Vegans fight amongst themselves all the time, and plenty of them have different rules.
For example, veganism doesn’t extend just towards diet but animal products overall. A lot of people will only focus on the diet or certain animal products such as leather though.
Really wish people would just agree to do whatever they can, anything helps.
Yeah veganism isn’t a single set of beliefs, it’s a range of practices and the people who do those practices do so for a rather wide variety of sometimes-overlapping reasons. I’ve never had a more heated debate about veganism than one with a fellow vegan.
IMO, leather really isn’t a big deal. It’s a by-product of the meat industry. Nobody is raising and butchering cows specifically for the leather. If nobody used the leather, then the skins would just be thrown away … or maybe ground up and used in dog food or something.
Fur on the other hand…
I mean, to be fair there aren’t many if any first world countries that eat fox, bear, or really anything with fur. I understand some people shoot bears and such, but in talking about actual farms.
Yeah my bad, I meant the fur industry is almost entirely barbaric for the purpose of fur, as opposed to leather being a byproduct.
Though I have found a shop that allegedly has ethically sourced fur that they buy from Alaskan natives that hunt for food, but I don’t think I have the means to confirm that.
I agree, as well with things like sauces from shellfish shells that would otherwise be tossed.
However, I recently heard the reasoning (of a buddhist who tries to avoid animal products, i.e. would not actively seek out a non vegan option, while accepting non vegan food if offered) - would the product in question still exist if the animal was seized to be killed? Even if it was for a different purpose and leather, seafish shells, gelatin etc were just byproducts, they would not exist if the animal it is derived from wasn’t killed for whatever reason.
I totally agree that it would be a shame to only use a part of an animal and let the other go to waste. Likewise, I get that “I’ll do X as long as everyone else does Y” is a way of reasoning that ends up counterproductive and keeps us locked in a status quo. So, if someone wants to stop using not just the primary products of the meat industry but also the secondary, I can understand.
it subsidises the meat industry.
It’s also responsible for a not-insignificant portion of the meat industry’s carbon footprint.
Valid, lowers the price of the resulting meat and thus increases consumption
Leather is horrible for the environment plus you’re still supporting animal AG
So, basically like religion? Just follow the parts you want to and everything is good?
They work for each other, Morty!
That sounds like slavery with… extra… steps
I told them it means peace among world’s.
Vegans are unwilling to come to terms with the fact that they aren’t special. Taking honey is fine. Bees aren’t going anywhere any time soon. You know what? Taking honey had no downside for society. There is sooo much other stuff to worry about. Have you heard about our Lord’s, and Savior: Corpse Bees! An obscene amount in cemeteries, and grave yards. Can’t wait for some for you to get offended. Yes, the journey of most animals/insects is tragic. I like having the ability to travel cost to coast in hours on a full stomach. Until my belly aches.
Common sense goes a long way. Radicalism is always stupid.
Just eat meat once a week or month. Eat whatever in moderation.
Moderation is key.
The important thing is that you appreciat it.
Who defines “common sense” and “moderation”? Meat eaters?
If vegans were majority, then you would be, too, called a radical for saying “we should build a slaughterhouse to give people PTSD”
I am not even vegan, but we can’t trust meat eating majority to write the rules on what’s acceptable amount of meat eating. This is just biased and unfair.
Radicalism is always stupid. Moderation is key.
How often do you eat babies?
Personally, I’m radically against eating babies.
I only eat them as eggs.
I’m a glutton for fish eggs.
Eat them up yum!
I have got 3 maybe-babies lying in my fridge rn.
I had no idea there was a market for eating human eggs. Seems like an extremely low Calorie:Cost ratio, but capitalism gonna capitalism I guess.
Don’t know about a market, just snorkeling for clams and find a pearl sometimes.
Can’t confirm nor deny the presence of a single cell in a sea of red.
Does it count if you spit them out?
Either way, those aren’t “babies.”
Well they meet at least 1 or 2 common usage definitions.
A very young child; an infant.
An unborn child; a fetus.
The youngest member of a family or group.
