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?”.
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.
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.
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.
But it will ruin the achievement badge I want to show in my profile!
The whole “Vegans against Honey” thing is so stupid… like… brah, Bees are the one critter that has already unionized.
Not like there’s much sense to begin with in a diet where you need a thousand supplements in order to not go insane from a Vitamin B-12 Deficiency and start blaming Carnist Voodoo for your Anemia… Ya know instead of going “Oh wait, I was getting my iron from chicken…”
Edit: On that note, I actually do need to take Iron for a defiency, this post reminded me… Not a vegan though.
I’m not vegan, I’m vegetarian, but I don’t need any supplements to be just fine. I know plenty of vegans who are happy and healthy without supplements. It isn’t that hard to find sources elsewhere in your diet. I’ve never understood the malnutrition argument, when we’ve known that you can be perfectly healthy (and statistically healthier than otherwise) when eating vegan. You can’t just eat salads and expect to be okay, but doesn’t that sound like such a bland diet anyways? I prefer making stir fries, burritos, stews, and other mixed dishes where I can hit all the macro and micro nutrients my body needs. I’m very healthy and haven’t eaten meat or animal products outside of humanely sourced eggs (my friend has chickens) for years.
Some people simply can’t comprehend the idea of eating vegetables that aren’t grains.
It seems so silly to me. Do plants not feel pain?
They do. I learned it first hand… You can call it stress if you like, but plants most certainly experience suffering
Then you should definitely go vegan. A vegan diet comes with the least amount of plant deaths and plant suffering, since lifestock is being fed with billions of individual plants before being slaughtered. You can save all of them.
if it needs to be pollinated by bees or wasps, then it’s not vegan (insert troll emoji i guess)
Bees, are vegetals.
Some folks believe that fish aren’t animals, either.
fish isn’t anything but a menu description
Reasons that I, as a vegan, do not use honey:
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I cannot guarantee that the bees consented to their product being harvested. Some beekeepers clip the queen’s wings, which can prevent the colony from leaving.
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I cannot guarantee that bees were not harmed in the process of harvesting (potentially getting crushed by the honeycomb frames, for example) or in the process of controlling the colony (like clipping the queen’s wings).
Bees can kill their queen and make a new one no problem.
If the colony would want to move away they would just do that. I don’t think clipping the queen wings would do nothing.
But I doubt any beekeeper colony would want to move as they are keep at a perfect environment so they can produce more honey that they would actually need to survive. Even industrial ones. It’s part of basic beekeeping that bees must be in a good place so they produce the most honey.
Hurt of mistreated bees would not produce honey. If they are mistreated the try to leave (and as stated they can just kill their Queen if she is crippled), they eat all the honey, or just die.
Bees are really complicate to get advantage of. Our relationship with them need to be symbiotic to work.
Not trying to convince anyone to consume honey if they don’t want to. As it’s basically just sugar so whatever.
Bees can kill their queen and make a new one no problem.
This doesn’t make the mutilation of the queen bee any less bad. It’s still harming the bee. I am not aware if a bee has the ability to make an informed decision on whether to kill the queen and relocate, so I cannot make an informed decision about whether the bees actually want to be in their current hive.
If the colony would want to move away they would just do that.
I don’t know if this is true. It’s possible the bees are being manipulated into staying at their current hive in some way.
I don’t think clipping the queen wings would do nothing
It would hurt the queen, which is more than I want to be involved in.
But I doubt any beekeeper colony would want to move as they are keep at a perfect environment so they can produce more honey that they would actually need to survive. Even industrial ones. It’s part of basic beekeeping that bees must be in a good place so they produce the most honey
Making an assumption about what the bees want is not strong enough of an excuse for me to be ok with their exploitation. I don’t believe we should have the right to make decisions for other organisms, and the bees are not able to tell us how they want to be treated, so we should not try to control them or take what they produce.
Hurt of mistreated bees would not produce honey.
This appears to also be an assumption. I do not know if it is true, so I cannot use it to make a decision
If they are mistreated the try to leave (and as stated they can just kill their Queen if she is crippled), they eat all the honey, or just die.
