Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why aren't figs considered vegan?

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#71

Post by ianai »

Lio wrote: post #45
chris_wot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Gassing may be one option. Another thigh is simply grinding them alive.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#72

Post by ianai »

raverbashing wrote: post #62
croisillon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bees and hens don't produce "naturally" food for humans, they have their own use of honey and eggs [addendum to people answering "bees don't produce for bears either" or "plants don't produce food for humans either" : that's a strawman, I merely commented the term "naturally produced honey and eggs"]

Newsflash: nothing in nature "produces" food specifically for another species/groups (with some exceptions) The plant "doesn't want" to be eaten (except for fertilization purposes) any more than any animal who can become prey.

Actually many plants “manipulate” animals or insects to do their bidding through their produce. Many (all?) flowers exist to attract bees or birds to carry their pollen to other plants. Some even paste their pollen onto bees after trapping them into a sticky fluid. Fruit of course transmit seeds for plants. Those plants being cultivated in farms may not often have their seeds directly planted for the next generation, but their species is definitely assured to continue by their humans.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#73

Post by scandinavegan »

raverbashing wrote: post #65
cyphax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Even if you treat the animal like a king; it's still not free to do its own thing" This person should get out of their gentrified neighborhood flat and go see what "do its own thing" mean in the wild. (There's also a good subreddit for it as well) It is not pretty, it is not idyllic

Why do you think this vegan wants nothing bad ever happen to an animal? Freedom is valuable on its own, even when that freedom means that life is a struggle. Why do you assume that this person thinks nature is idyllic and pretty?

You can compare it to choosing between a life in prison or living alone on a deserted island. If the person affected makes the choice, that's one thing, and it doesn't really matter which option they choose from a moral standpoint. But choosing for someone else is iffy. How can I decide if it's best for you to be in prison or on a deserted island?

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#74

Post by rocgf »

Grustaf wrote: post #40
salthound wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do bees produce "naturally" food for bears? Do hens produce "naturally" food for foxes?

I think the vegetarian argument is that while hunting may be natural for a lot of animals, including us, we have the possibility not to do it, so we should. I don’t really agree, but it’s a reasonable stance.

I believe it's a bit more nuanced than that.

Most vegans I've spoken to believe that hunting is okay. If you have the callousness of killing a baby dear, then you 'deserve' to eat it. The problem comes from how modern meat is produced - in massive factories which provide just enough conditions for the 'meat' to get produced. Animal wellbeing is nowhere near the list of priorities.

Mark my words. Two hundred years from now, if there will anything left of this planet, we will be seen as retarded barbarians for what we are doing now to the animals and environment.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#75

Post by ericb »

telesilla wrote: post #57
lostlogin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bees don’t survive in the wild where I am in New Zealand and there is no way they can eat all the honey they make, which is an average of 65kg more than they use, per hive. If they swarm, the swarms will die from varroa. Having the honey there weakens their hive as it’s too large an area to warm during winter. What’s the ethical thing to do?

The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally, so there is no longer a source of honey (except for that delicious beech honeydew, but I don't know if those insects can be farmed). https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1436-honeydew-ecos...

> The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally

What is it that makes the "natural order of things" better? Aside from our fantasies about not being animals, aren't humans part of the natural order, by definition? It seems like a deforested barren world would be more moral under this sort of reasoning?

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#76

Post by strainer »

dgellow wrote: post #60
seanwilson wrote: post #44

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 st…

> 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. Don’t worry (or do worry), newspapers will attack veganism, vegetarianism, AND carnivorism (or omnivorism) if they have ways to create inflammatory headlines. That’s not something reserved to only one subset.

Medias treatment of of different subjects is not randomly balanced in the way you assure. Clearly, positions which are more popular with readership require better treatment than less popular ones, and positions which are popular with advertisers have to be treated most respectfully.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#77

Post by benj111 »

lostlogin wrote: post #39
croisillon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do they eat animals dead of old age?

Can something die solely because it’s old?

Does my car stop working because its old? Strictly speaking no, there will be a cause of failure, in practice everything wears out, age has increased the chances of things wearing out, so after a certain point age becomes a 'good enough' reason.

I suppose if you want to be pedantic, a common failure mode isn't actually 'correct'. A heart attack isn't the cause of death, its oxygen starvation, so I'm not sure more 'correct' equals more useful.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#78

Post by Grustaf »

raverbashing wrote: post #62
croisillon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bees and hens don't produce "naturally" food for humans, they have their own use of honey and eggs [addendum to people answering "bees don't produce for bears either" or "plants don't produce food for humans either" : that's a strawman, I merely commented the term "naturally produced honey and eggs"]

Newsflash: nothing in nature "produces" food specifically for another species/groups (with some exceptions) The plant "doesn't want" to be eaten (except for fertilization purposes) any more than any animal who can become prey.

“Except for fertilization”

I would argue that to the extent plants want anything at all, it’s just that. Animals too, for that matter.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#79

Post by scandinavegan »

brusch64 wrote: post #48
cyphax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are obviously many different flavors of vegans, each stopping at different points when it comes to what they consider animal suffering. There are vegans with pets, but they might not agree with the idea that all forms of keeping animals is considered suffering. Other vegans won't keep pets, I'm one of them, because I agree completely with the post you commented on and draw the same conclusion as you that it's incompatible with my beliefs.

There's a middle ground as well, exemplified by Gary Francione (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_L._Francione). He's an animal rights abolitionist, meaning that we should just improve the welfare of animals in the animal industry, but abolish it completely. Yet he keeps pets, by only taking in rescued animals from shelters. He argues that their lives are already ongoing, and we should make the best situation we can for them. But we shouldn't buy animals from breeders, because then we help perpetuate the situation.

I think it's a sympathetic position to take, so yes, it's possible to want to stop people from breeding pets while still caring for the ones that are already here.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#80

Post by rocgf »

michaelt wrote: post #9
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 understand what you mean, but I don't know any vegans who would eat a steak from a cow that had died of old age.

Veganism is seen as a label, but it's actually not a binary trait, it's a spectrum at the very least. What I mean is that there are vegans who would never eat meat under any circumstances, ever. There are vegans who would eat eggs if they know that the chickens laying them are living healthy lives. There are vegans who would also eat meat under some circumstances, but ultimately these things matter very little in the grand scheme of things because, again, it's not black or white.

Most vegans are vegans because they are compassionate and caring people. They see cows as friends, not as a steak machine. Therefore, your argument is, honestly, irrelevant. It's simply a non-starter for most vegans, the same way as you would not eat a dead dog.

Post reply on HN