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
Comment on I'm right and the other vegans are wrong
tired_fedora@lemmy.ml 8 hours agoThis 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…
DokPsy@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
mika_mika@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
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.
DokPsy@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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.
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 8 hours ago
European honey bees are a foreign invasive species
But… I am European?
remon@ani.social 8 hours ago
Yeah, Europeans used to be pretty invasive, too!
chaogomu@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Sadly they still are in some areas of the world.
Particularly the middle east.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
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.