Comment on I'm right and the other vegans are wrong
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Not a vegan.
Honey is a direct animal product. It is meant to feed them, much like milk feeds other cows.
I don’t get how that’s even arguable. I don’t care what you do and don’t eat, vegans, but honey is definitely an animal product. It’s not a product of flowers, it’s a product of bees. Veganism/vegetarianism are both already series of arbitrary lines drawn, though, so, whatever.
Also fish is meat, for those people out there. It’s an animal, you’re eating the animal: it’s meat. You can be a vegetarian that eats fish, that’s fine. You are all illogical to me. Morally right, rationally arbitrary and inconsistent and often hypocrites.
Same. I’m not vegan, but honey is obviously an animal product, and we don’t get their consent to take it (much like eggs or milk).
Further arguments like bees leaving behind some hives are just self-serving - feel free to eat honey, or even milk and eggs, but then don’t call yourself vegan, because you are not.
I’m not began either, but it feels very strange for non-vegans to dictate to vegans what is and is not vegan and who is and is not a vegan.
But veganism at the core isn’t even about refusing to eat animal product. It’s about living a lifestyle that causes the least amount of suffering possible. Like some people would consider cocaine not vegan even though it’s not an animal product since an inconceivable amount of suffering is in the production and distribution of the product.
Most fertilizer contains animal waste, so are you allowed to use it to grow plants? Bees are also pollinators, so many plabts also depend on labor from bees. We live in a biosphere and interact with each other, so everyone needs to decide where their line is.
Yeah it’s about limiting the exploitation of others as much as possible or practicable. We don’t live in a perfect crystal world where we just feed ourselves by inclining our facets towards the sun and nothing ever suffers, but we can stop being such grubby little thieves about how we do feed ourselves.
I think the argument is that bees will do it regardless of consumption so may as well have some nectar/bee barf for sweetener?
Veganism/vegetarianism are both already series of arbitrary lines drawn, though, so, whatever.
They are not fixed lines. I can’t speak about veganism but not eating red meat is vegetarism, leaving meat out except for holidays is vegetarism, eating fish but not meat is vegetarism. There is many way to be vegetarian. Even if there is one way that is much more popular and much more discutes these days. So I can also image non-fixed lines in veganism.
The arguments are usually that fish aren’t animals or more clearly insects aren’t animals, similar to how plants aren’t animals even if they react to damage. Very easy to argue.
I’ve seen arguments that whatever sentience fish may have, it’s too low level to be aware of pain. I don’t buy that but clearly fish have a simpler central nervous system than mammals. Also easy to argue.
Well put.
Orcas would like to have a chat with you.
Context: just like vegetarians and non vegetarians, orcas are also pescaterian and Mammal eating. And they don’t mate with each other. Intact some lineages are hundreds of thousands of years apart.
I don’t think there is a dietary restriction that doesn’t draw a complete arbitrary line at some point.
Fish isn’t meat is just the pope compromising with fishermen. Not eating an oyster but eating corn is a fairly arbitrary line as well.
davetortoise@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
I think this kind of obscures the reason people are vegan in the first place. It’s more than just a dogmatic creed against eating anything animal-derived.
For people who do it for moral reasons, the core issue is consent. Animals cannot consent to be eaten and cannot understand why they are born in captivity and made to suffer. Honey can be farmed with almost total freedom for the bees (can be, not necessarily always is), and bees also produce significantly more honey than they need so do not suffer from it being taken.
Others object to the fact that choosing to eat meat when you can reasonably choose not to, is semi-directly deriving pleasure from the death of an animal. Which is the same reason most people are disgusted by blood sports. Again, that clearly doesn’t apply to bees and honey, because honey is not the flesh of a dead animal.
For people who do it for environmental reasons, beekeeping has no significant negative environmental effect, as long as invasive species aren’t being used. If anything it can have a positibe impact on local ecosystems if done responsibly (again, can).
Extracting honey fundamentally differs from other animal derived products. Take milk; cows are forcefully separated from their children and hooked up to automatic milking machines. They must be kept confined, and keeping them in this way is generally only economical if they are slaughtered for meat as well. There is fundamentally suffering involved, which is not the case for beekeeping.