If this is true, there is likely to be a minimum amount of mistreatment before they take action. I do not know how much mistreatment a bee can take, so I cannot use this to make a decision.
Bees are really complicate to get advantage of. Our relationship with them need to be symbiotic to work.
I do not know if this is true. We take advantage of many animals without giving them much in return, so I am not sure if the bee-beeker relationship is actually symbiotic.
Now I’m just curious.
How do you manage the amount of animals that are hurt during agricultural process then?
Tons of invertebrates are killed by pesticides, while harvest or during the cleaning process of the vegetables.
It seems to me that being killed by pesticides or drown with water is worse fate that beeing in a nice artificial honeycomb where they may or may not clip the wings of one queen or make you a little sleepy once in a while with smoke.
On matter of animals hurted/killed during production process honey seems more vegan that most vegetables.
How much awareness of it’s existence do you think a bee has?
More than that sort of people that make these posts, no bee has ever said anything that has convinced me they have zero understanding of philosophy of consciousness.
We have no way of knowing don’t is best to be on the safe side. Veganism isn’t about awareness it’s about respect.
I dont care. In my opinion, the best way to live is to do as little harm as possible, and it appears that bees are harmed by the human collection of honey, so I will not use honey.
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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?
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?
it isn’t produced by animal bodies
Sure is, it’s concentrated bee spit with sugar. And spit is made of water and body cells.
I’ve always found it interesting that using animals is a bad thing, but using plants in similar ways is fine. I guess there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise such a person would simply starve to death.
It is really tricky to genuinely discuss this topic. Many omnivores use this as a straw man argument to discredit vegans for not being fully consequential. On top of that, reasons for being vegan and where people draw the line also vary hugely.
Anyways, I would argue that eating plants and also fungi is very different to eating animal products. First of all, if you are vegan for ethical reasons (as I am) then usually the argument is that one can infer from one’s own feelings onto other animals. Sure, this isn’t always that easy and we will never know how other animals really feel. This includes fellow humans btw. But it is certainly very definitive that many animals feel pain, discomfort and many other emotions not unlike we feel them.
Plants and fungi on the other hand have completely different body plans. Plants are modular organisms and you simply cannot relate cutting your arm off with cutting a branch. We may deepen our understanding on plants and maybe we will find some form of conscience one day. But this is still far off and for now we can only speculate. Fungi are very different as well and we usually just eat their fruiting bodies anyways.
Secondly, as someone else pointed out, for ecological reasons and for the sheer quantity that is necessary to sustain humans, going vegan is always the better choice. Animals live on plants, too, and just use a lot of the plants’ energy on their own metabolism.
One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.
I respect this argument. I would like to know how Humans fit into the ecosystem.
Humans tend to remove predators from population centers to prevent Humans from becoming prey. The culling of predators allow more prey animals to survive. Humans find themselves competing with prey animals for fruits and vegetables. Humans hunt prey animals to increase yields of fruits and vegetables.
How do we reconcile that our population centers are built on the culling of predator and prey species?
How do Humans balance protection and food production with the morality of minimizing animal and plant death?
What should Humans do with the bodies of culled predators and prey?
I think if you ask 10 people this questions you will get 11 opinions, at least.
I personally would prefer the reintroduction of predators into their native habitats because the human tendency to squeeze economic profit out of every square centimeter of the planet we inhabit reads absolutely bizarre to me. This kind of instrumental world view where everything has to have a purpose for us is in my opinion an epoch in the development of humans we should strive to leave behind, because although for a time it shaped our progression as a species like nothing else, it’s also about to destroy the world we live in and come crushing down on us if we find no better way forward. I believe that in the long term we will have to withdraw from at least some parts of the ecosystem and let the predators do their thing. Our population centers can be (and for a good part already are) so sealed off to them that it should very well be possible to do our thing without being mauled by wolves.
…All this does go a bit beyond the question of honey though. Sorry for the rant there.
