Have vegans gone too far?

[remisser]

I just found out recently that there are some sets of vegans who will not consume honey. Their reasoning for this is that honey is produced by the bees, and taking away something they worked hard to make is against the vegan code of ethics. Sure, honey is not a living thing, but humans steal the honey from them. (Since vegans consider insects animals and they are to not consume animal products.)

My question is: Are vegans getting carried away? Should we all not eat honey because we're crapping on the bees hard work?

Also, aside from honey, are there any other products that are made through the hard work of animals that vegans should avoid eating? ;)

[Sublight]

Manna would be right out, I guess.

As for 'vegans going to far', I'd have to just shrug and say that with any decision involving personal ethics, many will simply do what they think is right for themselves, while a few will view it as a pissing contest and try to out-holier-than-thou everyone else. These are the ones who attract the most attention, but they're not usually representative of the group as a whole.

[Muffin]

What a person choses not to eat is none of your beeswax.

[Ephemera]

Since vegans consider insects animals and they are to not consume animal products.

Um. Insects are animals.

[Telperien]

I never heard of vegans not consuming honey because it was "stealing" the bees' hard work. The reason I have heard is that honey is an animal product in the same way milk is. Milk is produced by cows, honey is produced by bees from the nectar they get from flowers. Milk doesn't come from grass, not directly anyway, but other than that I think the analogy holds up.

[Ferret Herder]

I never heard of vegans not consuming honey because it was "stealing" the bees' hard work. The reason I have heard is that honey is an animal product in the same way milk is.
And to elaborate further, you're essentially "enslaving" the bees. The bees used for honey have to be kept by human owners in large hives, and I suspect a fair number die during the process through accident or necessity.

To the original poster: If you think vegans are wacky or have "gone too far" for not eating honey, google-search on Jains and watch your head explode. They dislike even accidentally stepping on any kind of insect and will try to gently sweep bugs out of their path if need be. And as other posters have said, why do you care if vegans don't want to eat honey?

[Shirley Ujest]

YAY !

More honey for me!

[Anaamika]

And to elaborate further, you're essentially "enslaving" the bees. The bees used for honey have to be kept by human owners in large hives, and I suspect a fair number die during the process through accident or necessity.

To the original poster: If you think vegans are wacky or have "gone too far" for not eating honey, google-search on Jains and watch your head explode. They dislike even accidentally stepping on any kind of insect and will try to gently sweep bugs out of their path if need be. And as other posters have said, why do you care if vegans don't want to eat honey?

Oh, poo! I came in here just to talk about the Jains!

But as Shirley Ujest said, more honey for me!

[Kizarvexius]

Ohmygosh! Every time we breath we massacre millions of innocent microorganisms!

[Metacom]

What a person choses not to eat is none of your beeswax.
Certainly.

That doesn't mean I can't hold the opinion that some of their beliefs are batshit crazy, though.

(Hmm... I wonder if Vegans use the phrase "batshit crazy"? I mean, it is verbally exploiting something that the bats worked very hard to produce...)

[Giraffe]

Shoot. I opened this thread hoping it was about something good, i.e. vegans had acquired The Bomb or started whipping people who wear pictures of animals. All the vegans I know are highly disorganized, so I was curious to see how they'd finally managed to work together and go Too Far.

But alas, it's just another yahoo who found out that hard-core vegans exist. Meh.

[elfkin477]

I never heard of vegans not consuming honey because it was "stealing" the bees' hard work.


It's said occasionally (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=Vegan+honey+%22stealing%22).

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

IANAVegan, but I'm really not surprised that strict practitioners would refuse to eat honey.

My take on this, as a non-vegan is this: eating honey is a concept that fairly closely parallels using dairy products. They're all animal products. You don't have to kill the animal to get them, but you do have to divert those products from the purpose which nature originally intended. So it would really be a surprise to me if a true vegan would eat honey and not drink milk, or vice-versa.

I wonder if any vegans argue that leather is OK, based on the notion that the animal must die at some point, regardless of how that happens.

[Heart On My Sleeve]

I don't think most vegans would think that leather is OK just because it's a by-product. I'm not comfortable with leather (although I do buy leather shoes when what I need isn't available otherwise. I'm still squeamish about it-does that count?), and I'm not vegan. Most don't even want to talk about it because then they have to face arguments about how synthetics are horrible for the environment, and so forth.

In my opinion, no choice is perfect, a person just has to do what they're comfortable with, and hopefully not judge others who are comfortable with something else (within the law, of course). :cool:

[norinew]

I don't think you could say vegans have "gone too far" until they start, say, lobbying for legislation outlawing honey. Until then, as others have pointed out, what they choose to eat or not to eat is their business.

[Little Nemo]

What if a vegan doesn't really have any strong feelings about animals but just really hates plants?