A very young animal.
An adult or young person who behaves in an infantile way.
A lover or sweetheart.
Sweetheart; dear. Used as a term of endearment.
Everything in moderation, including moderation. You’ve got to choose what you’re radical about, lest it choose you.
Equating human life to non human life is more psycho than meat-eaters tbh
A moderate genocide will do, local centrist claims
You’re doing a moderate genocide every time you change your diet or even the ph of your mouth. Those bacteria didn’t consent to die
Was that an argument?
This approach isnt helping the cause, you can’t conflate that responsibility to everyone. Guilt tripping is a Christian method
I will hold people responsible for their actions, that’s not a radical thing. And about “Guilt tripping”… Well participating in a mass murder of living, feeling beings in a world where you don’t have to do that in order to survive is very much a thing that people should feel guilt about, and I will not stop shaming them for doing so. You see, from my perspective, that would make me an accomplice.
I know it feels bad when you get reminded of the horrors of meat industry. You should feel bad, that’s a good thing. But your feelings have much less weight than the actual countless lives lost for nothing.
Just for curiositys sake: what do you think will help the cause then, if I should not even speak about it because I could hurt peoples feelings? It (participating in the mass murder of living, feeling beings) is an active choice that most people in the world can choose to not do. Like fuck man, if I should just smile and nod in agreement I dunno…
Again, I do realize that blaming feels bad. That is the point.
I never said you shouldn’t talk about it. I didn’t even say you personally shouldn’t talk the way you currently are. But do you understand that cultural change doesn’t happen just because you shout and scream at people who disagree with you? Even when you’re 100 percent right.
You CANNOT blame regular people as much as you do. People are uneducated, evolutionarily primed to be manipulated, and defensive. I personally do not feel bad when I am blamed for that, I know it is bad, I agree. I already know I should eat even less meat than I do now, and slowly but steadily i am doing it. But it wasnt the shame that put me on this, it was the empathy, it was the curiosity, it was the EXACT OPPOSITE of shame that brought me on the path.
Shame is for Christians. It brings Christian results. Us vs them. The radical vegan approach to communication enables the idea that veganism is ridiculous, not because it is wrong, but because it seems like its the only communication that gets through.
You feel righteous anger, rightly so, but that anger when aimed at regular people you are trying (supposedly) to convince,just makes veganism seem a tantrum instead of a mission. The way you speak seems to me like you’re feeding your ego, not like you are saving the world.
And what are you feeding it with? Other people’s shame. By definition, not a vegan source.
Pardon my joke, but I felt like biting back since you took my honest attempt at communicating as just another excuse to bark and release your anger.
Your fight is just, your energy is right. But “making people feel bad” isnt really a method. Just venting. I dont know the blueprint for a better way, but telling you this is my way of looking for help in searching one.
Hey, thanks for responding.
First of all, I admit that I do get emotional on the subject. And I do realize that when I lose the calmness, it really is counterproductive on the cause. Here again was a great example. I don’t think I was unreasonable or “screaming in anger” when I initially disagreed with with the original point that “radicalism is always stupid” (hey, isn’t that a radical thought to begin with :P )
But my second post was just pure barking, as you said, and I was venting at you. Sorry for that. :/
It’s difficult to be calm, when you get constantly made fun of, get challenged and so forth. And it seems like whenever I speak about the subject, it’s always a bad thing. I have opted to not talking about it IRL for a couple of years now, and it’s frustrating, and that frustration sometimes overflows and I’ll get all emotional like here. It feels like I CANNOT say to an individual that “meat eating bad” without then being accused of being an asshole. That feels also wrong, and I’m at a loss as to what to do here.
You had some really good points, and I’ll retreat to contemplate them. Thanks for being reasonable when I wasn’t.
Hey, dont mention it, I totally get it. This society primes us for the reaction you had, we are constantly ready for a fight, and it is not your fault, it is our conditioning. Finding the way to dispel that curse is the way we get to people’s hearts.
