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.
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
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.
We do need bees, but that doesn’t mean the honey industry is sustainable.
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/how-honey-industry-affects-environment
I’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.
This is a false equivalence; the answer is “neither”.
Veganism doesn’t seek to end all animal suffering, but not to exploit animals for humans’ sake. We don’t need animal products to survive, so we shouldn’t add to whatever misery already exists naturally.
In the case of livestock, we should just stop breeding them. No vegan is arguing for dumping all cattle in the savannah to be hunted by lions.
False equivalence is the anthropomorphism, animal farming misinformation agendas and generalisations being thrown like it has meaning…
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 mean bees are producing way more than they are using. We just shouldn’t take it all.
It’s a buffer for when the climate is different then normal so they will need more food…
That’s not true, bees really do produce more than one colony needs. The thing is that when they have no more room to store honey some bees will take a large portion of it and leave to start a new colony which is bad for you as a beekeeper and other insect species. The way I see it you definitely should take the honey. Just leave some for the winter.
Bees weren’t made by humans. They can survive on their own. They work until they die out of exhaustion due to the hard work, they work because of need, not of joy. Whenever they split up when there is enough honey, they spread around. That’s how bees work. By limiting them to one colony by partially starving them, we endanger the species. It’s already going bad for bees, due to urbanization, perticides, climate change but also colony starvation for honey production.
No one is talking about starving the bees. Someone already pointed out that bees are territorial and not great for the local insect population. You can let bees spread but there are better ways to do it. Bees do work because they think they need to, the thing is you can help them and have leftover honey that they don’t need to use. You don’t even need to limit the to one colony.
But to be fair our bees are nowhere near any urban areas nor pesticides so it might be different elsewhere.
So far, trying to control nature isn’t going that well. The more we do, the more we fuck it up. Maybe we should give nature some time to recover from our destruction without intervention.
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?”.
This question is still valid from a marketing standpoint. If you’re selling honey, are you able to advertise it as vegan?
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.
Don’t we help bee populations by building homes for them?
Also, and I did wonder about this, what do homestock want out of life more than food, getting laid, and taking a walk or run? I think even the smarter ones like octopuses just want to get food and live until making kids.
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.
The “what about plants” argument is such a thoroughly debunked joke argument that it’s amazing anyone would continue to make it. Eating animals and their secretions requires harming significantly more plants than eating the plants directly because animals need to be fed too, and animals as food is by far the least efficient and most environmentally destructive way to have a food system.
It’s not an argument. It was a consideration that should be weighed if you’re being consistent. Your response is not accurate though. You’re referring to most farmed animals. Bees do not require this and is what the post is about. There are many animal products that do less harm than plant products. Farming plants requires large areas of land to be cleared for farming and replaced with what is likely not a native species. This can’t be good for native animals. If you’re comparing the harm done by almonds and honey, honey is almost certainly better for harm reduction, yet it’s an animal product, not a plant product.
many animal products that do less harm than plant products
Can you cite some other than honey? Animal products require animals which mostly require, well, plants. Plants that cause harm in the exact way you described. And more of them than just humans eating the crops directly. More than 60% of animal biomass on the planet right now is livestock, so bees seem practically irrelevant to the issue.
I would say probably free-range goat milk is pretty harm free, where the goats just eat grasses that are already there natively. Probably some other milks too. The quantities that this exists in is much lower than factory cows milk, or even milk alternatives, but they can exist. I can’t think of any other animal food item that doesn’t require butchering, which I’m sure you wouldn’t consider regardless of how well the animal is treated before death, but I’d consider comparing it to other sources of food.
Bees are relevant because it’s what the thread is about. The conversation was about bees and honey. Sure, most other farmed livestock isn’t good. We aren’t in disagreement about that so I don’t know why you keep referencing that. My point was harm should be the consideration of vegans, not where it comes from. Who cares if it’s from an animal, plant, or fungus if the net harm is worse than other sources?
Bee point taken, I should have said something like ‘a drop in the bucket’, the point I intended to convey is that they don’t really advance the argument that there are many such animal products. Nor does saying oh and some goat milk. That statement of yours is what I specifically disagreed with.
The point about quantities, that’s my point too. Farmers in the Patagonia region may be able to sustainably eat meat, drink ethical milk, whatever. Not people in the US, not in most of Europe. Yeah, so I actually just bought a huge container of local honey from our local grocer, maybe two hours ago. I don’t cut honey out. But that’s not grounds for me to claim there are a bunch of other animal products that are also better than eating some nuts and beans for protein. Honey seems more like the exception that proves the rule.
