Why aren't figs considered vegan?
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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.
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.
Datapoint: the meat, fish and diary industries are provably much wealthier and more powerful than alternative food-related industries and they are known to heavily fund "think tanks", lobbying groups, "social media influences", ads.
I agree. This topic recently ran as Today I Learned on Reddit, and of all the vegans checking in, no one had heard about this. It's the same with me and all my vegan acquaintances, no one has heard that figs wouldn't be considered vegan.
The article title makes it sound like everyone agrees that figs aren't considered vegan, which is weird.
Speaking of fringe views, I read an interesting article debunking the idea that vegans are deficient in common nutrients. It looked deeper into the studies presented, and it turned out that they had studied fruitarians (only eats fruits and perhaps nuts and seeds without killing the plant), or religious groups with extremely limited food sources. Those groups are vegan, but they are a small subset of all vegans, and it would be incorrect to say that findings with these groups apply to people eating varied vegan diets.
If it's about not eating intelligent animals- pigs are way smarter than both dogs and cats. Yet meat eaters wouldn't find eating them "fringe" (I don't).
That kind of behaviour could easily be misunderstood, so none of them advertise it much.
[edit: omnivore instead of carnist]
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.
If you butcher when the animals are old, you have quite a bit lower risk of losing the meat due to disease, because old animals fall ill more than young ones.
If you butcher, you have some control over the timing, which helps with using the food. You don't have perfect control, but more than random, and you reduce the risk of having to throw anything away.
So if you use the animals both live and dead, it makes sense to optimise for keeping them alive long and die while still healthy (healthy enough to eat/use, if you want to be cynic).
People choose all sorts of inaccurate terms for themselves, your reasoning doesn't seem particularly sound either.
As social psychologists say, there is no in-group cohesion without out-group hostility, but it is a shame for vegans (for which I have some sympathy) to isolate themselves in this manner, particularly if they want to change the world for the better.
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.
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.
That logic would allow him to eat figs because it's a natural process, as you're no actor in the process of the fig forming itself.
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."
Language is defined by usage, not organisations.
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
You shouldn't leave out the egg part.
But yes, terms change. I've read early Vegan Society texts where they talk about "fruitarians" as those vegetarians that only eat the fruits produced by animals, i.e. milk, egg, honey. Today a fruitarian is a vegetarian that only eats fruits (and sometimes nuts and seeds) that you can pick without killing the plant.
There are also different opinions on the term vegetarian. In Sweden, it commonly includes milk and egg, and if you order a vegetarian pizza you get cheese from cow milk. But the Swedish National Food Agency, and other agencies like the Consumer Agency, define a product marked "vegetarian" as being strictly vegetable based. The last couple of years, soy hot dog manufacturers have been forced to add "lacto vegetarian" or "ovo vegetarian" to their packages.
So it's nothing strange to have different points of view of what exactly is denoted by the terms vegetarian and vegan.
In My Big Fat Greek Wedding there's a scene were the mother-in-law learns the groom is vegetarian and (after exclaiming embarrassingly loudly) she says she'll cook him lamb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFemw_6a-Tg
The way I understand this is that it says that Greeks think that lamb is vegetarian as in "not really meat". I always found that a little weird, because in Greece lamb is absolutely "meat". Traditionally, you're only supposed to eat it on Easter sunday, or on religious feasts (the "panygiria") so it's really something special, unlike pulses, legumes and fish (which would be eaten much more commonly traditionally). I can imagine a Greek yiayia saying "You're vegetarian? That's OK, I'll cook you chicken!", or adding feta to the salad, etc. But- lamb? I don't quite see that.
Maybe it's a Greek US diaspora thing, but I'm guessing that was translated for the American audience whom the authors considered might be confused by "I'll cook you chicken", because they actually don't consider chicken to be "meat".
I think this is part of the same definition issue. The sentence I quoted as an example doesn’t make it clear whether or not Watson intended for their choice of not eating eggs to be a personal one or one included in the definition of veganism. Certainly if someone told me they were non-dairy vegetarian I think I wouldn’t assume that they eat eggs (or assume that they definitely don’t eat eggs). I think I would err on the side of non-eggs despite that that would be the sameish as veganism. Perhaps everyone else disagrees with me and the phrase has a clear definition, but otherwise I think it shows that a lot of these terms are not fully defined and different people take them to mean different things when describing themselves.
Rereading the sentence again I think perhaps I parsed it wrong, in which case I agree with you.
Etymology is not use. Use defines language.
The "Vegan society" of mid-20th century is an insignificant part of the history of vegan ideas. It's just where the term originated in the US as a standalone term.
Millions of peoples call themselves vegans, and have adopted this or that part of veganism (or even just vegeterianism) without having ever heard about the Vegan Society and its founders.
The definition of the term doesn't belong, copyright style, to those that coined them, but to how it evolved in language by those that use it.
The dictionary itself captures that use, and doesn't care about how people originally defined the term in some office:
"vegan: a strict vegetarian who consumes no food (such as meat, eggs, or dairy products) that comes from animals"
Like how surrealism as a term is not defined by what Andre Breton wrote in some official documents the 20s and 30s.
It's kind of like the term hacker. The general public understands it to mean one thing, but vast majority of people who apply the term to themselves understand it to mean another thing.
