Good points. I think people should live with cows and horses to appreciate how they are. Did you know that cows seem to have friends? In a herd cows will frequently pair off and spend the majority of their time with their chosen friend.
Beautiful animals, having a big cow come up and want to spend time with you is a special feeling.
Thanks for your answer. It seems kinda impossible to have animal derived food stuffs at any scale that would be voluntary for the animal. If you are open to more questions I’m curious about other animal products that one could consider less harmful.
The big one I’m curious about is honey. My mother in law got into beekeeping and the bees seemed more than happy to produce an endless supply of honey and didn’t seem any worse off for her taking the excess. Is honey vegan or is that also considered an animal products?
Most people, including myself consider honey to not be vegan. I’ll admit that it’s a lower moral priority for me, since insects very likely have a much lower capacity for sentience than mammals, birds and aquatic creatures. My specific issues with honey production are both moral and environmental:
Artificial insemination typically requires the crushing of drones to extract semen.
It’s pretty common practice to clip the wings of queens to keep them from leaving the hive.
Transporting bees and hives increases the spread of diseases which can affect wild insects.
Western Honeybees are invasive to many parts of the world, including the Americas.
Studies have shown that Honeybees disrupt local plant/pollinator networks by outcompeting local pollinators.
Yeah it kind of blew my mind when I started looking into it. Pretty much everyone assumes that beekeeping is beneficial to the environment. There’s a rather famous quote among ecologists, “Conserving honeybees to save pollinators is like conserving chickens to save the birds.”
Cool well I appreciate your answers, all things I could Google but it’s nice to hear from someone directly their thoughts on it.
I’m not vegan myself, but starting to go low meat. Ive lived around farm animals some and have a great deal of respect for them and consider them to be sentient beings with feelings and consciousness.
Respect for vegans even if I haven’t gone that way yet. Have a lovely rest of your day! :)
Good points. I think people should live with cows and horses to appreciate how they are. Did you know that cows seem to have friends? In a herd cows will frequently pair off and spend the majority of their time with their chosen friend.
Beautiful animals, having a big cow come up and want to spend time with you is a special feeling.
Thanks for your answer. It seems kinda impossible to have animal derived food stuffs at any scale that would be voluntary for the animal. If you are open to more questions I’m curious about other animal products that one could consider less harmful.
The big one I’m curious about is honey. My mother in law got into beekeeping and the bees seemed more than happy to produce an endless supply of honey and didn’t seem any worse off for her taking the excess. Is honey vegan or is that also considered an animal products?
Most people, including myself consider honey to not be vegan. I’ll admit that it’s a lower moral priority for me, since insects very likely have a much lower capacity for sentience than mammals, birds and aquatic creatures. My specific issues with honey production are both moral and environmental:
This article goes into more detail: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/
Wow, thanks, didn’t know most of that before.
Yeah it kind of blew my mind when I started looking into it. Pretty much everyone assumes that beekeeping is beneficial to the environment. There’s a rather famous quote among ecologists, “Conserving honeybees to save pollinators is like conserving chickens to save the birds.”
Cool well I appreciate your answers, all things I could Google but it’s nice to hear from someone directly their thoughts on it.
I’m not vegan myself, but starting to go low meat. Ive lived around farm animals some and have a great deal of respect for them and consider them to be sentient beings with feelings and consciousness.
Respect for vegans even if I haven’t gone that way yet. Have a lovely rest of your day! :)
No problem, it was great chatting!