Honey, the food of the gods by ancient opinion, is suddenly weird?
I will never like vegans.
Context matters. In the ancient world starvation was a constant threat, so a source of concentrated calories like honey could in some cases be a matter of life and death despite the dangers of getting that honey. In industrial society we have in many cases the opposite problem - the majority of the top causes of death are lifestyle diseases which ultimately come down to overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles. Too much dietary fat, especially too much saturated fats, too much sugar, too much refined foods, too much concentrated calories, too much easily consumed liquid calories.
By contrast vegans by far have the easiest time maintaining balanced bodyweight levels.
If you all could learn to let go of your prejudice you might learn to recognize that doing the right things for animal’s rights is also some of the best things you could do for yourself. These “vegans” you hate so much are just trying to get you to stop self-harming.
I think they’re making a comment on the way vegans communicate their worldview to others, not necessarily a fixation on honey.
There’s also an argument that diet should contribute to thriving, not simply existing in the most convenient way to balance bodyweight.
If your goal is to build strength and muscle, an all vegan diet will be less effective than supplementing a similar diet with animal proteins. Every few years, a top contact sport athlete will give a full vegan diet a go, but they invariably fall back on animal protein because they can’t build the mass required.
Ultimately, it’s all individual choice and body chemistry.
I’ve come to understand that the healthiest people aren’t vegans.
It’s just that despite often lacking certain nutrients, vegan diets tend to enforce being at least kind of healthy unless you go ridiculously overboard on fruit or vegan junkfood.
But eating beef/honey/eggs being “self-harming”? Fuck you very much.
I am completely disinterested in your arguments, and will continue buying ridiculously good foods from abusive sources. Sources that I’d prefer to regulate in terms of animal rights, but every time that comes up, you people divert the conversation to “if you’re not gonna be vegan you’re evil either way so it doesn’t matter” and everyone tunes out.
excuse me I need to eat meat in front of vegans again.
fungi?
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…
Does mother Focker have nipples?
Let me get my milking gear. For the tiny udders.
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
Dude, language!
/s
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.
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.
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?
Sure, but remember that there’s sometimes a scientific term used incorrectly, but it’s so widespread it has non-scientific definition in dictionary. Although thinking that insects are not animals is indeed stupid.
I feel like bees are a bit of a grey area. We’re not eating them, we’re kind of like landlords that give them a nice place to stay and they pay rent in honey. I’m not vegan so I’m not quite sure what the rationale is for bee stuff.
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.
Beekeeping family here: who the fuck clips bee wings?
People who don’t understand bees and think that the queen is ruling the hive – if the queen can’t swarm then they’re going to dispose of her and raise a new one. All you’re doing is weakening the hive without actually preventing it from swarming. You might even kill it off.
You let them swarm, you let them get their rocks on, and you also have a nice property ready for them to settle back into.
I read that in Kerrigan’s voice.
Iunno, never personally seen it. Just heard about it online when I first started looking into beekeeping (which I ultimately did not take up).
Still interested in doing it (the keeping not the clipping), if you have any advice on getting started for someone with like 18 dollars between paydays. Lol
I’ll say many cities have a club that rents out supplies or even has club hives you can use to get started. Also, I don’t live in a huge city and I’ve seen used hives and frames for sale more than I thought I would, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for those as well.
Takes forever to find the flight feathers on the little guys and it’s very intricate work.
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.”
Idk…how much vomit?
Not just vomit but a snowball train of vomit.
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”.
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.
It’s an all well and good philosophy, but i think it’s just attempts to feel better about oneself. There’s no reason you can’t be satisfied with not eating meat and at least feel like you’re doing your part, but NOO the dogma must be pushed onto everyone else.
The truth is a lot of meat eaters simply don’t care about farm animal suffering, so arguments don’t even matter because if every single argument from a meat eater were to be undeniably refuted, many would still not be converts. So many of these vegans want to go the communist route and revolt. Does this seem like a healthy philosophy to you?
It would start making sense to you, if you’d see the analogy in racism et al (unless of course you are one, then it won’t). An animal-rights-activist-vegan sees it that way and hence has a hard time to “shut up” about it. Like you would when you’d enter some nazi-meeting. Can’t just sit there, doing nothing, and thus invoking the feeling you’re part of it.
It’s not vegans per se, it’s those that are just vegans as a direcr consequence, not those that follow a dietary decision.
