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Why aren't figs considered vegan?

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Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#41

Post by lostlogin »

skilled wrote: post #32
clydethefrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone disturbs a colony to take honey or pollen it places a great amount of stress on the bees. This disorients them for a period and, in that sense, their whole order has been tampered with. We cultivate honey bees just like chickens, cows, and pigs, and like all agriculture animals, their high population is a harm to wild populations: they compete directly for nectar and pollen, transmit diseases, and push w…

Hmm, so, my local farmer who sells glass jars of Bee Pollen at the market is doing this as well?

Sort of yes, sort of no. You can collect pollen without opening up the hive. However hives must be opened regularly to inspect and treat, which actually helps the hive in easily measurable ways, like ‘is the colony alive?’.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#42

Post by ToolsDevler »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
bloogsy wrote: post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

How does milking a cow harm an animal?

Cows are manipulated to produce much much more milk than they would naturally. Also the machnines doing the work are harsh and painful. But even when it is from a farmer doing everything by hand on a really happy cow. Being vegan means in the first place avoiding everything produced by or out of animals. The rule "It must not harm any animal to be vegan" is an additional rule for products which are not made by or out of animals. Standard super market milk violates both rules.

Source: A friend of mine is vegan since almost 20 years (before it was hyped).

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#43

Post by cannonedhamster »

proaralyst wrote: post #22
ma2rten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "there are different kinds of vegans". The term vegan was coined by the Vegan Society. They have the following definition: "Veganism is a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing and any other purpose."

But not all people who avoid more foods than a vegetarian do so because of that ideology. If those people's diets exclude all animal products it's useful to use the term vegan as most English speakers will understand what you mean. Language is defined by usage, not organisations.

I think my only really problem with this is that it creates confusion because of people using the term wrong. I've known too many people who say they are vegetarians but still eat meat frequently, or they eat fish, which is meat regardless of what Catholics claim.

Vegetarians are people who eat no meat intentionally but may consume milk, eggs, and some other animal byproducts like honey so long as nothing had to directly die or suffer.

Veganism is a higher level where the attempt is to remove all products and foods that are not plant based it that require some other creature too perform outside of it's natural life cycle.

Pescatarians are people who are vegetarians other than the eating of fish.

Raw food advocates do not cook their food.

Jainism has a religious element to their food intake and behavior regarding other creatures.

In any case it's either done for dietary or ethical reasons. The standard diet is to eat what's comfortable or easy with little thought to what you're eating. That's pretty much the only constant as there's numerous other non-veg diets out there that people eat for a variety of reasons religious, dietary, and personal.

Me personally, I'm of the opinion that you should case about what you're eating and as long as you're comfortable with what that means regarding how it's procured, eat up

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#44

Post by seanwilson »

I wish people wouldn't generalise that because 1) some people might consider figs non-vegan and 2) this line of reasoning might be weird/stupid, then 3) most vegans must think this therefore veganism is weird/stupid as a whole.

How many people that say they are vegan consider figs non-vegan? Are there surveys on this? I'm going to guess most haven't thought about it (figs aren't daily in most places), don't have a strong opinion on it or don't see the harm if the insect does this process itself, yet the natural reaction of comments in newspapers is to strongly attack veganism using fringe issues like this.

Most of veganism seems pretty straightforward and rational but there's a bunch of edge cases like figs, honey, almonds and avocados people love to use a means to attack the whole concept as stupid. It would be like looking for fringe cases of things meat-eaters do (e.g. eating animals while they're still alive, eating dogs and cats) and using that to attack meat-eaters.

I'm seeing recently that newspapers love to run veganism stories where readers jump in with comments mocking imaginary vegans that hold extreme fringe views (who is actually claiming this? how many are?) to compound their existing beliefs that veganism is stupid. It's exactly the same thing as political filter bubbles where nobody is learning anything because everyone is sharing extreme and fake stories in an echo chamber.

The goal of veganism seems to be to make choices that are better for the planet and reduce animal cruelty - it turns out the choices you need to make to do that aren't always obvious (which is interesting in itself), but that shouldn't be a reason to ignore the whole concept or ridicule people who are trying to make a genuine attempt to help others.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#45

Post by Lio »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
bloogsy wrote: post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

How does milking a cow harm an animal?

I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian but in order to have a female cow produce milk regularly you need to cycle it through pregnancy.

So the question is what happens to the calves?

Well the females go on to be milk cows but males calves are raised just long enough to be slaughtered.

If the male is particularly unlucky it will become a veal calf, which I'm sure you'll agree is not a great life.

If the male cow is "lucky" it will be castrated and allowed to grow into a bullock (British terminology, known as a steer in USA).

Very rarely a male calf will be raised breeding but it's a pretty small chance.

So milk.

In the case of egg laying hens, most male chicks will go off to be gassed as they have no commercial value.

So eggs.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#46

Post by cannonedhamster »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
bloogsy wrote: post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

How does milking a cow harm an animal?

Milking a cow requires that you keep the animal producing milk which means numerous pregnancies that produce either another dairy cow that has been born into milk slavery or a meat cow destined for the slaughter house after fattening. I'm not sure where people get the idea that milking hurts the cow as it doesn't. The machines are automated and some are ones the cows voluntarily enter for milking. If the cows don't milk regularly it can be painful for them.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#47

Post by lostlogin »

clydethefrog wrote: post #25
skilled wrote: post #8

Is there anything similar on Bee Pollen? What are people's thoughts on this? I have met people who are extremely opposed to it, whereas I myself can't get enough of it.

When someone disturbs a colony to take honey or pollen it places a great amount of stress on the bees. This disorients them for a period and, in that sense, their whole order has been tampered with. We cultivate honey bees just like chickens, cows, and pigs, and like all agriculture animals, their high population is a harm to wild populations: they compete directly for nectar and pollen, transmit diseases, and push w…

Done right, beekeeping doesn’t stress bees very much at all and there is a feedback mechanism which trains the beekeeper very quickly if they are bad at it.

If the beekeeper works in hot, still weather, is careful and avoids the squashing of bees they can work without smoke or protective gear. Even basic things like entrance size are not controlled in the wild, and having a beekeeper open the entrance or reduce it down is a huge advantage to a colony. Managed bees can be looked after such that they live far longer than any feral colony will. Diseases haven’t been shown to be spread to native bees in New Zealand, but competition for food sources is definitely going to be occurring.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#48

Post by brusch64 »

cyphax wrote: post #15
bloogsy wrote: post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

I think maybe there are different "kinds" of vegans. As in: maybe not all vegans are vegan because of the same ideology. One vegan explained his motivations like this: he's against slavery, using animals is like a form of slavery and he's against that. Even if you treat the animal like a king; it's still not free to do its own thing. I really liked his reasoning, it seemed consistent and coming from a good place. Tha…

Does she or he have a pet ? Just wondering.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#49

Post by [deleted] »

bloogsy wrote: post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

[deleted]

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#50

Post by croisillon »

jjgreen wrote: post #30
croisillon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to meet an omnivore who would do it [edit: omnivore instead of carnist]

Omnivores are generally polite enough to call vegans that which you call themselves, perhaps you'd like to return the favour?

sorry the term didn't come to my mind, I updated my comment
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