Apparently lots of people have no idea how bees work, or how honey is made. And they’ve made some weird assumptions about how it’s done. Just to be clear in case you don’t know, honey is made by bees collecting nectar from flowers, which they store in their honey stomachs and bring back to the hive. Inside the hive, they pass the nectar to other bees, who chew it and gradually reduce its water content, turning it into thick, sweet honey. Bees are not harmed during this natural process (which is covered further in this Harvesting Honey Does Not Hurt Bees post). Ethical beekeepers ensure that bees are left with enough honey to survive and avoid stressing or injuring them.
Veganism is a political movement based on a philosophy cobbled together by people who don’t care to actually understand the real functions of the natural world. It’s a philosophy based on romanticism with generous side-servings of moral superiority and righteous indignation, NOT on so much as a single fact about the natural world.
If the world turned vegan as they desire, we’d kill the planet in less than a century through use of mass synthetic fabrics to replace leather, mass-manufactured vitamin B12 to replace naturally-occurring, animal-derived cobalamin, wilful destruction of species that literally no longer live in the wild because we’ve domesticated them utterly, and the forcing of carnivores onto plant-based diets.
The sheer idiocy of this particular vegan only underscores the point: there is quite literally no thought going on in this one’s head. They’ve simply adopted a doctrine, and everything they see, they interpret as evidence for that doctrine. Never mind that it’s actually evidence for the exact opposite, of course, and that those of us who know the facts are laughing our asses off at the amount of stupid coming out of their cranium.
The smallest level of applied thought shows that veganism is a nonsense. Just a little more thought shows the chain of extinctions and pollutions that it must necessarily create in order to exist. Vegans can claim the reverse all they like – but the evidence is there for those who choose not to ignore it or explain it away. It’s a synthetic lifestyle, and it carries all of the problems of such – petrochemical pollution, massive waste and redundancy, and violent disruption of society and the social order.
Vegans are generally hated for a very good reason – in the main, they’re arrogant, opinionated, vicious cretins who go out of their way to attack others who are just trying to live their lives and buy or consume nutritious food. Meat eaters don’t picket vegetarian or vegan restaurants, or harass people in the vegetable section of the supermarket. But oh boy, vegans are always trying to do that to meat-serving restaurants and the meat aisles in the supermarket. And then they have the affrontery to accuse others of aggression when they get thumped for their disgraceful behaviour!
“Meat eaters don’t picket vegetarian or vegan restaurants, or harass people in the vegetable section of the supermarket.”
As a lifelong vegetarian, I disagree. I’ve suffered through so much harassment from meat eaters. From purposely putting meat on my plate, opening their mouths to show me half chewed food (which is just rude) or lying about ingredients, belittling my diet or trying to explain how to stop being a vegetarian and enjoying meat.
The worst part is that I’m not even vegetarian by choice. Life would be so much easier if I COULD eat meat or eggs without getting sick. But between food allergies and intolerances and severe food aversions, I’m a lacto-vegetarian… meaning I don’t eat eggs but do eat some milk products.
I would be a conscientious omnivore, seeking to eat as little meat as possible and mostly buying animal products near expiration, at a discount price to reduce waste, save money and reduce market demand. I do not consider eating animal products in itself the problem, BUT the way the meat is produced: Industrial meat production is inhumane and unsustainable for the environment.
How many humans really need leather clothing? How many humans really need to constantly eat vast amounts of animal products? How much animal products are advertised and sold to us JUST because of consumerism selling us the story that this is how it must be?
While I can agree that some vegans can be annoying, the damage the meat industry and ignorant meat-eaters are doing to the environment is a major issue, which you seem to be utterly oblivious to. You also seem to lack any empathy towards the suffering of non-human animals.
The statements you make? Sounds to me like you’ve been listening a bit too much to the meat industry, like someone who was listening to the tobacco industry when they were wriggling and trying to assure that smoking was perfectly safe, and refuse to acknowledge that there are actual problems with the meat industry at its current state. For a very real example, the deforestation of the Amazon for grazing grounds to feed cattle to sell abroad. The rainforest soil drains of nutrients quickly, becomes less useful for grazing, and leaves a wasteland as the cattle farmers need to cut MORE forest to feed the cattle. If you don’t understand what the problem with that is, you must’ve been living under a rock at a remote farm for the last few decades.
And soy? A majority of soy is used for animal feed… Soy that we could eat straight, without wasting it by first feeding it to cattle. This would save on processing costs, resources, fuel, chemicals, etc., if we just ate it ourselves.
Just because humanity has survived this far by doing certain things, doesn’t mean it is sustainable in the future, and we need to look into reforming our culture and economy.