[Podkayne]

I think I remember from somewhere that as they harvest honey, inevitably some bees get killed as the hives are opened, the wax is scraped away, etc. Can't find a cite for that, though, sorry.

So it's not just that we are stealing from the bees, but we're pretty careless about their individual welfare as well.

The bees themselves are pretty casual about that, too, being willing to sacrfice individuals for the sake of the hive, but, whatever.

What other people decide to eat ain't no skin off my nose. As long as they don't start spalshing me with red paint and chanting "Honey is murder" at me, I wouldn't say they're going too far.

[remisser]

But alas, it's just another yahoo who found out that hard-core vegans exist. Meh.

Yay, I'm a yahoo. Yahoo Serious, I hope. :\

I'm just saying that it fascinates me that people have such strict beliefs. Be it involving religion, or the food they consume, or what have you. Then again, there are people who find my slovenly American habits peculiar and outlandish as well.

I'll have to admit though, I just want to know a counterpoint to the honey thing. I, myself, have slowly become vegetarian... and... gosh darn it they have a point with the honey.

[Mangetout]

How could vegans possibly go too far? - they're all so weak and feeble from malnutrition, they can hardly go anywhere.

[Podkayne]

I think I remember from somewhere that as they harvest honey, inevitably some bees get killed as the hives are opened, the wax is scraped away, etc. Can't find a cite for that, though, sorry.

As fate would have it, Good Eats tonight is about honey, so I can add a minor correction. No bees around when they get to the wax-scraping part. So any bee-death would occur when the hives are opened and the trays removed.

[Yllaria]

Yeah, bees pretty much have a hive mentality.

Milk is produced by cows, honey is produced by bees from the nectar they get from flowers. Milk doesn't come from grass, not directly anyway, . . .

Oh, great. Now I have an image of cow-bees flying around and storing grass in cells, where it turns into milk. This is going to stick with me all day.

On the other hand, they're kinda cute. About six inches tall.

[Mangetout]

As fate would have it, Good Eats tonight is about honey, so I can add a minor correction. No bees around when they get to the wax-scraping part. So any bee-death would occur when the hives are opened and the trays removed.According to a doper beekeeper whose name I can't remember, bee deaths in captivity aren't limited to accident - the beekeper can often find himself needing to cull large numbers of bees.

But I don't think that's quite the point; most vegans tend to avoid animal products on principle, regardless of whether the animal(s) producing the product actually suffered measurably.

[BoBettie]

I"m not a vegan- I'm a meat eater 100%. However, if your personal ethics forbid you from eating anything that is an animal product , how could you eat honey? Whether or not you think that's batshit crazy or not, it's their personal code of ethics that they stand by. :: shrug:: Gone to far? I say no. It's something that affects them personally, not you. They're not snatching your little bear full 'o honey and lecturing you on bee abuse right? Then I guess it's not going to far yet.

[inkleberry]

I
My question is: Are vegans getting carried away? Should we all not eat honey because we're crapping on the bees hard work?

Also, aside from honey, are there any other products that are made through the hard work of animals that vegans should avoid eating? ;)


I knew a person who wouldn't eat bread because it killed yeast. Also, he wouldn't eat broccoli because if you hooked it up to an eeg machine, it got readings when sliced. To him, this meant broccoli was "evolved" and "could feel pain." So he didn't eat broccoli either, just to be safe.

I told him that showering and wearing clothes killed millions of microscopic organisms living on your skin. He had troble finding a solution there.

BTW, the go-bots fought the evil Vegan Empire. For a reason.

[ouryL]

I just found out recently that there are some sets of vegans who will not consume honey. Their reasoning for this is that honey is produced by the bees, and taking away something they worked hard to make is against the vegan code of ethics. Sure, honey is not a living thing, but humans steal the honey from them. (Since vegans consider insects animals and they are to not consume animal products.)

My question is: Are vegans getting carried away? Should we all not eat honey because we're crapping on the bees hard work?

Also, aside from honey, are there any other products that are made through the hard work of animals that vegans should avoid eating? ;)


So, no wax candles also.

[Already in Use]

Gone too far? Well, of course they've gone too far for me. Otherwise, I would be a vegan. As it is, I like chomping on the flesh of innocent animals.

I don't get what "gone too far" means. Do you think we should legislate against them or something?

And funny, I thought all vegans were against eating honey.

[Little Nemo]

I'm a meat eater 100%.
At least go take a look at the salad bar. It's free with the steak.

[lezlers]

if your personal ethics forbid you from eating anything that is an animal product , how could you eat honey?

Okay, I'm a vegan that eats honey. :eek:

Vegans are that way for a variety of reasons. Not all vegans refuse to eat animal products due to personal ethics. Some do it for health reasons. Some, like myself, just think eating animal products is icky. Others do it for animal rights. Human beings are so unique and complex, it's silly to assume there's any one uniform reason for any particular belief or lifestyle.

