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Stella Artois is not Vegetarian
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ?
Jan 15, 2003, 22:05
The commercial fishing industry is - of course - the primary reason i don't eat shrimp. I understand how heartless this sounds; but the people earning a living off that industry are earning a living off the destruction of vast areas of our planet and the sooner we stop paying them wages, the sooner they'll be forced to find something else to do. Stop buying trawled fish.

I know the world is not that simple; i know that fishing villages which have survived on that way of life for generations are ill-suited to suddenly find some other way of supporting themselves. But they can either stop now or stop in 7 or 10 years when there's just no fish left at all.

But farmed shrimp (does such a thing exist?)... not sure what ethical issue i'd have with that. I know fish farming - by and large - is environmentally destructive; but no more so than large-scale crop growing; what with groundwater contamination, pesticide build-ups, lowering water-tables, desertification, nitrate pollution etc etc etc; and bear in mind that there are sensibly run fish farms - they aren't all like the worst examples of them (just as some agri-businesses are measurably better than others).

I don't share your squeamishness regarding animal products. So honey is squeezed out of a bee's arse? Fine with me. Plant growth is basically the transformation of waste materials and energy into plant material. Shit + Sunlight + Water = Corn (to criminally oversimply). It's an organic process just like honey production, and neither one seems more worthy of squeamishness than the other (as i see it).

My "squeamishness" only seems to kick in when i can empathise with the animal in question. And insects don't seem to induce that in me for whatever reason. I can swat a wasp without any hassle, but fretted for days before finally deciding NOT to put down a mouse-trap in my last flat. Go figure.
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Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ? (Merrick)		 Replies:
Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ? (YerArseInParsley)
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