All this is to say, if someone wants to strictly abstain from animal products as a matter of principle, that’s their choice! But the vast majority of reasons to be vegan aren’t reasons not to eat honey.
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
This is why I don’t eat honey. The profit motive incentivizes unethical practices, so the logical choice is to deprive that industry of its profits.
Also, we will never meet the current demand for honey sustainably, so its necessary for some of us to voluntarily go without. I’m more than capable of being one of those people.
Can honey be produced ethically? Theoretically - but you could say the same for any animal product if you get theoretical enough. The truth is that it frequently isn’t produced ethically, and that’s enough for me to opt out. And I think anyone with the ability to stop consuming animal products ought to do likewise.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Thanks. I think the single biggest barrier to the population as a whole eating more ethically is the way that veganism as a movement has taken on this absolutist dogmatic stance that makes it a dealbreaker for most people. If you make people feel as though cutting their meat intake by 50% is pointless because you’re still going to call them murderers, why would they make the effort?
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
The problem with the carveouts that utilitarian vegans make for honey is that they’re largely falsifiable feel-good industry apologia. The claim that harvesting honey doesn’t harm bees is complete bollocks, really it’s in the same realm of the claim that milking a cow doesn’t harm the cow because she can always make more. The hive does need to downsize and drones do have to die to accommodate the loss of surplus, workers do forage further and compete more with other insects for nectar, while honey harvesting rarely harvests at the low extraction levels claimed to be harmless. If it were harmless the bees would never bother to make it, it takes a shitload of energy for them to produce it. It’s turn-brain-off dissonance territory but because Peter Singer said it’s OK they’re all willing to make the huge leap in logic to eat something that could just as easily have been maple syrup or agave nectar.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 3 weeks ago
Utilitarian hedonist here. I stopped eating prawns because I heard about them pulling the eyes out to increase breeding rates. I decided to research it by watching a video of a prawn having its eyes removed.
It looked like it was in pain.
That’s enough for Me. I don’t believe in p-zombies, so if something looks like it’s in pain, I believe it. I don’t want the prawns to have their eyes pulled out because it looks like it hurts.
And the meme is actually a lie. I don’t have strong feelings about honey, I’m undecided. I actually posted this bait in part to start an argument so I could read what people have to say. And also because it’s funny and this is lemmyshitpost. Right now in this present moment, I don’t think I want honey in My life.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
This thread is actually fantastic, I’ve never seen so much open discussion about veganism between vegans and non-vegans with so little malice so I’d say you hit pay dirt.
I like your utilitarian determination of pain more than most utilitarians, who require a complete nervous system and therefore eat shellfish. Your test has a higher standard than theirs, because shellfish still retract when poked nervous system or not.
MouldyCat@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Gay space communist here. I’m not vegan, not even vegetarian - I do however only eat vegetarian at home, and most of the time vegan, but I’ll eat non-vegetarian food when visiting carnivorous friends or even in restaurants, if the veggie options are unappealing.
Honey is something I stopped buying after hearing from vegans about the cruelty in its production - from what I recall, and I did also watch a video or two of the process, queen bees routinely have their legs pulled off to trigger a hive to be built, and while I don’t know if bees are conscious, I know I would never pull the legs off an insect, so I can no longer in good conscience put a pot of honey in my basket as I walk around a supermarket.
Similar logic should also apply to cheese and ice cream, the non-vegan items that I still buy a lot of, but I did try giving up these items for a couple of months, and man I’m sorry baby calves but I just love those things too much.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Yeah if there were apiaries around me who harvested honey ethically I might consider it. Same with milk and meat (well, probably not because I just don’t like them now, but on ethical grounds), if it was just the extras from having animals around.
But as soon as there’s money involved that all goes out the window and you get the wall of flesh at the back of every grocery store, which amounts to hundreds of years of subjective suffering from beings that just had the misfortune to be born inside the factory on four legs rather than outside of it on two.