Your analogy makes sense
That means a lot, coming from the grammar-police 😁
Muh communism
There was no tone of judgement in my response. I hope that’s not what you got from it. I said I find it fascinating the way they think. This is not limited to vegans but it is easier to get someone to talk about this than other beliefs.
I have no doubt that minimizing suffering is the higher goal. I meant that if their goal is to to use no food or product that involves using animals (within their personal definition) that they will find nothing in this world that is without impact from or to animals. That’s what makes it impossible.
True to that. Easier to talk with people about veganism than their religion :-)
I get your sense of logic, but it’s inherently flawed. So you’re saying, if there’s no way to 100% an ethic, it’s better to just totally skip it? Of course you can’t 100% live in this world without somehow touching an animals life by some degree. But it’s about what one CAN do. The more one knows about this world, the more one could avoid. Ignorance is bliss, the evil I don’t know is the evil I must not fight. But the moment I get knowledge of unjust X, I can do my best do avoid unjust X to the best of my abilities. Not even judgin in, us just being flawed humans. If I do 99% of everything I know right, and just fucked up the 1%. Am I still a bad person and suck at my ethics?
I was unaware that my message implied a 100% requirement. That part of the comment was meant to be about how I see them trying to define the line between what is vegan and what isn’t. I see now how this is being interpreted and it is my fault for being unclear.
Oh okay. Sure there are probably many vegans that don’t even REALLY know their motivations and hence have problems making clear and thought out statements that doesn’t really help their well meant cause.
Reacting to stimuli like the colour of light is irrelevant. My phone camera would fall into the same category, then. A light switch reacts to getting pressed and turns on a light, it’s reacting to a stimulus.
What matters is sentience, which plants cannot possess, since they don’t have a central nervous system. And even if they did, a diet that includes meat takes more plants, since those animals have to be fed plants in order to raise them.
They all make it up as they go along. It’s very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not
The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.
Regarding these two, is this any different from human rights? Where people draw the line regarding slave labour, child labour, which type of humans they care about (considering racism, homophobia, trans phobia, ableism etc). I’m sure lots of people have impossible goals regarding human rights, but working to get as close to those as possible is still sensible.
The response to light color does not stand on its own. That is merely one parallel from many. It is true plants do not have a nervous system like animals, but they do have similar responses to stimuli. Parallels can be drawn to sight, sound/touch and smell/taste.
Sentience is another topic that is defined subjectively. From context it is clear you make a central nervous system a foundational requirement. I could also apply this to technology, so I would need clarification from you to understand what it means to you. I do not hold to a personal definition for sentience because I have found neither a universal nor scientific understanding of the idea.
As for the last paragraph: yup.
Again, all of these reactions to stimuli can be explained as direct, chemical reactions, not signals that get sent to a central unit, are processed, being “felt”, and then being reacted to. There is no one thing or being in plants like the central nervous system of animals that is capable of feeling something.
Regarding the topic of sentience, I propose looking at it like this:
There’s a range of definitions that is somewhere around it being the capacity to perceive, to be aware, to be/exist from ones own perspective. However you define it, a central nervous system or other type of similar central unit would have to be a requirement, because that is what would actually be sentient. You are your brain, your hand is just part of your body, if it was chopped off, it by itself is not sentient.
And whatever vague definition of it you go with, there’s two options: Either sentience is real, or it isn’t. If it isn’t real, literally nothing matters, gg. If it is real, non-human animals with central nervous systems, and therefore sentience and the capacity to suffer, deserve ethical consideration, and we should do what is reasonably possible to reduce their suffering and death.
Since we don’t know the answer to the existence of sentience, we should err on the side of caution. If we’re wrong, and we’re all as sentient as a rock, the inconvenience we’d have suffered in our efforts to protect fellow sentient-but-actually-not beings can’t be felt by us, no harm done. If we’re right, the suffering we’ll have prevented, in both scale and intensity, is indescribable.
I feel so kindred with the way you see things. You’re making an observation and you’re curious about the “why” of everything. I feel people often read my similar interest in a subculture as critical. Kind of like how bluntness can be perceived as rude, I guess. Do you ever have a similar response happen to you?
Just look at the other responses to my comments.
In real life it can be better or worse. Some of the closest people in my life get immediately defensive. It’s sometimes easier to talk with strangers. More often than not, I will find a passion point that is the limit of conversation. At those times I just listen as much as possible. How much I engage depends on how they rect to my questions.
Veganism has and always will be just dogma. I find it quite annoying how individuals can so freely push their moral philosophy onto others. Veganism should always be a personal philosophy.