Animals aren’t just used, they are tortured on a industrial scale. That’s mainly why vegans oppose animal products.
Are bees tortured to get honey?
Well bees are definitely objectified and seen as industrialized honey producing machines. They’re starved of their own resources and are given mostly sugar water in return. Bee keepers are not concerned with their well-being other than for production yields. It is a form of factory farming. Isn’t this reason enough?
As a local beekeeper, I take offense to your sentiment.
your offense has been duly noted and taped to the refrigerator for all to see
They’re certainly exposed to a very different living situation than would be typical for them in most cases, to their detriment. For example, bees that make their combs in frames lose substantial heat from their hives, which usually helps protect against disease and even predation. They’re also often given a sugar water substitute to eat when their honey is drained off for human consumption, which is nowhere near as nutritious. They’re also moved around on the bee keeper’s schedule, which may be a substantial stressor compared with a hive that stays in one place. Never mind that they may be exposed to climates that substantially differ from where that particular variety of honey be evolved.
Given issues like colony collapse disorder, it’s pretty clear that many forms of bee keeping aren’t really great for bees. Does that constitute torture? That’s hard to tell, but it certainly does put pressures on them in multiple aspects of their lives and the lives of their hives as a whole that they wouldn’t be dealing with otherwise, and which probably aren’t pleasant.
Would you consider it torture, or at least cruel, to forcibly relocate the population of a city to an area that’s freezing cold, force them to live in poorly insulated homes, make them eat food that isn’t healthy for them, and steal the product of their labor in exchange for their efforts?
There are varieties of Jainism that won’t pluck fruits (will only eat what has naturally fallen) and many mainstream varieties of Jainism that won’t eat any root vegetables (because digging them up would harm insects), or seeded vegetables (eating it harms the plants ability to reproduce).
Naturally fallen fruit has ground bugs enjoying them like slugs. If a slug is already enjoying the fruit, that would violate Jainism?
Well basically yes, tho would need to get into the topic of exploitation and all that if we are talking about if something is viewed as acceptable to consume.
Beekeeping is exploitation, but don’t the bees benefit from it too vs. being in the wild?
What’s fair compensation to the honey bee? Humans aren’t allowed to speak on behalf of the honey bees. We don’t actually know if this is a fair trade on the side of the honey bee, we can only look at it from our very biased opinion.
Bees are gubbermint drones, and honey is simply concentrated 5G chemtrail juice that gives you super autism.
i guess this person refuses to work or patronize a place that uses pest control for cockroaches?
Heh, nice try at having standards but since it is impossible to not harm anything then obviously possibly harming for pleasure is fine. Checkmate loser.
Now I am going to depict you as the crying wojack and me as the handsome wojack.
false equivalence
agreed. insects are definitely not animals
TIL lol
i get there’s a difference between exploitation and extermination, i’m just not seeing how one is “immoral” and the other isn’t
I’m personally an amoralist vegan so I can’t really speak to that exactly, but it comes down to practicality and health. Veganism is usually about reducing harm as far as is practical (I.e., without risk to your own health), so most vegans make exceptions for medical needs, etc.
reduction of harm is really the best point, and i can’t think of an argument against it
Because cockroaches are considered harmful to humans, some people just can’t leave cockroaches alone and live correctly.
some people just can’t leave cockroaches alone and live correctly
some people can’t be around peanuts. or bees for that matter
And we have to respect the peanuts’ right to be everywhere, right?
Peanuts and bees usually don’t invade your home. And if they did, some would argue it’s acceptable to get rid of them. I’m pretty sure you can figure this out.
some would argue it’s acceptable
some would argue that eating honey is not immoral
edit: also, funny how you bring up “invading homes” while agriculture inherently, necessarily is invading the homes of all sorts of animals. i guess “some would argue that’s acceptable” also?
some would argue that eating honey is not immoral
Sure.
The point of going vegetarian or vegan is to aim at a reduction of animal suffering and environmental footprint. Not to starve by choice. Agriculture is still better than more agriculture needed to consume meat.
What’s the problem exactly?fair enough.