or eggs or other insect parts
My understanding is most do but it’s the subject of occasional controversy.
Depends who you ask. I know a guy who’s vegan because he likes animals. I asked him about honey and he said “fuck insects”.
But opinion differs because bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It’s not hurting them and not keeping them confined, so…
Others put the line at no hurting animals ever. I don’t ask about fleas or mosquitos or tapeworms though.
bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It’s not hurting them
I don’t think this is entirely true. Honey bees are basically factory farmed, we don’t just go into the woods and steal honey. They are ecologically problematic as they compete with native bee species. I’m not an expert but look up how bees are being exploited for almond pollination in California for instance.
That’s a valid position, but it applies equally to most kinds of land use. Agave plantations are not less ecologically problematic. Agriculture has an impact.
And animal agriculture uses even more land than eating plants directly. We have to eat something to survive and eating plants has the least impact.
For most animals yes, but bees (the topic at hand) are different because their land use overlaps with other kinds rather than displacing it. The competition with native insects is a real problem but not necessarily more of a problem than honey alternatives.
Fuck mosquitos. I kill them with a passion. I would estimate I have been bitten a few million times. They’re numbing protein doesn’t work on me and I’m allergic to it. Nothing like feeling your body is on fire.
Vegans are not a monolith. Some do, some don’t. The decision generally comes down to their motivations & their education level.
Since ethical honey sourcing is actively good for both bees and local ecosystem, many vegans will consume ethically sourced honey. As opposed to meat where even the most ethical forms still involve the death of an animal.
Besides that many vegans view it as their ‘cheat’ option to curb their cravings. But also, there is very little reason to consume honey vs raw sugar, the flavor is similar especially once mixed into other food items. So some cut it simply because it is easy to cut.
I am vegan, because I want to minimize animal suffering. if insects have the ability to suffer is highly debated. honestly I think they could just be different enough for us to not recognize their intelligence, like we do/did with fish. I will eat honey when offered, but would not buy my own. tldr: I wouldnt reject it. but I would also not but it myself.
I’m not vegan or even vegetarian, but I respect this. I’m doing the same thing with meat now. I don’t reject it (and really enjoy it), but I don’t buy it myself so everything we make at home is vegetarian! I’m working on it.
and thats all everyone should do. working on it and keeping it in mind. I think we (also me until some years ago) consume mindlessly.
Yes.
Used to be vegan for 5ish years.
It is a grey area and personal preference. Are you vegan for morality, health, global sustainability, etc…
It depends why someone is vegan (diet, not movement).
I was vegan for health reasons, and local honey helps with allergies so I ate it.
and local honey helps with allergies so I ate it.
I don’t think this can be true, to be honest
Yeah, wasn’t too sure about this one. But allergies have been getting worse every year and there is no harm in trying it. Also, it does make sense on a superficial level, bees pollinate and make honey. So eating honey builds up your immunity to the pollen bees carry?
I am not a bee guy, just a guy that doesn’t like allergies.
I totally see how the conjecture can feel intuitive, yeah. That’s probably why it’s spread.
I feel you on the allergies, I suffer from them too.
According to Wikipedia, honey does have anti-bacterial properties but can also cause allegic reactions depending on the immune system.
I’m thinking it could loosely help with inflammatory responses, maybe? But that may be a stretch and it’s definitely a case by case basis regardless.
I think the conjecture is that it’s supposed to contain local pollens, and hence be somewhat similar to hyposensitization, where you subject the body to the allergen in controlled doses to successively lessen the allergy response.
Honeybees don’t drink from the kinds of plants that people are typically allergic to, however - they drink from flowering plants, while the common allergies are from wind-borne pollens (trees and grasses).
Even then, the dosage is not right for provoking a hyposensitization response.
See https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-library/allergies/honey
not all vegans are the same but personally i use agave over honey
One’s an excess product that we’re literally allowed by the animal to take, the other’s a food source for an endangered species of bat
You should reconsider
Bees can’t give consent
Tell me you know nothing about beekeeping…
They literally only take honey that the bees don’t need. If the bees lose enough honey for it to hurt them, then guess what? They can’t continue to grow and keep making honey. If bees had an actual problem with it, they wouldn’t be so chill about it either
Meanwhile bats have no way of making agave. It’s just there, and then when we harvest it, there’s just gonna be less for them to have. That’s the difference
There’s no need to be confrontational !
They literally only take honey that the bees don’t need.
Bees still can’t give consent, lol
the plants you eat didn’t give consent either. nor did the spider you killed. so sit down and shut up.
Control yourself, mate. You should be able to discuss things without immediately resorting to insults. If you’re interested in talking further, I am, but only if you drop the attitude. Cheers,
if telling you to sit down and shut up aka don’t be a hypocrite is something you consider to be an insult… then you are the biggest snowflake second only to maga.
Mezcal? Sold
Maybe but honey is far more humane than eggs.
Depend on the eggs. Farm ? Yes, most of them are unethical. Home chicken ? Not unethical, if there are no roosters.
What makes it unethical if there’s a rooster?
It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can’t stop a hen from laying eggs.
The hens I’ve met abandons most of their eggs, for most of the year. If the hen abandons the egg, it won’t grow or hatch regardless of fertilization, so as long as you only take the abandoned eggs, a rooster makes no difference in the ethics of eating those eggs.
The difference is that what I’ve heard a flock usually does better and feels better with a rooster (this may be propaganda from Big Rooster), and if you don’t interrupt the nesting process (I dont know the English word for it, when the hen lays on the eggs until they hatch?), you’ll keep putting more of the birds into the world which may not be ethical according to the person.
So positives and negatives, but no difference in the abandoned eggs.
But is this a wild hen roaming free, or imprisoned?
What’s unethical about roosters?