You can doubt it, but you'd be wrong. At best they'd chanced about some historical background piece that contained the definition. But the huge majority wont tie it to some 19th century "Vegan Society" or know/remember anything about some "original definition".
>It's kind of like the term hacker. The general public understands it to mean one thing, but vast majority of people who apply the term to themselves understand it to mean another thing.
Well, the latter are wrong in your sense (etymology, history) too. There are references to the term "hacker" to mean intruder on other systems from decades before people self-identified and pushed for the supposedly benign-only definition. (E.g. there are reports of "hackers" messing with telephone services and bringing them down as far back as the early sixties (literally mentioned as "hackers", not phreakers).
Do you have any evidence for that claim? All the vegans I know use this definition.
Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.
No, but you can check it empirically and statistically.
>All the vegans I know use this definition.
Well, I know several people that self-identify as vegan (annoyingly so), who have no idea about the origins and just seen a few videos or read some articles and were convinced to try that diet.
(And of course they don't belong to any society either).
>Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.
Yes, confused it with the vegetarian society.
The word vegan was explained to me, decades ago, by an swissair employee: "VGML is vegan, which is vegetarian, but also without eggs and other animal foods that leave the animal alive, and almost unspiced. If you want spices, you want AVML."
Plus vegans draw the line at different things. Some evidently wont eat figs, some potentially may eat meat if the animal had died naturally.
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.
When you say "against animals suffering in any form" you make it sound like you mean both in the human-operated animal industry and wild in nature, and also that these vegans would want to prevent wild animals from breaking their legs or something because it induces suffering. I haven't seen vegans argue that we should interfere with nature to limit suffering in that way.
Some vegans are utilitarians (what I've read of Peter Singer comes to mind), and then I guess it comes down to if you think that the benefits of the animal's life outweighs the suffering when considering if they should have been born or not.
Other vegans are into animal rights, where you assign unalienable rights to animals like the right to freedom, but these vegans wouldn't even consider your idea of ending all animal suffering. They would be antinatalist in the sense that being born into captivity and raised just to be slaughtered for meat is wrong, and for that animal it would surely have been better to not have been born at all.
I'm heavy on the animal rights side and extremely suspicious of utilitarianism. I'm sure that hardcore utilitarianism could lead to the bizarre conclusion that you're presenting, but I haven't seen it argued.
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
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?
[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"]
BTW, vegetable farming, be it organic or conventional (especially conventionnel) isn’t exactly non-human animal friendly.
But still, veganism isn’t as clearcut as it would first seem.
Are chickens not the most wide spread birds? Sheep and cows the most widespread 'large' animals.
Even rats are doing as well as they are because of humans.
Yes I suppose you can reduce the meaning of life to successfully creating the next generation, that applies equally to humans and amoeba, but I would contend its too reductive.
Almost all that you are eating are plants, taken from the wilderness tens of thousands of years ago, and genetically selected over hundreds of generations.
If you went back to eating the plants in the state they exist naturally in the wilderness, you would have a very hard time feeding yourself.
I don’t really agree, but it’s a reasonable stance.
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.
Most the control comes from killing the bad and reproducing from the good (and then hoping the queen finds good drones, avoids birds and finds her way home).
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1436-honeydew-ecos...
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?
The plant "doesn't want" to be eaten (except for fertilization purposes) any more than any animal who can become prey.
I would argue that to the extent plants want anything at all, it’s just that. Animals too, for that matter.
The poet Percy Shelley wrote most idealistically but also intelligently about vegetarianism, this small section of a poem contrasts a human caretakers attention to the behavior of wild animals:
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,--
In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
Source: A friend of mine is vegan since almost 20 years (before it was hyped).
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.
1. Enzymes in the fig digest wasp parts so you don't normally find wasps inside your figs. So they really are vegan.
2. The males are flightless and wouldn't have escaped anyway. The females only escape long enough to go lay their eggs in another fig. So it really isn't that dramatic.
Source: https://www.jerseyshoreonline.com/dear-pharmacist/figs-reall...
Even the ones that do contain wasps can be considered vegan in my opinion. Veganism is about reducing harm and suffering, and these wasps aren’t being harmed. After all, no one is forcing the wasps to fertilize the figs. It’s part of their natural life cycle.
I'm reminded about this beautiful documentary about the fig tree and her symbioses: The Queen Of Trees [1]. This is an official version. It was broadcasted on American TV, and this was ripped on BitTorrent. I can highly recommend watching this documentary. It teaches us how cruel yet intelligent nature (and evolution) can be. There are mutual benefits for different species who suffer or die in the process.
So, if one thinks insects aren't vegan I think you can make a logical basis for not wanting to include figs in your diet.
For hyperbole, if the only way for mango trees to grow was by soaking up the nutrients of dead sheep, and so every mango farm would chop up a ewe for fertilizer once a week to maintain their orchards, than would mangoes still be considered vegan?
As for your example - if the sheep's natural life cycle included being consumed by a mango tree in order to breed then sure, I'd consider those mangoes vegan. If we have to kill the sheep in order to grow mangoes ourselves(but the sheep gets nothing out of it) then I would not consider them vegan.
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 wild bees out of their native areas.
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.