill their queen and make a new one no problem.
This doesn't make the mutilation of the queen bee any less bad. It's still harming the bee. I am not aware if a bee has the ability to make an informed decision on whether to kill the queen and relocate, so I cannot make an informed decision about whether the bees actually want to be in their current hive.
If the colony would want to move away they would just do that.
I don't know if this is true. It's possible the bees are being manipulated into staying at their current hive in some way.
I don't think clipping the queen wings would do nothing
It would hurt the queen, which is more than I want to be involved in.
But I doubt any beekeeper colony would want to move as they are keep at a perfect environment so they can produce more honey that they would actually need to survive. Even industrial ones. It's part of basic beekeeping that bees must be in a good place so they produce the most honey
Making an assumption about what the bees want is not strong enough of an excuse for me to be ok with their exploitation. I don't believe we should have the right to make decisions for other organisms, and the bees are not able to tell us how they want to be treated, so we should not try to control them or take what they produce.
Hurt of mistreated bees would not produce honey.
This appears to also be an assumption. I do not know if it is true, so I cannot use it to make a decision
If they are mistreated the try to leave (and as stated they can just kill their Queen if she is crippled), they eat all the honey, or just die.
If this is true, there is likely to be a minimum amount of mistreatment before they take action. I do not know how much mistreatment a bee can take, so I cannot use this to make a decision.
Bees are really complicate to get advantage of. Our relationship with them need to be symbiotic to work.
I do not know if this is true. We take advantage of many animals without giving them much in return, so I am not sure if the bee-beeker relationship is actually symbiotic.
That seems well thought out to me, thank for this explanation.
Do you personally grow everything you eat? If not, animals (and humans) are absolutely harmed in the process. Commercial agriculture, even organic, kills huge numbers of small animals and destroys habitat just to prepare the soil, not to mention all the insects killed by pesticides. Farmers will also kill deer, wild pigs, birds, etc. to protect their crops. And agriculture in some places still relies on child and/or slave labor.
How much awareness of it’s existence do you think a bee has?
We have no way of knowing don’t is best to be on the safe side. Veganism isn’t about awareness it’s about respect.
I dont care. In my opinion, the best way to live is to do as little harm as possible, and it appears that bees are harmed by the human collection of honey, so I will not use honey.
More than that sort of people that make these posts, no bee has ever said anything that has convinced me they have zero understanding of philosophy of consciousness.
of its* existence
-
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.
I've always found it interesting that using animals is a bad thing, but using plants in similar ways is fine. I guess there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise such a person would simply starve to death.
One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.
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.
Think about it as if its about consent. The bees don't consent to their honey being taken. Cows don't consent to be repeatedly impregnated and milked. Pigs don't consent to their butts becoming bacon. Chickens don't consent to their eggs being taken.
However, the miller and the baker both consented to milling/kneading, and later selling their wares.
Human breast milk can be vegan, though, if given freely. If you forcefully take human breast milk, then it is no longer vegan.
Honey is a by-product of bees, the same way that all human made food is a by-products of humans.
so if I buy food from people I'm basically a cannibal
Maybe if we went around collecting raw food and storing it inside our bodies, and then converted it into a nearly pure sugar.
Dude, language!
/s
if it needs to be pollinated by bees or wasps, then it's not vegan (insert troll emoji i guess)
I think that's actually a very valid point. What level of involvement in producing the food makes it vegan or not vegan? If eating honey is unethical I would think so is eating food produced by the hard work of another person.
What level of involvement in producing the food makes it vegan or not vegan?
It's about A) exploitation and B) harming the animal.
Pollination is done by all kinds of insects, but they are part of our ecosystem and happen to be pollinating the plants that we eat. We don't breed them, we don't kill them (pesticides, sure), we simply coexist.
Honey isn't vegan because we breed the bees, take their food and often kill the entire hive because they get sick and cannot survive winter without their honey. It's also not sustainable, because honey bees are being bred en masse and are pushing out native pollinators that are highly specialized in certain kinds of plants, causing them to go extinct.
Can you milk a bee? I didn't think so!
You can milk certain types of bees. Boo bees.
Wait, it's Halloween soon. What kind of spooky scary bees make milk?
BOO! bees.
Bees have a nipple, Focker...
Let me get my milking gear. For the tiny udders.
Does mother Focker have nipples?
Bees are gubbermint drones, and honey is simply concentrated 5G chemtrail juice that gives you super autism.
That was rough.
Yeah, but, did you ever see an ape turn into a human being?
That shit went dumb REAL fast
Not as fast as an ape turning into a human being.
Jesse Lee Peterson always cracks me up. I feel like his whole thing has to just be an act, but he never cracks it's amazing really
The fact that he thought he won this "debate" and uploaded it is so embarrassing...
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
Genuine question, I would like to know if there is a reason. Why doesn't she just let the bees keep it?
I believe it’s to encourage them to increase numbers, but I haven’t discussed that with her. She’s the type of nerd I know probably has a good reason so I never asked
Isn't that vegetarian, not vegan though?
"It's complicated".
It's the same category of dispute as the "eggs or milk can be vegan under certain circumstances" one. The argument is that rescued farm animals have been so warped by human intervention that it's actively harmful for you to not use their produce - dairy cows can in rare cases die, and otherwise will just be miserable, if left unmilked. Chickens lay too many eggs, and leaving unf. chicken eggs in the coop can lead to the chickens learning to eat their own eggs, so you have to remove them. (I don't hold a position on these claims, I'm just reporting what I see come up in the argument.) Bees fall into the same sort of category, they've been so selectively bred that they now produce far more honey than they can possibly use, so removing and eating some of it helps to mitigate the negative impact that humans have had on the creatures.
