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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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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?".
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.
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).
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.
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.
Yeah, for sure I agree the quantities aren't there to be a replacement, and it seems like we agree that harm is the thing to consider, not really the source.
Not with bees not.
Eating plant based sugar will kill and harm more animals that bee produced sugar.
Or do you think that agricultural process does not kill bugs?
I would argue that eating honey instead of plant based sugar would be more vegan.
In general drawing the line of veganism with bugs is... Complicated. As you really cannot have agriculture without killing bugs.
You need pesticides, or some form of plage control. You need to harvest plants that surely will have animals in them. And you'll need to clean the vegetables of bugs before consumption.
and they are mostly fed parts of plants that people can't or won't eat. the same field that grows soybeans for human consumption is growing animal feed, it's just different parts of the plant.
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.
Unfortunately, honey bees aren't the bees we need to bee helping
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36457280/
Entirely true. My favorite stupid argument is about lab-grown meat. People don't seem to understand that veganism is practiced for a variety of reasons. Is lab-grown meat vegan? It depends on the vegan.
My rule of thumb is that I'll eat it as long as nothing was permanently injured or killed to make it. Factory farmed eggs? Nah, I've seen videos of macerators. My neighbor's chickens' eggs? Hell yeah, I'm friends with those chickens
ETA: then there's the breast milk "debate." Can't tell you how many times I've seen numbskulls try to argue that breastfeeding isn't vegan because "milk is an animal product"
Like all ideologies idiots stick to the rules while forgetting the actual meaning behind them. Compare how Christians act to what their Christ taught.
Sorry, is this post satire or are you talking about satire you did not recognize? NEVER seen a vegan call breast milk non-vegan and have in fact actually seen more discussion about whether vegans should be breastfeeding children at all, I.e. is it healthy to do so with their diet.
You've put the word debate in quotation marks flippantly like there's an obvious answer, but I'm pretty sure you just misunderstood a conversation rife with sarcasm or taken out of context (or straight up made it up).
I think the point was that some numbskulls try to pull a "checkmate vegans" claiming that. You probably know the type, obnoxiously trying to butt in on vegan discussions and go "but if you're fine with breastfeeding, you're not really vegan", misunderstanding (or misconstruing) the motivations in the same vein as mentioned before.
It just struck me as weird. Really strange thing to add in an edit considering the rest of the post, just extremely confusing in context.
Misunderstandings happen, I don't think any malice was intended
Yeah, I've never seen a vegan say that either. Didn't say I did. It's always carnists trying to catch vegans on some imagined technicality so they can pretend they're hypocrites. I put the word "debate" in quotation marks because there isn't one—it's not a debate if one side is founded entirely on ignorance of the other's position
I'm no vegan, but I think a large incentive for veganism or at least being vegetarian is the carbon footprint as well. A plant-based diet is much more sustainable than with meat, as in vertebrates. I think invertebrates would be great alternatives but the west-influenced culture is not very fond of eating invertebrates except for crustaceans.
This question is still valid from a marketing standpoint. If you're selling honey, are you able to advertise it as vegan?
True. Though marketing is a cancer in itself. But I guess that's a different discussion 😬