So, I had an amusing idea for a science fiction short story. At long last, we discover that we are not alone in the Universe: There’s a sentient species on a planet orbiting Vega. And it turns out they’re a lot like us. Their biochemistry is even based on more or less the same amino acids as ours.
Well, as so often happens when cultures meet, some humans eventually go to live on their world, and vice-versa. One enterprising immigrant to Earth decides to set up a restaurant serving xis people’s cuisine, which is based on the flesh of organisms about as closely related to them as pigs and cows are to us. And of course, xe bills it as an authentic Vegan restaurant.
But PETA gets wind of this, and sues him for false advertising, since it’s meat, not vegan. It goes to court, and the restauranteur eventually wins… not because “Vegan” means “of Vega”, but because Vegan organisms are alien to Earth, with a completely different ancestry than anything here, and so they can’t be a member of kingdom Animalia. So all of the food in that restaurant is, in fact, technically vegan.
Following that line of thinking. The Earthlings could ask a whole lot of Vegans to come visit, and then cook them as “authentic Vegan cuisine.”
Of course, the big finish to the story is when one of the Vegans, about to board the ship to Earth, finally gets a translation of the Earthlings’ manual and screams, “TO SERVE VEGAN - IT’S A COOKBOOK!”
Then it comes to light that the restaurant owner isn’t even from the Vega system, he and his staff are all Tau Cetis! So social media rallies against them and shuts their Tau asses down.
This idea made me think of the short story “The R-Strain” by Harry Turtledove about a genetically engineered pig that chewed its cud. A rabbi was asked if it was kosher. The rabbi ruled yes, because it had both cloven hooves and chewed its cud. However, since it couldn’t interbreed with regular pigs, it wasn’t a true pig. Note that this story was written before a wild swine that chewed its cud was discovered.
Is Vegan meat kosher? Is Vegan meat even meat? This is an existential question. Do Vegans dream of electric sheep? Do they sing the body electric? If Vegan Samsa woke up one morning transformed into a giant cockroach, would Samsa be cockroach or Vegan? And would Vegan cockroach be high in protein?
Can we eat the Vegans themselves? It’s a well-established fact that the smarter the meat, the more delicious it is. See: insects->fish->poultry->mammals. Intelligent Vegans are probably very tasty but without the problem of giving me a nasty prion disease.