If I use this to fertilize my veggies, are they still vegan?
Two factors to consider id say. Blood isn’t the only organic source of nitrogen so it’s not as if its necessary, thus I’d wager many vegans would consider it unnecessary animal suffering, at least in theory. However the caveat, and second factor, would be blood is byproduct, no ones killing the animals in order to obtain blood meal so many people including vegans may think it more ethical to not let it go to waste since weather or not there’s a demand for blood meal, there will still be animal blood that needs to be disposed of.
Strictly dietarialy, yes they would still be vegan. All soil is full of countless formless decomposed animals and plants, it’s an inescapable reality of how the soil came to be. It can only get more ethically involved when you choose to add it yourself imo.
That second point would require intimate knowledge about which animal parts would be disposed of if they didn’t find a buyer.
In reality, everything is used. If there wasn’t a market for part of an animal, a use was found and a market created (which is part of the reason why industrially produced white sugar, beer, wine, apple juice, potato chips and bread usually aren’t vegan).
Anyway, vegans usually don’t care about whether an animal product could be leftover. Their philosophy boils down to “Just fucking leave animals in peace.”
Their philosophy boils down to “Just fucking leave animals in peace.”
It’s more complicated than that unless you don’t understand how many animals die when you clear farmland. Every crop you eat came at a cost to animals, if there’s no amount you deem acceptable or unavoidable your only option is to exclusively eat food you grew yourself, and that still alters the environment to be less favorable to animals, you just don’t directly kill them like large scale farms do.
There are vegan blood meal alternatives out there to resolve this exact conundrum.
But the reality is, unless your plants are being grown hydroponically in a sealed warehouse or similar, chances are real good that they are feeding on decaying animals (either directly or indirectly) whether you like it or not. They’re mostly insects and annelids and such, but still animals.
I think the issue for vegans is more about whether animal slaughter was involved in making their fertilizer. Dead pillbugs in the soil is just nature doing its cycle of life thing.
The issue for vegans is whether animal slaughter was involved and whether they supported it with their purchase.
Its easiest to treat paying for something the same as doing it firsthand.
It gets really strange to find the line that separates how far away from an immoral act you need to be to be considered moral still. In the same room? In the same building? What if you don’t explicitly ask someone to do the immoral thing, and only ask for the remains of it?
a common definition of nature is the stuff that is untouched by humans.
as wiktionary puts it:
flora and fauna as distinct from human conventions, art, and technology
If i see you get attacked by wild animals i guess i won’t try to help you, wouldn’t want to go against nature or anything