I was out in the woods the other day hoping to find a deer antler to use in a craft project and I got to idly wondering… what do vegans think of use of products that are of animal origin, but that are naturally shed or discarded by the animals in the wild, without any human intervention.
Examples:
Deer antlers - they are deciduous - the deer grows a new set in spring and sheds them in autumn, after rutting.
Seashells - OK, the organism usually had to die to vacate the shell, but that’s just part of the natural life cycle.
Ambergis - AKA ‘Sperm Whale vomit’ - the whales just produce it and it washes up on the beach - and it is highly valued in perfumery
I’m not a vegan, but it seems to me it’s going to be an individual decision. I mean, I only learned fairly recently that a fair number of fruits and vegetables are not technically vegan, because their production involves the use of bees to pollinate the plants. Which seems to me an extremely strict definition of “vegan” that I suspect most vegans do not subscribe to.
In my opinion, most of the vegans I have met would take the position that, while this particular antler may have been shed naturally, if there is a market for them, someone else may be tempted to harm deer in order to make a quick dollar. This particular blob of ambergris may not have harmed any whale, but using it creates the temptation to harm whales.
An old German folktale summarized tells about a maid who was found weeping in the cellar next to the beer keg. When asked, the maid said she was thinking how someday she might marry and have a son, and someday they might ask that son to go to the cellar to fetch beer, and that son might jiggle the keg while getting the beer out, and because of that jiggling, a brick might work loose from above the keg, and might fall on her son’s head and kill him.
In other words, don’t work so hard to find things to worry about.
For the antlers, I think that makes sense (and some antlers in the market are from culled/butchered animals, not naturally shed - although I am sure an accreditation framework could be worked out for that)
For the whales, I don’t think the market for ambergris can lead to harm for the whales - they need to be alive to produce the stuff, so in theory, it should work the other way - if you want Ambergris, you have to look after the whales.
True, but those species don’t naturally shed their horns/tusks - deer antler is actually a pretty plentiful resource, even if (especially if) nobody ever harms a deer
Why would bees be a problem? They’re just doing their bee thing, and it happens to pollinate the plants. It doesn’t harm the bees unless we somehow harvest the plant with the bee still attached somehow.
It’s a win-win for everyone- we get pollinated plants, and the bees get nectar and pollen.
It depends, I guess, on whether the bees doing the pollinating are wild bees, doing their bee thing, or if they are domesticated bees, enslaved by humans for their honey
Yes, the reality is that deer are no in danger of being hunted for antlers but if someone spread a rumor in Asia that deer antlers were an aphrodisiac then you can bet that people wouldn’t just wait around for them to fall off.
Insect are the dominant pollinators. Bees top the list. Topping the list for bee pollinators worldwide is the European honey bee. Agriculture relies on a bee that humans have selectively bred and then introduced into non-native ecosystems. Since we care about protecting, tending, and when needed feeding those invasive bees they tend to out compete the native bees. They also tend not to be as good at pollinating native crops as native bees.
We rely on those partially domesticated bees, despite their weaknesses at actually pollinating crops, because we had already invested in using factory farming methods on them. They also produce honey and wax that we can take from them. Because we have selected for relatively low aggression against the beekeepers they are useful for industrial agriculture. We can and do intentionally breed them to increase numbers. We then ship their hives around to pollinate crops at the appropriate times.
The bees we rely on for agriculture aren’t just doing their thing. Now I am not a vegan so none of this is my ethical take. As pointed out above there can be a range of opinions on how absolutist any individual vegan. Some do focus more on reducing harm and draw that line different places. PETA considers honey and beeswax to be non-vegan products because of the kinds of issues I brought up above. That is different but provides some insight into how some view beekeeping practices that related to agriculture.
Oh for god’s sake, Mangetout was just looking to do a craft project with a deer antler. Are you saying that there’s a danger that some random Asian dude could see Mangetout’s project, get a boner, then go back home and start blabbing about it, leading hordes of poachers to cause America’s super abundant white-tail population to go the way of the passenger pigeon? Cripes, that German maid in the basement has nothing on you.
If vegans won’t consume milk or eggs, which are pretty much “naturally shed” by animals, I’m sure they wouldn’t want deer antlers or snake skins or bird feathers either.
But seriously, if going vegan will help us get through this Thanksgiving holiday in the US without being exposed to Jello with fruit in it, I may be supportive of the whole vegan
idea.
I think there’s a key difference in that you generally can’t just wander around and collect eggs or milk in the same way you can collect seashells at the beach, or antlers in the woods. The question is: Is that point of difference significant to vegans?
Eggs are in fact live birds waiting to hatch, unless they are unfertilized, which presupposes human manipulation. They aren’t ‘shed’ in any natural sense.
Milk is even less ‘shed’. In nature the female provides exactly as much milk as it takes to raise her children, no more. Human intervention requires extraction, among other things. It doesn’t just appear in a bucket.
Antlers on the other hand, have already served their purpose for the animal and are a true discard.
I understand vegetarianism as an ecological position, but not as a moral one. It’s like my friend who “doesn’t eat anything with a face”. To her, fish don’t have faces.
Perhaps you missed the point. No one is criticizing the OP, but the OP was asking how a vegan (who obviously already takes these concerns seriously) might view it. This was one concern that Cooking could envision, and it’s not a completely far out hypothetical because there are similar situations already happening.