or eggs or other insect parts
I am now 5 years cancer free and with all my bits, thanks in large part to immunotherapy. This involved infusing live bacteria into rude locations. So, my survival and quality of life were predicated on killing millions of bacteria. What do vegans think of that?
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a vegan; the word is also used to describe foods and materials that are compatible with veganism.
- Veganism (Wikipedia)
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms belonging to the biological kingdom Animalia.
- Animal (Wikipedia)
Vegans don’t care about that. Everything you eat and drink is absolutely covered in bacteria. They’re unavoidable. -Vegan (Me)
As for me, on a personal note, I will take anything prescribed by a doctor as prescribed if there is no vegan alternative. Many medicines come in gelcaps or have lactose-based binding ingredients.
If a doctor tells me to take Advil, I’m finding a generic ibuprofin with no gelatin or dairy binders. If a doctor tells me to take Advil in a gelcap because it absorbs better or whatever (I’m not a doctor), I’ll take the gel cap. If it’s a prescription filled by a pharmacist, I’m taking whatever they have available. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I’m sure all but the most “radical” vegans would do the same in your situation. Btw, congrats! And damn, isn’t medicine cool AF?
Well if your life depended on it, you did good. That’s it
Used to be vegan for 5ish years.
It is a grey area and personal preference. Are you vegan for morality, health, global sustainability, etc…
It depends why someone is vegan (diet, not movement).
I was vegan for health reasons, and local honey helps with allergies so I ate it.
“honey, I’m home!”
shocked gasp “I want a divorce!”
Depends who you ask. I know a guy who’s vegan because he likes animals. I asked him about honey and he said “fuck insects”.
But opinion differs because bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It’s not hurting them and not keeping them confined, so…
Others put the line at no hurting animals ever. I don’t ask about fleas or mosquitos or tapeworms though.
Fuck mosquitos. I kill them with a passion. I would estimate I have been bitten a few million times. They’re numbing protein doesn’t work on me and I’m allergic to it. Nothing like feeling your body is on fire.
bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It’s not hurting them
I don’t think this is entirely true. Honey bees are basically factory farmed, we don’t just go into the woods and steal honey. They are ecologically problematic as they compete with native bee species. I’m not an expert but look up how bees are being exploited for almond pollination in California for instance.
That’s a valid position, but it applies equally to most kinds of land use. Agave plantations are not less ecologically problematic. Agriculture has an impact.
And animal agriculture uses even more land than eating plants directly. We have to eat something to survive and eating plants has the least impact.
For most animals yes, but bees (the topic at hand) are different because their land use overlaps with other kinds rather than displacing it. The competition with native insects is a real problem but not necessarily more of a problem than honey alternatives.
My understanding is most do but it’s the subject of occasional controversy.
not all vegans are the same but personally i use agave over honey
One’s an excess product that we’re literally allowed by the animal to take, the other’s a food source for an endangered species of bat
You should reconsider
Bees can’t give consent
Tell me you know nothing about beekeeping…
They literally only take honey that the bees don’t need. If the bees lose enough honey for it to hurt them, then guess what? They can’t continue to grow and keep making honey. If bees had an actual problem with it, they wouldn’t be so chill about it either
Meanwhile bats have no way of making agave. It’s just there, and then when we harvest it, there’s just gonna be less for them to have. That’s the difference
Mezcal? Sold
Yes.
I have never met a vegan who was okay with honey but I have had plenty of non vegan mother fuckers constantly bring this up as if its this huge edge case point of conflict. Its made and taken involuntarily from animals. It ain’t that hard to figure out.
I saw a post once that actually argued bees are aware of the arrangement and generally willingly tolerate the deal. We can tell they know the deal because they produce extra honey to account for the keeper’s cut, and we know they willingly tolerate it because if they found it intolerable, bees are perfectly capable of fucking right off and leaving you with an empty hive.
“Don’t like the rent? Just move somewhere rural lmao” type argument.
I’ve been hit with the “they literally make it for us.” No bro the bees that evolved honey did not do it millions of years ago for the people that weren’t even around back then.
They didn’t evolve it for us, no. The evidence just suggests to me that they find this an agreeable expense in exchange for a solid shelter guarded by a comparative titan. I don’t know exactly what parts of the deal they understand and what parts they like, but they clearly at least know to expect the honey tax.
They “find this an agreeable expense”? They have a choice in the matter? Bees do what bees do in the wild or or in man-made hives. Humans choose to place them in hives.
Yeah it also is gross as fuck. Imagine putting spider silk on your weet-bix
Sounds like an interesting mix of textures!
yes. the reason the term vegan came about was because of the looseness of vegetarian. vegetarian would inply no eggs or insect unless it had a rider. like lacto/ovo vegetarians will ingest milk and eggs. honey was usually not to much of an issue. so vegan started being used for people who don’t eat animals or anything that came from an animal like honey or milk. There is a thing called fruitarian that theoretically will only eat the parts of the plant that the plant made to be eaten. Like fruits. Steve jobs was into it before he died. I think he thought it would cure or help his cancer or something.
