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- AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish11 days
Here is an article about why honey is not vegan. I’ll quote some notable excerpts.
The latest research in the field suggests bees are indeed sentient, and experience a host of sophisticated emotions. In his 2023 book What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann states that bees are “self-aware,” highly intelligent, and possess a “primitive form of consciousness.”
The Guardian reported on the book earlier this year, saying bees’ apparent ability to recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and feel optimistic, playful, and scared raises “complex ethical questions” about our treatment of them.
…
…by using a piece of mesh that worker bees can pass through but [the queen bee] cannot, or clipping her wings. The structure contains horizontal sheets, where, because the queen bee is trapped nearby, the bees build their honeycomb.
To harvest the honey, beekeepers either smoke the bees to subdue them, or trap them with a clearing board over one or two days. Others kill the colony altogether.
Oftentimes, beekeepers replace the honey they remove with a sugar water substitute. This practice prompts honeybees to overwork themselves to replace the missing honey. Meanwhile, the sugar water lacks the nutrients, fats, and vitamins that bees need to be healthy.
Think of how labor rights, and even basic human rights are a constant struggle. Now imagine that you are a species that is regarded in such a way that everything you produce and everything you are is thoroughly classified a commodity. You do not have the capacity to speak against it. You are smart enough to suffer, but lack the degree of intelligence necessary to even begin to comprehend the enormity of what you are entrapped in. One species of animal has decided that all other species of animal are its products. None of the others can raise a voice against that. If human rights abuses abounds, how often do you think any kind of animal agricultural system is going to operate in a way that’s anything other than systematic abuse and suffering?
Is that really the kind of world you want to continue to create?
It’s easy to dismiss bugs, easy to think they don’t matter. But I think of them as a litmus test. We are the real equivalent to bugs, of what we think a God is like to us. Are we the kind of deitys that we would want to exist?
If you actually care about a mutualistic relationship between pollinators and humans, grow a garden.
Thank you very much for that insight! I wasn’t aware of those practices used in bee keeping and their negative effects on the colony, nor of their emotional range.
- 11 days
I’ve been on the fence about honey for a while but tbh I’ve heard enough. I’ll just switch to maple spread or jam.
- AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish10 days
Awesome. Also worth pointing out, eating honey by choice is kind of weird too if you think about it. It’s literally nectar that’s been regurgitated by bugs, I don’t get why so many would want that in the first place.
- AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish10 days
Doesn’t change that it’s weird. And it doesn’t sound gross, it is gross.
There are plenty of other sweetener options out there, with whole blended dates or date sugar in particular being a much healthier option.
- 10 days
I’m failing to see what’s weird or gross about it, honestly. I don’t think bugs or their activities are inherently weird or gross. I don’t personally use honey in anything other than honey roasted peanut butter.
- AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish10 days
There are two layers to the weirdness. The first layer is that, when you remove your conflict of interest, it becomes clear right on the face of it how bizarre and macabre it is to consume the excretions or mutilated body parts of other sentient beings. The second layer builds on that, with it being a secretion that was previously consumed by a multitude of other sentient beings, partially digested inside their internal organs, and then regurgitated before being stolen from them.
- 10 days
To be clear, I eat a mostly plant-based diet due to environmental considerations, not because I find it bizarre to consume animal products. Do you somehow find it bizarre or gross that worms and other microorganisms breakdown dead matter from sentient creatures to produce the soil used to grow crops? Or the involvement of insects in the production of said crops? Do you find it gross for a baby to consume breast milk?
- 11 days
There is evidence that plants have some form of sentience. They react to their environment and stimuli, and communicate with each other. We honestly shouldn’t be eating anything that was previously alive.
- 10 days
Not saying it’s the case here, but I’ve never heard this argument raised in good faith, like by someone who is interested in reducing the amount of suffering caused by humans to non-humans. It’s always brought up as some thought-terminating catch-22 device to just keep doing wtf ever you want to do anyway.
I am genuinely curious what you think we should do with this information, though. Like how has it influenced your own actions?
- 10 days
I think my takeaway is that morality arguments for veganism based on subjective perceptions of sentience or suffering are not persuasive.
Many farms provide far better lives for animals than they would have in the wild. Many livestock species are far more successful and widespread because we eat them. Furthermore, if everyone was to become vegan, some livestock species would go extinct without human care. Do those who insist everyone should be vegan because animals are sentient and suffer think that we should just genocide the livestock?
Morality arguments totally depend on the perspective. I happen to agree with vegans on many points, but if your prime argument is moral, then yes I expect everyone to do wtf they want. Everyone’s morals are different.
- 9 days
The ethical argument was totally persuasive to me. I mean firstly it was a matter of challenge, but I also like opting out of cruel industries as much as I can handle.
I’m also not trying to universalise anything, but all your points so far are covered here. The use of inflammatory language to suggest I want you genocide animals is a new one I will admit.
You also didn’t answer my question.
- 11 days
Better to just eat cows. A cow is 1 suffering to feed many humans. A jar of honey is thousands of sufferings for one family to have sweeter tea.
Checkmate atheists
- 11 days
Common sense goes a long way. Radicalism is always stupid.
Just eat meat once a week or month. Eat whatever in moderation.
Moderation is key.
10 daysThis approach isnt helping the cause, you can’t conflate that responsibility to everyone. Guilt tripping is a Christian method
- 9 hours
I will hold people responsible for their actions, that’s not a radical thing. And about “Guilt tripping”… Well participating in a mass murder of living, feeling beings in a world where you don’t have to do that in order to survive is very much a thing that people should feel guilt about, and I will not stop shaming them for doing so. You see, from my perspective, that would make me an accomplice.
I know it feels bad when you get reminded of the horrors of meat industry. You should feel bad, that’s a good thing. But your feelings have much less weight than the actual countless lives lost for nothing.
Just for curiositys sake: what do you think will help the cause then, if I should not even speak about it because I could hurt peoples feelings? It (participating in the mass murder of living, feeling beings) is an active choice that most people in the world can choose to not do. Like fuck man, if I should just smile and nod in agreement I dunno…
Again, I do realize that blaming feels bad. That is the point.