Just a side not, I absolutely do not think that radicalism is always stupid, or stupid at all. “Deep roots are not reached by frost”, we need conviction and strong ideals, and to further clarify, I do think that veganism is the end goal for a truly advanced society and a healed world and people.
The point is just that to communicate radical ideas we do not need to be in constant anger. Most people respond well when you engage with them and their differences with curiosity, asking questions instead of directly challenging their ways right away. Our communication must be like water, seeking the path of least resistance, yes, but always ending at the sea or a lake. People already know (in some level) that their lifestyles are wrong. That isnt the Epiphany. The epiphany is helping them build up the idea that it is not to late, that they are not irredeemable, and that change is possible.
People do not want to feel irredeemable and as you said, when talking to Normies abt veganism ppl get defensive. It is largely the fault of propaganda, but more critically, it’s the shame angle that always, always fails. Responsibility is a different concept, and it melds better in the mind
The only way to change is with grace, compassion, and when needed, severity and discipline, distributed sparingly.
You have to imagine current human society as a collective made of children, fragile, sensitive, impulsive. They will mirror what they perceive, despite your intentions
I hope this helps, and thank you for reading my comment and being graceful
Thank you for sharing my views I only murder once every 7 weeks but my friends say it’s not good.
“Murder” is a very strong (and wrong) word for killing animals.
Oh bloody vegans coopting murder. I wanted to make a joke that’d you’d murder (people) in moderation.
be careful. the blood mouths are not ready for your humour.
this is what I like about vegans, they call me the most metal “insults”.
Getting all meat eaters to cut intake by 50% is easier than getting 50% of meat eaters to turn vegan.
Arguably carnivores have already cut meat intake, at least red meat, to greater impact than vegetarians.
While I’m going by anecdote rather than data
- vegetarians/vegans are a small minority so limited impact
- many people I know have cut back on at least red meat for health or environmental reasons.
Basically one fewer burger a week by 100 people has more impact than one person not eating meat at all
Even a switch from beef burger to chicken burger would have a substantial CO2 impact.
I think that’s not true. The easiest would be to ban animal farming, which would cut consumption nearly entirely.
Top down approaches are almost never the answer.
Ah good to know, let’s ignore all laws then, abolish religion and live in Anarchy. Wait that’s actually also fine with me.
I don’t think fighting a civil war qualifies as an “easy way”.
The government has the police and the military, there’s no way a guy with a rifle is doing something against an F15.
Yes and and the police and military will absolutely just enforce this ban without question … they are quite famously full of vegans.
I actually retract my statement. We’d only be fighting vegans, so we probably could knock out the civil war in a couple of days.
You think somebody would actually ban meat farming in the first place? I like how naive you are.
Probably not in a democracy, no.
I like how naive you are
It’s called a hypothetical, dipshit. Also quite rich from someone that seems to fundamentally misunderstand what a civil war is.
How is that easy?
“The easiest way is just me fiating this impossible idealistic nonsense in my own head”
You do you, man.
Well easier than cutting everybody’s consumption by 50% lmao
You’d first need to capture the current consumption for everyone, so yes, a ban would be way easier to implement
I agree an authoritarian ban would not be well received, and likely circumvented.
The 50% cut in consumption could be achieved voluntarily through subsidy, tariffs, education and health arguments.
Um you know that historically lack of food lead to cannibalism right? … It’s still a thing today, everyday.
You’re aware that there wou’d be more food, not less if we banned meat?
Gimme some of of that listeria, e. coli, salmonella, the parasite thing I had from a salad, etc. There wouldn’t be more food. Diversity is what keeps us alive. You do you, but I don’t think you understand how the world works. And please tell me how rice and beans will keep me alive in -40 degree weather. I guess I should just chug olive oil.
And yeah, sure it was nice when I had my own garden in Vermont. But now I get to play Russian roulette, except 5/6 chambers have rounds. I hate to shit on you since you have good intentions but it’s a naive take.
You know that the e coli on the salad comes from the excrements of farmed animals that get spread on the fields because otherwise it would be expensive to get it all handled?
Also I live in the Midwest and I am fine as vegan, even during winter walking outside. And like most people I have a house and a heating anyways.
