How can plants be vegan and honey not?

Question

Insecticides are used to kill insects even in organic farming. You can't farm without killing insects on a mass scale so why is honey not vegan when you don't even kill them and they are beneficial to the plants?

Answer 1

This is not my personal opinion, but rather my take on why some people have these beliefs:

While farming vegetables leads to the killing of insects through pesticide, killing/cruelty is not inherent to growing plants. Honey, however, is often harvested in ways that injure or hurt some of the bees. (Obviously the bees are not intentionally killed, but I believe many are hurt or killed in the process due to carelessness or just as an unavoidable result of the harvesting process.) Also, I think some (not me) see honey as a sort of product of animal labor/slavery. I've seen indications of such beliefs on PeTA message boards.

Also, it's in the definition of "vegan". Veganism is the refusal to eat/use any product that comes from an animal, whether the animal had to die or not. (Hence the lack of meat, milk, eggs, etc. in a vegan diet.) Honey is made by an animal, while plants are not. Whether or not insects are killed when plants are grown is irrelevant to the definition of a vegan diet.

Answer 2

Completely forgetting all the habitats of small mammels destroyed during the production of fields for farming vegetables etc.

These habitats are not detroyed through herd fields, because everything remains the same. But crops? Think of all the trauma caused to the ground?

Bye-bye, habitat.

Answer 3

Yes, insects are killed when plants are harvested, and I'm sorry for that.

However, insect casualties r/t harvesting of plant foods is a far cry from the deliberate exploitation of an insect species in order to steal a food product (honey) which is made by and belongs to them... a food product that is completely unnecessary for human nutrition.

Answer 4

Honeybees are alien to North America and no one has any business promoting their survival over the survival of other pollinator species just because they make honey.

I choose the strength and protection of biodiversity over the homogenization and weakening of the pollinator population.

Answer 5

because honey is bee vomit

Answer 6

State your source.

I fear you point about

organic veg may be BS.

Answer 7

it depends on what level you take being  a vegan to.

The further up the chain you go, you will start to realize nothing is purely vegan. At some point an animal was hurt, an animal was killed or a life was abused.

People kill animals / insects everyday just driving or walking. Granted, it is not *intentional* but it still happens. Try to view it as survival of the fitest at that point.

When it comes to farming, yes, they do it intentionally, It is inevitable that insects are even killed in organic farming. Some of these insects are harmful though and if they get into the food it could potentially make us sick if we eat it. There could probably be a more humane way of making those bugs go away but the farm world doesn't really think in those terms.

My point is, being vegan is about how far you want to take things. Cotton is grown on farms and I'm sure bugs are killed to keep the cotton alive...does that make cotton un-vegan? It is really up to you and what level you decide you want to take it to. Being a vegan is doing as much as humanely possibly to put a smaller footprint on this earth - as far as animal rights go.

Honey is not vegan b/c it is an animal *product*. It directly comes from an animal - "Vegan: a philosophical position and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind."

Plants on the other hand are not direct products of animals, even though they were birthed because of animal product (in the soil) and yes, the killing of the bugs to keep them healthy.

I understand your question. I question whether or not I want to support the use of cow dung in soil in order to grow my fruits and veggies. But like I said, it really depends on how far up the chain you want to go and how far you want to take your veganism.

Answer 8

Because you are stealing the honey from the bees.

Answer 9

You don't have to kill bugs to farm. It called using coverings. My family has a small garden and we use no form of bug killing whatsoever. I'm not saying its for the bugs, i can care less if the bugs die. But we really don't have a problem with bugs. And honey is obviously from bees. So yeah, being vegan is not eating anything from animals. Plants are not the direct product of animals.

Answer 10

You may want to check out www.vegetus.org for an excellent essay on why honey is not vegan.  While what the bees do is beneficial to the plants, the honey they create is their food, not ours, for lean times.