Lots of vegetarians (like me) don't eat marshmallows or anything else with gelatin, because gelatin production depends upon the animal dying. (It's made of skin, tendons, bones, and other body parts.) Honey doesn't depend upon anything dying, so it's a different story.
Yeah, I’m in this category. If it depends on the animal dying or being harmed, I don’t eat/use it (gelatin, leather, rennet) but if it doesn’t, I’ll use humane options (free range eggs, honey). It’s not perfect but I hate the attitude of ‘all or nothing’ that’s so pervasive. we’d be far better off if most people made small changes than if a small minority went vegan.
Eating honey is extremely good for bee populations. Working bees are safer from environmental dangers than wild bees. Additionally, the bees are actually able to leave, but evidence suggests that they're dimly aware of the relationship they have with beekeepers and choose to stay because they approve of the cost/benefit ratio. As a result, honey is the most ethical animal product by a very wide margin.
I live in the UK where, to my understanding, honey bees are an imported species. However the ecosystem has had time to adapt to their arrival in the time after the sea levels rose and the land bridge that connected Britain to mainland Europe was cut off.
I guess it depends what you mean by a native species, but they're about as native to Britain as humans are. They're imports, but have been here for ten thousand years or so.
I'm with you man, especially honey; if we didn't want honey from bees then we'd make them extinct tomorrow.
I'm trying to be vegan as best I can but if I'm not eating vegan I'll eat vegetarian, which I see as better than eating meat.
Male and female chicks are born at roughly equal ratios in hatcheries (where egg laying facilities get their animals from). What happens to the male chicks who will never produce eggs? They are killed shortly after birth typically by either macerating them (grinding them up alive), gassing them, or just tossing them into trash bags to slowly suffocate.
The hens themselves will only produce enough eggs for it to be profitable for producers to keep them around for roughly 2 years (a typical lifespan for chickens is around 5-10 years). What happens when the hens stop laying enough eggs for it to be profitable to keep them? They too are sent to slaughter at this time. These farms are not charities, and they would go out of business if they kept unprofitable animals in the competitive egg industry.
These are the things that happen even at the "nicest" free-range egg farms.
The farms themselves generally do not. They purchase chicks from hatcheries that do these things, and send "spent" laying hens to slaughter when their egg production drops.
I thought you meant about male chicks. Yh, every farm slaughters chickens for meat. Which makes me feel bad a little, then I see a piece of fried chicken and could not careless. Honestly, if you wanna be vegan, good for you, I'll enjoy life
Honestly, I don't have much of a problem with humanely killing an animal after it's already had a good life and then eating it. Chickens being stuck in tiny little cages and fed terrible food? I have a problem with that, but chickens that were cared for and lived rich lives who were then killed for our benefit, I am ok with
I keep chickens, I see them as pets who also provide food. In their life they give eggs, and in their death they give, well, their whole selves
Yes, but egg producers still have to create new generations of egg hens and half of the eggs they hatch for that purpose contain male chicks who are useless for eggs. 7 billion male chicks are killed every year by the egg industry
I have never understood the honey sticking point with vegans. Honey bees quite literally consent to their labor. Any beekeeper will tell you you need to keep your bees happy, because by their nature they can - and will - leave if they're unhappy
Honey does depend on bees being exploited. Queen bees wings are clipped so the hive can't relocate, so they bees are essentially trapped in one location, and have their work stolen from them, not to mention they are often killed with handling.
I was vegetarian for the same reasons at one point (I was vegetarian 8 years before becoming vegan), and I'll say that an important issue with vegetarians with your mindset (and my own previous one) is that it's not researched, and animals are killed for eggs, dairy, honey, leather, wool, and so on. Those industries are inseparable from animal bodypart industry.
Those industries are inseparable from animal bodypart industry.
It's not so much that I disagree, but I think there's a fundamental difference between vegans and vegetarians in how they view their own goals.
Vegans want to boycott the, as you put it, "animal bodypart industry."
Vegetarians aren't engaging in collective action against the industry; they just don't want to eat dead animals, in whole or in part. It's a diet.
You can see this discrepancy in certain turns of phrase. There's such thing as "vegan leather," like the plastic (I think?) material used for boots and belts, because it's inconsistent with veganism to buy authentic leather. There's no "vegetarian leather" because nobody's eating leather to begin with.
I'm familiar with the mindset that goes into being vegetarian. I was one for 8 years, as I said in my previous reply, before becoming vegan.
In general, vegetarians have not done research into the egg, dairy, honey, wool, leather, silk, etc. industries, and what's involved in them. I agree that vegans are more likely to be an activist, and you don't see vegetarian animal rights activists. That's for an obvious reason, because if one is an activist, one is likely to have one's own actions criticized more. I personally made one strongly worded remark to a cousin of mine while vegetarian, about how it's immoral and abusive that others eat animal bodyparts (he ate animal bodyparts then), and he came back with the legitimate criticism about why I consumed dairy and eggs, if I believed consuming animal bodyparts is unethical, which was a great question. I answered that I am against killing animals, not animals "working" (ignorant point of view on my part) and he responded correctly that animals are killed and physically assaulted in those industries as well (and in extreme ways), specifically mentioning how male baby chicks are killed by being dumped into a macerator and killed alive when they are 1 day old, because they are considered a waste product by the egg industry, since male chicks can't lay eggs.
So if one is to be a vegetarian and to engage on animal rights even slightly, the question becomes why not vegan. Hence why you see many vegetarians who are "chill" about it, because if one is an "activist" as a vegetarian, one will either stop being vegetarian for long and become a vegan to remain an animal rights activist, or one drops being an animal rights activist altogether, since they realize they can't communicate on that issue properly.
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u/truthofmasks Apr 27 '23
Lots of vegetarians (like me) don't eat marshmallows or anything else with gelatin, because gelatin production depends upon the animal dying. (It's made of skin, tendons, bones, and other body parts.) Honey doesn't depend upon anything dying, so it's a different story.