Regardless though: cows, chickens and bees are all still animals. I don't think any vegans are gonna argue that one.
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.
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.
I appeal to the Director of Veganism!
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
Bees, are vegetals.
Just finished watching Tolkien stuff, so i got this:
Bees are kelvar: beings that are "capable of moving and escaping"! Except maybe for the queen bee, which may be an olvar.
Kelvar was a name used by the Valie Yavanna to refer to that part of her natural realm capable of moving or escaping, as opposed to the olvar which were rooted in place.
It seems so silly to me. Do plants not feel pain?
They do. I learned it first hand... You can call it stress if you like, but plants most certainly experience suffering
Then you should definitely go vegan. A vegan diet comes with the least amount of plant deaths and plant suffering, since lifestock is being fed with billions of individual plants before being slaughtered. You can save all of them.
No, I can't save them. Because systematic problems cannot be solved through individual action
That being said, it's bold of you to assume someone conscious of the suffering of plants isn't eating as sustainably as they can with the choices they have available
Also, this is about honey - honey production encourages freely planting wild fields rather than mono crops, and it discourages killing the bees. I don't share your moral system, but in mine this is about as good as it gets
Go vegan if you’re serious about morals and protecting the environment!
i guess this person refuses to work or patronize a place that uses pest control for cockroaches?
Heh, nice try at having standards but since it is impossible to not harm anything then obviously possibly harming for pleasure is fine. Checkmate loser.
Now I am going to depict you as the crying wojack and me as the handsome wojack.
What the fuck? Does she think honey composed of dead bees?
I think that's the distinction between vegan and vegetarian. Milk is vegetarian since it's not eating a cow, but it's not vegan because an animal was used to produce it.
So honey not being vegan is the same kind of thing.
The whole "Vegans against Honey" thing is so stupid.. like... brah, Bees are the one critter that has already unionized.
Not like there's much sense to begin with in a diet where you need a thousand supplements in order to not go insane from a Vitamin B-12 Deficiency and start blaming Carnist Voodoo for your Anemia... Ya know instead of going "Oh wait, I was getting my iron from chicken...."
Edit: On that note, I actually do need to take Iron for a defiency, this post reminded me.... Not a vegan though.
I'm not vegan, I'm vegetarian, but I don't need any supplements to be just fine. I know plenty of vegans who are happy and healthy without supplements. It isn't that hard to find sources elsewhere in your diet. I've never understood the malnutrition argument, when we've known that you can be perfectly healthy (and statistically healthier than otherwise) when eating vegan. You can't just eat salads and expect to be okay, but doesn't that sound like such a bland diet anyways? I prefer making stir fries, burritos, stews, and other mixed dishes where I can hit all the macro and micro nutrients my body needs. I'm very healthy and haven't eaten meat or animal products outside of humanely sourced eggs (my friend has chickens) for years.
Some people simply can't comprehend the idea of eating vegetables that aren't grains.
Vegans only need multivitamins and omega 3s for supplementation, that’s it.
You know what the omnivore that I am needs for supplementation?
Iron for anemia and that's it
Any that’s the hypocrisy of Vegans. Milk and honey are the only two animal-based food sources that don’t involve the killing of animals. And in the case of most cow breeds, milking is actually needed as they have been bred to produce far more milk than their calves drink. And with careful management of the hive, you can harvest a lot of honey from a mature hive without negatively affecting the hive itself - it just delays/defers new queen production and swarming, which is desirable anyhow - no beekeeper who has hives primarily for crop pollination wants to have hives swarming each and every year.
You are free to have this opinion but how does it make vegans hypocrites? Everything you said is incompatible with veganism simple because you are commdifying other creatures.
You did a great job trying to make it sound like humans make their lives better by enslaving them though.
Milk and Honey involve absolutely killing animals. For milk the "excess" bulls are being killed. Not to mention the rape to get the cows pregnant for them to produce milk. Maybe we shouldnt breed animals that suffer at all. The bee hives get sugary water instead of their honey, this weakens the hive since its obvisiously unhealthy for the bees. Also the honey bees suppress other natural bees, that are neccessary for many plants since the honey bee doesnt pollinate every plant.
Maybe we should just let the animals alone. We dont need them for food.
Vegans are more "consent" than focusing on the consumption.
Vegetarians eat honey and drink milk. Vegans don't as they don't feel that animals can consent to the actions being taken place on their body. It's basically a form of "Can this animal agree to what is taking place?" question. If they can't even answer a yes or no, then it's a form of abuse.
Like how we consider that animals can't consent to sexual acts. It's wrong because we exert a force to them that they can't even disagree with. Bestiality is obviously wrong, and I don't think you'd find a lot of people who would disagree except those who perform it. But it's weird that we view the killing and eating of them as normalized.
And I am saying this as someone who consumes meat. I fully acknowledge I am complicit, I just don't defend my actions.
the vegan society definition makes no mention of consent at all, only exploitation
Eggs? Even if you count "fertilized" as being an animal, the vast majority of eggs aren't fertilized.
Ever heard of chick shredding? We need far more hens than roosters, so the males get shredded.
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.
"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."
~ The Vegan Society, 1944