Strict vegetarian used to be the term for not eating any animal products. Vegan denoted lifestyle, not just diet. A vegan would not have leather shoes of wool sweaters.
I feel like someone strict enough to not eat honey is going to be thinking about their clothing choices though. I mean I was not a part of the subculture honestly but from an outside perspective that is what it felt like to me.
fruitarian
It’s interesting to me that they went with that name, since there’s already a name for eating fruit (frugivory)
But they kill elephants for ivory!
Frugivore implies a biological cause for the diet primarily consisting of fruit. Humans are biological omnivores regardless of if we choose to limit our diet of other reasons. They don’t use frugivore for the same reason that vegetarians don’t use herbivore.
I never herd of frugivore. My guess is you have vegetarian so its using the same thing.
Maybe but honey is far more humane than eggs.
Depend on the eggs. Farm ? Yes, most of them are unethical. Home chicken ? Not unethical, if there are no roosters.
What makes it unethical if there’s a rooster?
It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can’t stop a hen from laying eggs.
But is this a wild hen roaming free, or imprisoned?
What’s unethical about roosters?
It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can’t stop a hen from laying eggs.
You would have to be a life-begins-at-conception, anti-abortion kind of person, as well, for that.
It’s not an impossible or unnatural combination, intellectually, but demographically speaking, being radical in two directions at once is rare.
A vegetarian would be fine with a backyard coop. Vegans might say that your chickens are kind of like slaves - they make stuff for you, and can’t leave - and that’s bad.
You’re right on that, I can’t deny it. But then again, I had some vegans friends that had hens that were saved from the slaghterhouse. They had no barriers at all and their hens roamed free. Yes, a hen is a product of human selection, and on that aspect the line between ethical and practical is really fine and more suitable to philosophical debates, but since the hens were saved, they were better off their fate and in that regard, harvesting eggs was not an act of torture per se. But I’m not a vegan and can’t speak for them, just give an insight on a non-dicheotomic point of view.
Yes, a hen is a product of human selection
Actually, layers are pretty close to natural red junglefowl, as far as I can tell. It’s not like turkeys or cows, where they can’t really exist in the wild. Although, the wild sucks too…
I’m in the picture FWIW, as a vegetarian who’s cared for backyard hens. They seemed fine and happy, if a little bored in the winter, and were pretty great and easy-to-care-for pets. If there was any money in fixing the gender ratio problem, that bit about what happens to the male chicks would probably be solved, as well.
Turkeys do live in the wild
That’s an interesting aspect that I hadn’t considered. It brings the question of “does life begin at fertilization” into this.
Most reject honey. There are those who don’t and there are vegans who want to strictly deny that label to those who don’t.
Eggs? That’s pretty universally rejected.
I know a vegan who has ex-battery hens as pets. She’s against taking eggs away from them because it may cause distress, but often they’ll lay an egg wherever they happen to be, and walk away. Those ones are fair game because the chickens have abandoned them, and they need to be collected before they rot in any case.
That’s stupid because chickens don’t give a shit about their eggs. It’s a good idea to feed them egg shells to give them back some nutrients but you have to smash the shells up because if they recognise the eggs as food they will enthusiastically eat their own freshly laid ones.
Also, there’s a distinct difference between normal and brooding behavior. A broody hen gives a shit about her eggs (well, not specifically her eggs just the concept of sitting on and hatching eggs) but if they aren’t fertilized it rapidly becomes a problem. And they’ll lay another in a day or two regardless.
I find this one interesting. I knew a farmer who only had hens and so all of the eggs were unfertilized.
Of course, its always possible that there’s some sort of immaculate conception and a hen will lay a fertilized egg, but I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.
Parthenogenesis is rare, but it can happen in chickens
Some do, some don’t.
They’re against domestic animals as a concept, so you’d think. The basic idea is that animals are independent beings, and benefiting from them, with the massive power imbalance in play, is wrong.
Vegetarians are just against slaughter as a practice. And then you might land in between, if you don’t like the way battery hens are treated, for example.
They’re against domestic animals as a concept, so you’d think.
Except the great many vegans who keep pets, as if that was somehow different.
I’ve wondered about the pet thing too and I am vegan.
I’ve brought it up a few times with people and most of the replies were that the pets they had were rescues or strays, so looking after them was better than not, which I kinda get. Vegans who own and ride horses are weird as fuck though and I do not understand their moral stance at all.
Personally, even though I really like playing with cats, I am deeply uncomfortable with owning a being for my entertainment,and said being relying on me for its survival. So I am not having pets.
I don’t share your principles but I have to respect them, it’s nice to see a consistent position instead of carving out self-serving allowances.
I am what I call an “involuntary vegan”. I had to go full whole food plant based due to heart health issues. One of the effects that consuming any animal products has on me is significant inflammation. That includes honey. It is bee puke afterall.
That said, I maintain bee friendly gardens wherever I can because bees rule. Honeybees are grea for the environmen and bee is good for most people, so I would never chastise anyone for having it.