I’d actually argue that you’d have more problems cutting out the carbs during winter, than cutting out the meat.
heh there’s the human excrement as well. I mean you do you, if you’re willing to take up that lifestyle than good. I don’t think when it comes to food most of the time. It’s kind of like my buddies that like to hunt deer, they’re all about trophy shots and whatever. Tracking the blood trail. And get pissed when I shot to the back of the head (shutting down all function); no suffering no running away in fear.
Brb, giving up my entire means of livelihood in an environment where I can’t even sell off my assets because they are also banned, all in this job market. Sounds like a good way to quickly block major roadways with tractors, fuck cars should be happy.
I am sure farmers could get free money to compensate, just like they did when trump fucked the soy trade with China. I didn’t hear about tractors on streets when that happened.
An incremental step would be making it more expensive through taxes or regulation. A possible improvement rather than sitting on an impossible ideal
I’d take that, but is that going to happen? Doesn’t seem more realistic than a total ban.
Thats not how world markets work though. 20% of meat eaters turning vegan would compound vegan movement more than 50% less meat consumed. The former grows vegan market explicitly while the latter just maybe shrinks the meat market only. You have consider availability, research and development, service, pop culture and the fact that we massive overconsume food so less consumption does not directly shrink the market in linear fashion.
And that’s a more reasonable way of thinking. I tried being a vegetarian and a vegan. Not compatible with my body and factoring in supplements, too expensive.
The whole debacle can be easily avoided by just eating the bees directly.
The whole debacle can be easily avoided by just eating the
beesflowers directly.You could probably get out of just about any argument this way.
Pssshhhh!!! Maybe you set your sights that low. You can eat your bee’s, I’ll only be eating A’s!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) …just tell me where the line starts…
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Sheep wouldn’t need shearing if we wouldn’t breed them to grow more wool, and if we allowed them to live where they are native, instead of “farming” them e.g. in Australia.
Also I am pretty sure that those sheep get slaughtered after a couple of years, instead of being allowed a happy life.
But I don’t think your cognitive dissonance is ready for that convo.
They could just fly north for the summer if they weren’t so lazy.
I chose a whole food plant based diet for health reasons, and honey just isn’t good for my body.
I chose to plant pollinator friendly plants in my yard because I think bees are cool and I love watching them do their thing.
Here is an article about why honey is not vegan. I’ll quote some notable excerpts.
The latest research in the field suggests bees are indeed sentient, and experience a host of sophisticated emotions. In his 2023 book What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann states that bees are “self-aware,” highly intelligent, and possess a “primitive form of consciousness.”
The Guardian reported on the book earlier this year, saying bees’ apparent ability to recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and feel optimistic, playful, and scared raises “complex ethical questions” about our treatment of them.
…
…by using a piece of mesh that worker bees can pass through but [the queen bee] cannot, or clipping her wings. The structure contains horizontal sheets, where, because the queen bee is trapped nearby, the bees build their honeycomb.
To harvest the honey, beekeepers either smoke the bees to subdue them, or trap them with a clearing board over one or two days. Others kill the colony altogether.
Oftentimes, beekeepers replace the honey they remove with a sugar water substitute. This practice prompts honeybees to overwork themselves to replace the missing honey. Meanwhile, the sugar water lacks the nutrients, fats, and vitamins that bees need to be healthy.
Think of how labor rights, and even basic human rights are a constant struggle. Now imagine that you are a species that is regarded in such a way that everything you produce and everything you are is thoroughly classified a commodity. You do not have the capacity to speak against it. You are smart enough to suffer, but lack the degree of intelligence necessary to even begin to comprehend the enormity of what you are entrapped in. One species of animal has decided that all other species of animal are its products. None of the others can raise a voice against that. If human rights abuses abounds, how often do you think any kind of animal agricultural system is going to operate in a way that’s anything other than systematic abuse and suffering?
Is that really the kind of world you want to continue to create?
