As for the exploitation, all living things have their own lives. Even plants seem to be able to communicate to some degree and can be stressed and stuff. Either you’re OK exploiting living things to some degree or you die. The level of exploitation is what should be discussed. Is beekeeping harmful to bees? I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like it.
As for it being sugar, sure. Sugar isn’t bad though. Sugar is bad when consumed in the quantities the average American consumes it. It also has other properties that make it pretty good for your health. For example, I think it’s good for preventing allergies because it contains pollen (I might be making this up, but it seems like I’ve read that somewhere).
Plus, it’s just weird to want to eat the vomit of other species anyway.
Do you realize that fruit is the ovary of a plant? Life is weird. Get over it. Weird is not a word that should come into a discussion of ethics.
The “what about plants” argument is such a thoroughly debunked joke argument that it’s amazing anyone would continue to make it. Eating animals and their secretions requires harming significantly more plants than eating the plants directly because animals need to be fed too, and animals as food is by far the least efficient and most environmentally destructive way to have a food system.
It’s not an argument. It was a consideration that should be weighed if you’re being consistent. Your response is not accurate though. You’re referring to most farmed animals. Bees do not require this and is what the post is about. There are many animal products that do less harm than plant products. Farming plants requires large areas of land to be cleared for farming and replaced with what is likely not a native species. This can’t be good for native animals. If you’re comparing the harm done by almonds and honey, honey is almost certainly better for harm reduction, yet it’s an animal product, not a plant product.
many animal products that do less harm than plant products
Can you cite some other than honey? Animal products require animals which mostly require, well, plants. Plants that cause harm in the exact way you described. And more of them than just humans eating the crops directly. More than 60% of animal biomass on the planet right now is livestock, so bees seem practically irrelevant to the issue.
Not with bees not.
Eating plant based sugar will kill and harm more animals that bee produced sugar.
Or do you think that agricultural process does not kill bugs?
I would argue that eating honey instead of plant based sugar would be more vegan.
In general drawing the line of veganism with bugs is… Complicated. As you really cannot have agriculture without killing bugs.
You need pesticides, or some form of plage control. You need to harvest plants that surely will have animals in them. And you’ll need to clean the vegetables of bugs before consumption.
The answer they gave is the gotcha answer. The real answer is that vegans currently don’t consider plants worth moral consideration. Its a non-issue, although I’m sure you could find some vegans who are concerned they are harming plants.
To put it another way, you can harm a plant as much as you can harm a rock. Of course our understanding might change as time goes on.
Eating animals and their secretions requires harming significantly more plants than eating the plants directly because animals need to be fed too,
and they are mostly fed parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat. the same field that grows soybeans for human consumption is growing animal feed, it’s just different parts of the plant.