It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can’t stop a hen from laying eggs.
You would have to be a life-begins-at-conception, anti-abortion kind of person, as well, for that.
It’s not an impossible or unnatural combination, intellectually, but demographically speaking, being radical in two directions at once is rare.
A vegetarian would be fine with a backyard coop. Vegans might say that your chickens are kind of like slaves - they make stuff for you, and can’t leave - and that’s bad.
You’re right on that, I can’t deny it. But then again, I had some vegans friends that had hens that were saved from the slaghterhouse. They had no barriers at all and their hens roamed free. Yes, a hen is a product of human selection, and on that aspect the line between ethical and practical is really fine and more suitable to philosophical debates, but since the hens were saved, they were better off their fate and in that regard, harvesting eggs was not an act of torture per se. But I’m not a vegan and can’t speak for them, just give an insight on a non-dicheotomic point of view.
Yes, a hen is a product of human selection
Actually, layers are pretty close to natural red junglefowl, as far as I can tell. It’s not like turkeys or cows, where they can’t really exist in the wild. Although, the wild sucks too…
I’m in the picture FWIW, as a vegetarian who’s cared for backyard hens. They seemed fine and happy, if a little bored in the winter, and were pretty great and easy-to-care-for pets. If there was any money in fixing the gender ratio problem, that bit about what happens to the male chicks would probably be solved, as well.
Turkeys do live in the wild
That’s an interesting aspect that I hadn’t considered. It brings the question of “does life begin at fertilization” into this.
Most reject honey. There are those who don’t and there are vegans who want to strictly deny that label to those who don’t.
Eggs? That’s pretty universally rejected.
I have never met a vegan who was okay with honey but I have had plenty of non vegan mother fuckers constantly bring this up as if its this huge edge case point of conflict. Its made and taken involuntarily from animals. It ain’t that hard to figure out.
I saw a post once that actually argued bees are aware of the arrangement and generally willingly tolerate the deal. We can tell they know the deal because they produce extra honey to account for the keeper’s cut, and we know they willingly tolerate it because if they found it intolerable, bees are perfectly capable of fucking right off and leaving you with an empty hive.
I don’t believe they take the beekeeper’s cut into account! They make as much honey as they can all the time.
The rationalizing is off the charts in this thread, do not try to understand, there is no consistency.
You may be right. I had heard that they make extra for it, but I’m having trouble corroborating that.
“Don’t like the rent? Just move somewhere rural lmao” type argument.
I’ve been hit with the “they literally make it for us.” No bro the bees that evolved honey did not do it millions of years ago for the people that weren’t even around back then.
They didn’t evolve it for us, no. The evidence just suggests to me that they find this an agreeable expense in exchange for a solid shelter guarded by a comparative titan. I don’t know exactly what parts of the deal they understand and what parts they like, but they clearly at least know to expect the honey tax.
I know you think animals can consent but they can’t
I mean some animals certainly can consent to some things. There are obviously limitations, and bees may be well within those limits, but I’ve seen pets and farm animals that very clearly understand the deal with “owner is gonna do something unpleasant and then give us a treat” because they offer themselves up for something they initially resisted and clearly still are not fans of.
Yeah the animal I’m talking to clearly consented to a lobotomy
Oh wow you’re so clever with your locked in opinion that resists the evidence of my experience.
They “find this an agreeable expense”? They have a choice in the matter? Bees do what bees do in the wild or or in man-made hives. Humans choose to place them in hives.
They “find this an agreeable expense”?
They produced extra to account for it when they could leave, so it appears to me they at least understand that their current home comes at the cost of honey.
They have a choice in the matter?
They can and WILL leave if abused, so they very obviously do have a choice, yes.
Humans choose to place them in hives.
And if humans want them to produce honey, they’re going to have to give the bees ample opportunity to find a better home and leave.
Yeah it also is gross as fuck. Imagine putting spider silk on your weet-bix
Sounds like an interesting mix of textures!
“honey, I’m home!”
shocked gasp “I want a divorce!”
yes. the reason the term vegan came about was because of the looseness of vegetarian. vegetarian would inply no eggs or insect unless it had a rider. like lacto/ovo vegetarians will ingest milk and eggs. honey was usually not to much of an issue. so vegan started being used for people who don’t eat animals or anything that came from an animal like honey or milk. There is a thing called fruitarian that theoretically will only eat the parts of the plant that the plant made to be eaten. Like fruits. Steve jobs was into it before he died. I think he thought it would cure or help his cancer or something.
Strict vegetarian used to be the term for not eating any animal products. Vegan denoted lifestyle, not just diet. A vegan would not have leather shoes of wool sweaters.
I feel like someone strict enough to not eat honey is going to be thinking about their clothing choices though. I mean I was not a part of the subculture honestly but from an outside perspective that is what it felt like to me.
fruitarian
It’s interesting to me that they went with that name, since there’s already a name for eating fruit (frugivory)
Frugivore implies a biological cause for the diet primarily consisting of fruit. Humans are biological omnivores regardless of if we choose to limit our diet of other reasons. They don’t use frugivore for the same reason that vegetarians don’t use herbivore.
But they kill elephants for ivory!
I never herd of frugivore. My guess is you have vegetarian so its using the same thing.
There’s been a lot of Japanese studies showing insects aren’t so dumb recently. Same with fish.
So I’ve ranked them up and don’t consume honey anymore. I already considered fish sentient before the recent studies anyways but now I’m validated lol.
I would be more interested in knowing if commercial honeybee pollination is vegan ok or not, and the same with buying boxes of bumble bees to pollinate inside greenhouses.
I suppose they should probably avoid products that use shellac as well.
- hard candy
- chocolate
- gum
- ice cream
- popcorn
- pretzels
- cookies
- cakes
- pies
- vitamins and supplements