It’s easy to dismiss bugs, easy to think they don’t matter. But I think of them as a litmus test. We are the real equivalent to bugs, of what we think a God is like to us. Are we the kind of deitys that we would want to exist?
If you actually care about a mutualistic relationship between pollinators and humans, grow a garden.
Thank you very much for that insight! I wasn’t aware of those practices used in bee keeping and their negative effects on the colony, nor of their emotional range.
You are smart enough to suffer
Not disagreeing with your overall point, just want to say that being smart is not a prerequisite for suffering. I don’t even think it’s possible to have a “primitive consciousness”, or a “sophisticated consciousness”. A being is either conscious or, well, it simply is not - it doesn’t exist. As an individual, you either exist independently or… you just don’t - not even blackness.
Let’s say that bees are conscious. Each individual bee has a unique internal existence just as you or I have. If you are a human (actually I’m assuming you are) then your experience certainly differs from the experience that a bee has, but that consciousness, that isolated spark of being, that is the same. If you were to shut your eyes and still your mind, and we imagine a bee could also do that (just give them imaginary eyelids for this thought experiment) then both of you would be experiencing the same thing, for that brief time you are both in that state of wordless shapeless existence.
You could perhaps wake up from this meditative state as the bee, coming to with a shake of your head, and fly off away from the flower you’d been resting on. “Woah what a weird dream” you’d think in bee language, then a new enticing fragrance from another flower fills your olfactory glands and you are drawn irresistibly towards it, quickly forgetting that funny dream of being a great big thing stuck heavily to the ground with two arms and legs hanging off your body.
I’ve been on the fence about honey for a while but tbh I’ve heard enough. I’ll just switch to maple spread or jam.
There is evidence that plants have some form of sentience. They react to their environment and stimuli, and communicate with each other. We honestly shouldn’t be eating anything that was previously alive.
Not saying it’s the case here, but I’ve never heard this argument raised in good faith, like by someone who is interested in reducing the amount of suffering caused by humans to non-humans. It’s always brought up as some thought-terminating catch-22 device to just keep doing wtf ever you want to do anyway.
I am genuinely curious what you think we should do with this information, though. Like how has it influenced your own actions?
I think my takeaway is that morality arguments for veganism based on subjective perceptions of sentience or suffering are not persuasive.
Many farms provide far better lives for animals than they would have in the wild. Many livestock species are far more successful and widespread because we eat them. Furthermore, if everyone was to become vegan, some livestock species would go extinct without human care. Do those who insist everyone should be vegan because animals are sentient and suffer think that we should just genocide the livestock?
Morality arguments totally depend on the perspective. I happen to agree with vegans on many points, but if your prime argument is moral, then yes I expect everyone to do wtf they want. Everyone’s morals are different.
The ethical argument was totally persuasive to me. I mean firstly it was a matter of challenge, but I also like opting out of cruel industries as much as I can handle.
I’m also not trying to universalise anything, but all your points so far are covered here. The use of inflammatory language to suggest I want you genocide animals is a new one I will admit.
You also didn’t answer my question.
putting a phrase on a vegan bingo card is insufficient to rebutt the argument.
If you click them they expand to the rebuttal.
Also why do I need to rebut my eating decisions? I just eat what I eat. Why don’t you rebut your own.
I saw your comments further down but I want to reply here because some people do sometimes make this argument in seriousness:
Like others said, if I could get all my nutritional needs met synthetically and/or photosynthetically (and still be healthy) I would be happy to. But as it stands, going entirely plant-based is the best and most practical way to minimize harm to all life - including plants. To consume animals you need to raise them, and it takes significantly more plants to raise an animal for food than it takes to eat the plants directly.
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Unless you are recommending synthesizing food from base chemicals, there isn’t another option. All life, excepting that which can photosynthesize, consumes other life for energy and materials.
The best we can do is mitigate suffering and environmental harm - factory farming is abhorrent - but until we have the Star Trek replicator pumping out TV dinners from the ether, we have to eat something.
Damn I thought my sarcasm was obvious.
We are animals and part of the food web, there is nothing innately immoral about eating any other part of the food web to sustain ourselves.
