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The Vegan Honey Debate

January 21, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 5 COMMENTS

Learned an interesting tidbit yesterday: Turns out that there's a big debate in the vegan community over whether honey is okay to eat. The hardcore vegans argue that it's an animal product and that even though it's an excretion, the bees are imprisoned. The honey-eaters, on the other hand, argue that if you avoid honey you have to consider everything bees are used for: "Honey accounts for only a small percentage of the total honeybee economy in the United States; most comes from the use of rental hives to pollinate fruit and vegetable crops."

Also, following some links off the article I was reading a bit about pearls (which also aren't vegan). The suggestion is that vegans who really want them should wear fake ones, which brings up a whole other interesting issue: Other people don't know you're wearing fakes and you're therefore elevating the pearl in society (and thus the killing of oysters for them). (The same could be said about people who buy fake diamonds because they are against the diamond industry.)

Tags: ethics, vegan


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COMMENTS

1nick

You're on a slippery slope, NB. Next you'll be asking about breastfeeding and fellatio are kosher. (from what I hear, a vegan breastfeeding a vegan baby doesn't make it un-vegan; only products from other animals are verboten.)

I'd be interested in an experiment, a cross between "The Year of Living Biblically" and "Super High Me" that stuck to the strictest tenets. Like no refined sugar etc. (filtered through ground up charred bones).

January 21, 2009

2Larissa

The pearls debate is very interesting. I think that if you're adopting something as extreme as veganism, then you should probably have a solid, personal reason behind it. And through your own rational, the pearls choice should be fairly obvious.

January 21, 2009

3amber

that's funny, I just hung out with my very vegan friend last night. I've asked him about this before - he said really strict vegans (like him) don't eat honey or any bee-related products. Not so sure about the whole pollinated fruit thing, but it seems like they would have a loophole there. (and believe me, I've totally asked about fellatio - answer inconclusive).

January 21, 2009

4amber

Oh and about the pearl thing, i guess i'd assume anyone who was a vegan would be one on principle, and probably wouldn't want to wear fake pearls no matter how pretty they are, for the very reason that was cited. seems like sort of a moot point.

January 21, 2009

5Ryan

Honey not being vegan is not now, nor has it ever been, a debate. Constraining bees to artificial hives—beekeepers go out of their way to capture wild hives—is not vegan. Replacing bees' honey with corn syrup or the like is not vegan.

Yes, bees are pollinators. Honeybees, however, are not the only pollinating bees; nor are bees the only pollinators. They may be essential for things like almonds, but there are plenty of crops that don't require honeybees specifically or any bees at all. In fact, all plant foods native to North or South America do not require any commercial pollination.

If honeybees were to die out as a species, we might have a few problems, but we could cope. However, if farms stopped using insecticides and the entire beekeeping profession were to disappear, our food supply wouldn't blink. Beehives swarm prior to splitting; wild hives would spread and naturally seek out (and build) homes near food sources, including our crops.

My favorite are those who argue for using honey because it's a natural sweetener. It's actually a naturally refined sweetener that hits your bloodstream right away—unlike a raw fruit sugar like agave nectar.

January 25, 2009