Also, there are now many vegans (considered bottom-up vegans) taking the communist route and basically advocating for revolutions in order to cease animal food production.
I have conversed with quite a few vegans and none of them have pushed their morals on others. Some of them have been very upfront about their veganism. I am wondering where you are that you see vegans being so revolutionary.
When i speak of ones that push their moral philosophy on others (rather aggressively i might add), I’m talking about the vegans that walk into restaurants to cause a fuss. I’m talking about the ones that criticize and talk down on meat eaters for their habits. There are many who do practice veganism as a personal philosophy. I guess dogma always attracts “bad apples”
Also, i never claimed all vegans were revolutionary. I’m specifically referring to “bottom-up vegans” who advocate for more aggressive and hands-on methods in preventing animal farming rather than waiting for government reforms akin to a revolution.
Don’t you feel that you just see it that way because you’re on the opposing side on this? This sounds to me exactly the same as how a homophobe for example would describe gay rights activists.
Just go through all the points you mentioned in this and your previous comment, and replace those scenarios with the issues of various types of bigotry and ethical issues like transphobia, racism, child labour, slave labour etc.
Don’t get hung up on how bad these are in comparison to each other, that’s not the point. Just look at how they’re all ethical issues where a group of sentient beings are being harmed, and what kind of advocacy you’re in favour of to prevent that harm. And why you would see the one issue you might be on the side of the harm being carried out so differently.
Your analogy makes perfect sense, and i can understand from a vegan point of view why they would advocate in such manners even though i don’t agree on the equivalence of human rights issues and animal rights issues.
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.
Do you think there are no vegans in Europe?
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.
Can’t eat bread or drink alcohol, because that’d be making yeast our slaves!
Can’t digest food. The only reason those trillions of living organisms in your gut microbiome are doing it is you’re keeping them enslaved by being their sole food source. Way to practice monopolistic practices on a entirely isolated living ecosystem!
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.
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.
One of my best friends is vegan. They won’t use anything that comes from animals. Nothing. That includes wool, even though the sheep is harmed in the process. They’re absolutely opposed to any animal products or bi-products.
even though the sheep is harmed in the process
This is such a funny typo
The dark vegan. Eats only food that causes as much suffering as possible.
so they’re vegan
So honey is not a grey area, it’s not for human consumption according to vegan values.
Pretty much since it’s animal-derived
Bees produce honey. Chickens produce eggs. Can’t eat eggs. Can’t eat honey.
Idk I’m not a vegan either.
Chickens. Google what happens to male egg-laying chickens and you probably can figure out why it’s not vegan.
Usually things aren’t vegan due to the horrors of factory farming practices, even before any potential death occurs.
I mean anything commercial comes out to be pretty inhumane. They cut off the queens bees wings in commercial honey harvesting.
I guess bees aren’t as animal as chickens are?
They are, which is why honey isn’t vegan, and you brought a very good argument for that yourself, namely that the industrial process behind it all tends to be quite brutal.
I keep my own bees for honey and I have chickens for my eggs. I’m trying to cut off the industry from my life. Not that I’m vegan, the industry tends to remove a lot more from the end result than just the humanity.
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.
Man, I have religious people in my family that say “you can’t eat meat on Fridays” during lent. But then fish is 100% okay to them. Makes no sense to me.
That rule might not come from English language and what was translated to “meat” doesn’t necessarily mean all animal flesh. Even English has words like “beef” and “pork” and “poultry”, “red meat” etc.
If you want to gotcha lawyer culture or religion, you’ll need the actual sources. I’d suggest avoiding that, since it will just make you behave like an asshole.
Why do you have contact with such …things? How could you take a human being somehow serious if it says things like that, especially due to being brainwashed in a fucking sect?! We don’t seem to have a collective tolerance to nazis or pedos, why do we have it for religious nutjubs?
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. 🤔
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Some folks believe that fish aren’t animals, either.
And that eating fish doesn’t count as eating meat…
Also, beavers are fish. Clearly.
fish is merely a menu description
Honey can be vegan. I have a friend who keeps endangered bees and as an unintended side effect of fostering their growth has honey that she has to give away because she doesn’t want it
Playing devil’s advocate, this could be sidestepping the issue, because the honey is only an unintended side effect from your friend’s POV, not the bee’s.
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.
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.
Can human meat be vegan?
Technically, yes.
Assuming the canabee is consenting freely, and likely has to be done in a way not violating other laws. Like some variety of a pain kink where people slice of small portions of each others meaty bits and eat them. That’s probably a thing, though likely not very popular among vegans.
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