There’s certainly stupid ways to sustain ourselves, such as practices that unsustainably harm the environment like factory farming, or practices that would spur other life forms to harm us, like eating other humans.
But my main point is that “sentience” is a really vague term that can’t be objectively measured.
Awesome. Also worth pointing out, eating honey by choice is kind of weird too if you think about it. It’s literally nectar that’s been regurgitated by bugs, I don’t get why so many would want that in the first place.
Because it tastes good? Anything we eat can sound gross.
Doesn’t change that it’s weird. And it doesn’t sound gross, it is gross.
There are plenty of other sweetener options out there, with whole blended dates or date sugar in particular being a much healthier option.
I’m failing to see what’s weird or gross about it, honestly. I don’t think bugs or their activities are inherently weird or gross. I don’t personally use honey in anything other than honey roasted peanut butter.
There are two layers to the weirdness. The first layer is that, when you remove your conflict of interest, it becomes clear right on the face of it how bizarre and macabre it is to consume the excretions or mutilated body parts of other sentient beings. The second layer builds on that, with it being a secretion that was previously consumed by a multitude of other sentient beings, partially digested inside their internal organs, and then regurgitated before being stolen from them.
To be clear, I eat a mostly plant-based diet due to environmental considerations, not because I find it bizarre to consume animal products. Do you somehow find it bizarre or gross that worms and other microorganisms breakdown dead matter from sentient creatures to produce the soil used to grow crops? Or the involvement of insects in the production of said crops? Do you find it gross for a baby to consume breast milk?
Don’t let PETA form your opinions. Plenty of good honey out there. Look for actual local beekeepers (not people selling ‘locally bottled honey’ because many of those are just buying mass market honey and rebottling locally). I wish that wasn’t a thing but it is.
Better to just eat cows. A cow is 1 suffering to feed many humans. A jar of honey is thousands of sufferings for one family to have sweeter tea.
Checkmate atheists
Ah yes the classic trolley problem: 1,000 bees getting bullied or a dead cow. Very useful.
Or just don’t eat either.
Just don’t eat.
Just don’t
"edit: the source author is quoting PETA. This whole article has zero merit, even if it does contain some real data.
Going to challenge the legitimacy of your source here.
Who is out there killing the bees to harvest the honey? That’s not how it works and makes no sense.
Also, ‘replace the honey with sugar water’? Yes, sometimes bees get additional sugars, but they aren’t “replacing honey”.
This reads like someone who got some information and then extrapolated their own details to fit their preconceived agenda.
For the record, I’m a fan of the bees. Vegetarian since the 90s. And I’m 100% against spreading false or misleading information.
ITT: Honey-eating vegans getting ethically roasted by non-vegans.
ITT: people who don’t understand what veganism is lecturing what vegans should do.
ITT: People pretending to be moral because of their eating preferences.
Ah, the spirited and rational debate of intelligent human beings
When the bees can engage in the debate, I’ll hear them out.
What’s the buzz about, I say.
Bzzzzzzz, they say back, then they dance.
Bees have deeply philosophical waggle sessions.
No matter how hard you try, in this industrialized world, some animal has been harmed by your activities. So, is true veganism even possible, in a practical rather than philosophical sense?
Yes, it is. “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.”
Yes, it makes a huge difference. Animal agriculture is one of the most environmentally destructive things we are doing.
if being vegan made a difference this might be true.
If that were true, there wouldn’t be an industry for plant-based foods. Vegan activists also drive real change, like exposing abuses, getting facilities shut down, and even driving legislation for better protections for animals.
It only seems like it makes no difference now because something like 95-98% of people globally still consume animal products, but throughout the course of veganism as a social movement, the percentage of vegans has grown.
The overton window just hasn’t moved enough yet. But it’s going to have to, because industrial animal agriculture is sheer madness and utterly unsustainable.
