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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