Myself? I eat honey because to me, it's not the flesh or bodily fluids of an animal. Flesh or bodily fluids of an animal? Kinda nasty. To me. (Usual disclaimer: I don't ever force my views on others. In fact, I strive to keep my veganism a private matter and avoid even telling people, just so I don't catch any shit).

Now, there will probably be a hoard of people rushing in to "prove me wrong." To them, all I have to say is: bugger off. My beliefs are my own. So long as I don't try to force them on anyone else, who the hell are you to try to second guess them? Now go eat your steak and let me munch my carrots in peace. Thank you and goodnight.

[alice_in_wonderland]

What exactly is honey, anyway?

I always assumed it was sort of bee poo, but I'm assuming that would rule it out of lezler's diet...

('cus poo is nastier than milk, IMHO)

[lezlers]

I think if it were bee poo it would rule it out of most people's diets. ;)

[Muffin]

Honey is bee barf.

[lezlers]

So, I did some quick honey research..

http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/073097.html

Kinda gross, really. Not going to stop eating it, though.

[Muffin]

Found an interesting article on bee barf: http://www.bumblebarf.com/bbarfart.html

After the foraging bee barfs its load into a house bee: The house bee has two main processing responsibilities. The first is to dehydrate the nectar into a stable product with batch to batch consistency. This is accomplished by vomiting the nectar and chewing it down over and over again. Each cycle of the process takes about twenty seconds. Given that on the average a house bee will work approximately fifteen to twenty minutes on each droplet of nectar, that translates into about fifty chew-swallow-regurgitate cycles -- guaranteed to eventually dry out even the watery-est nectar. When the nectar's water content reaches an agreed upon concentration (set by arbitrated agreement between management and labor) the house bee stops chewing and adds the partially digested nectar to a cell in the honey comb. It is here that the second processing responsibility of the house bee is accomplished . . . being the injection of an enzyme to further break down the sucrose.

[Muffin]

So what exactly does your spouse mean when he or she calls you "Honey" ?

[Muffin]

Come to think of it, some birds feed their chicks bird barf, dogs wolf down barf of all sorts, and a few members of my rugby team . . . (well, we'll just not go there).

So tell us, remisser, who are going too far in your opinion:

(a) People prefering not to eat avian barf;
(b) People prefering not to eat mamalian barf;
(c) People prefering not to eat insect barf.

[Green Bean]

So what exactly does your spouse mean when he or she calls you "Honey" ?
That he's looking for an excuse not to perform oral sex?

[Hypno-Toad]

No vegan has ever forced me to eat broccoli. I won't force them to eat honey.

[kitarak]

How could vegans possibly go too far? - they're all so weak and feeble from malnutrition, they can hardly go anywhere.

I know this is probably intended as a joke, but it's really not true.

My diet is practically vegan, and I'm not at all malnourished. Further, the only true vegan I know is probably one of the healthiest people I know - he does ridiculous amounts of exercise, and always has more energy.

The stereotype of a malnourished vegan may well have some basis in reality, but only because people in general don't know how to manage their diet, and vegans who don't know how to manage their diet tend to get into trouble pretty quickly.

As to the honey thing. I'll admit I find it going a bit far, but really only in the sense that I wouldn't do it. I simply can't bring myself to care about insects. If they don't want to eat it, good for them. Not my call to judge it.

[Telperien]

It's said occasionally (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=Vegan+honey+%22stealing%22).

Mind you, the reason I hadn't heard of it is probably because I don't exactly live in vegan paradise.

[bouv]

Like all threads, this one reminds me of a Futurama quote:

Leela: How can you trick people into drinking something that comes from your behind? It's disgusting!

Giant Slug: Is it? Honey comes from a bee's behind, milk comes from a cow's behind. And have you ever used toothpaste?

Fry: Who's behins does that come from?

Giant Slug: You don't want to know.


Granted, they were wrong in saying honey is from a behind, but they had a theme going and didn't want to ruin it.

And since we're on the topic of honey, I will mentio something not everyone knows, but is very important:

NEVER give honey to a child under the age of one, and to be safe, not even until they're two. Honey has botulism spores, and while child and adult stomachs are acidic enough to kill it, a baby's isn't.

[Incubus]

Obviously, the Vegans who don't eat honey are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their conquering Bee Overlords :p

[iampunha]

NEVER give honey to a child under the age of one, and to be safe, not even until they're two. Honey has botulism spores, and while child and adult stomachs are acidic enough to kill it, a baby's isn't.

Coulda sworn that applied mostly to raw, unprocessed honey. Probably wise to adhere to it anyway, I suppose.