Its almost as if its just another thing for assholes to feel elitist about.
the vegans i know are great
I’m not a vegan, but the current state of beekeeping is pretty shit. Taking the honey and replacing it with sugar water on top of the stresses of monoculture and killing varied flora with herbicides creating food deserts and using market conditions to race to the bottom on pollination contracts just results in a whole bunch of dead hives. Like you can both support sustainably practiced beekeeping and find the production of industrial honey to be a horror show.
Regardless of whether you are vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, or other, if you aren’t horrified by industrial food production, you should be. This goes for industrial fish trawling & fish farming, industrial chicken cow and pig processing, honey I guess, even factory plant growing e.g. alfalfa almonds and corn (ruins the land and wastes water)
It’s so pervasive it’s hard to avoid everything.
With that and the amount of recalled food in the US, the only way to way ethically right now is to just die.
in the US, the only way to way ethically right now is to just die.
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Like anywhere else is much different. You think only the US has industrial farming?
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And there is an ethical way to eat: dumpster diving. Everything in that dumpster is already waste, and taking it does not increase demand – no store is going to order more stock because the dumpster is running low. None of your money is going to support factory farming of any kind. Any food you find in the dumpster is 100% ethical to consume.
Dumpster diving still relies on industrial agriculture happening and doesn’t scale to more than a small portion of the population, some of whom have no other choice but to do so.
True, but at a personal level, you can get perfectly ethical food that way, even meat.
I don’t think that paying for it or not paying for it changes anything about the ethics of how it came to be. Dumpster diving concerns capitalism, not veganism.
This doesn’t hold up. For you, personally, sure. But EVERYONE couldn’t convert to dumpster diving. That’s just shitty supermarkets.
I had this revelation about buying local. If EVERYONE “bought local”, local farms begin looking like factory farms in order to produce enough for the local population. I’m certain there would be additional inefficiencies (moral atrocities) as a result. It’s more ethical for me, personally, to get my produce locally, but I can’t in good faith criticize anyone else that buys groceries on Amazon.
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.
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Isn’t a lot of the industry produced “honey” actually honey flavoured corn syrup anyways?
This is the correct response. Small-scale hobbyist beekeeping is awesome for humans, bees, and nature, and we absolutely positively need it. Industrial beekeeping, in which bees are carted across the continent to pollinate the fields of the highest paying industrial farmer may still be tolerable to the bee but far less so for nature. Many people don’t appreciate the nuance. Apis mellifera almost certainly won’t go extinct as long as beekeepers are around. But that’s not what we talk about when we say the bees are dying…
Apis mellifera isn’t native to the Americas and neither are a lot of the plants they pollinate. They crowd out the native bees and destroy their habitat. Small-scale beekeepers working in populated spaces aren’t the problem though. And they rescue swarms that would otherwise be exterminated. Plus they’re more likely than the average person to know about their local natives and support them, by making carpenter bee homes or whatever.
Industrial honey is just another facet of my distain and complaint of industrial agriculture as a whole. Almost every vegan argument I’ve ever encountered has been in reaction to the horrors of the industrial process
Which is why when someone asks me “Well what about indigenous tribes? Almost all of them hunt, are you doing to tell them they’re morally wrong?”. No, no I am not, because they are not morally wrong. They’re hunting for survival, in relative harmony and reciprocity with the ecology that completely enveloped every aspect of their social development.
This is what will lead me to the full change in diet. I’m at the mitigation and small changes phase. I really don’t have ethics issues with animals as food (farming & hunting meat isn’t bad when suffering is inherent to existence, and to deny this is to deny given order), but we exist in a capitalist hellscape that has zero shame or remorse for exploiting making perverse anything once natural for profit.
Hard agree. I’m no vegan as a fully understand that a) humans are omnivorous mammals who thrive on a mixed diet and b) eons of selective breeding has created creatures that are designed for food and goods and wouldn’t survive in the wild in their current state without either much suffering or outright death of the species. The monocultures created for large industrialized farms are a blight for the environment as well.
I champion local small scale farms with permaculture and local plants as much as possible while reducing meat consumption in general (at least here, meat is usually at every meal so reducing it to one a day if not every few days would be a huge shift). I also recognize not everyone wants nor cares about going vegetarian or vegan but would accept the reductions in meat use and focusing on buying local if it was made more readily available
farming & hunting meat isn’t bad when suffering is inherent to existence, and to deny this is to deny given order
But it isn’t necessary (at least in most cases), and we have the intelligence to make better decisions simply because they are better.
Unless I misunderstood your comment, “when suffering is inherent to existence” could be used for things like burglaries as well.
I wouldn’t say “need”. European honey bees are a foreign invasive species. They displace the native pollinators. IMO hobbyists are worse because they are damaging the native bees without reason unlike industrial farmers that need the bees to produce the food we all eat.
And the reality is the vast majority of hobbiest bee keepers do it as a tax dodge. In most states, if you put a hive on your yard, you get to classify your house as a farm and pay virtually no property taxes.
European honey bees are a foreign invasive species
But… I am European?
Europeans used to be pretty invasive, too!
Sadly they still are in some areas of the world.
Particularly the middle east.
I thought Vegans cpuld consume animal things if its done willingly.
Like if a cow walked up and said “Please gopd vegan, butxher me, it is my purpose,” they could totally make.and eat burgers from said cow.
That said, bee vomit feels like it sort of fall into that category.
The bees don’t want you to take their honey. They don’t make excess, they make what they need and we steal it and replace it with stuff that’s “just as good” according to us. Bees die in the process of harvesting honey.
These are reasons that honey isn’t vegan.
A quick web search tells me that bees don’t die when harvesting honey, unless you take more than they need to survive, too often and are careless when harvesting?
“google ai overview told me exactly what I wanted to hear so I’ve decided to look no further”
I’m open to counter arguments
“i’ve invented a reason to dismiss what you posted and decided that’s a good enough reason not to think about it any further”
Also a good restatement of the comment I’m replying to, yes.
I’m don’t know much about beekeeping, but I could easily see large scale industry doing exactly that. I would have a hard time trusting them to be careful of the bees’ livelihood. It seems like if the farmers are actually careful the bees should be ok though
Me neither lol. But if there’s ethical consumption there’s no need to abstain from all right?
Yeah all of those things sound pretty likely in most honey farming settings.
I know some people who keep bees and absolutely none of that is true if you take care of them properly. Bees will try to fill the space they are in with honeycomb even if it is well in excess of what they need because they are anticipating that the colony will grow, but if you harvest regularly and consistently the colony will not grow larger than can be supported by the honeycomb that is left behind.
Have you ever kept bees? They make a ton of honey in excess of what they need.
And my cat always keeps an excess of food in her bowl. If I fed her only the amount she actually ate, she would just eat less to still have excess. These are evolved survival behaviors.
Right because cats and bees are the same thing. Are you a bot that gets paid to make vegans look stupid?
Compared to all life on Earth cats and bees are almost the exact same thing. I’m not a bot, I’m a human with ideas that are apparently so challenging to your own that you immediately resort to ad hominem.
Dang dude, turn on autocorrect
I would but then the phone is all “I replaced entire words 3 sentnces ago and didn’t tell you! Ha ha ha.”
So fuck it, I will just take my typos.
If there is a way to turn on autocorrect from like, 2019, before it was assy, I would take that.
Why did autocorrect (and swipe predictions) seem to go to shit around 2019? I remember thinking it had gotten really good… and then it got gradually worse. It’s not AI, I think it started going downhill before that, but why? I can’t see a profit incentive and it didn’t make digital communication sufficiently more difficult for conspiracy-sounding reasons.
I feel like it’s just a case of “we must constantly iterate on everything.” So they started adding more and more “predictive” nonsense because where else do you go with autocorrect aside from the branch that is LLMs?
But then the predictive text was basically super duper light LLM. “Autofill the next most likely word or phrase” without realizing the nuance every person has to their phrase patterns.
autpxprrext
I avoid honey because european honey bees are an invasive species, devastating populations of native bees and threatening their existence, endangering plants who have specific pollinator relationships, where that pollinator is now threatened. They are helping facilitate ecological collapse. We are not the same.
