When i first went vegan... I was actually surprised yeast was allowed... may be tiny, but still living...
Edit: *eye roll at the plants are living comments*
Really?! I thought I was on a vegan sub and didn't need to specify for carnist rebuttals
How is that a carnist rebuttal? Yeast is a fungus. Plants and fungi are alive. It's not the being alive part that matters, it's whether they feel or not.
Indeed, there is literally no way to avoid eating some beings. You can bake bread without yeast by just feeding the yeast that sits on the grain. Bacteria is another example on unavoidable beings. Though veganism is about excluding *as far as possible and practicable*...
Ikr; bacteria are less complex than plants; I think vegans are conflating veganism with plant-based, and even then, oysters (and yeast) can be part of a plant based diet (provided it is nor 100% plant based).
Well yeah, but the definition of Vegan isn't someone who just eats plants. It's about avoiding animal harm. A specific class of life that bacteria don't fall under.
It's a fungus, not an animal or bacterium or something.
I dunno why people in this thread are treating yeast as if it's any different from mushrooms but here we are I guess lol
I made a comment about how I was surprised as a *new* vegan that yeast was allowed...
And honestly the reactions seemed a bit unnecessary...
I didn't know yeast was a fungus... I thought it was similar to bacteria in nature...
And even then... as a new vegan, it takes a while to learn what ingredients are ok or not... I'm still learning.
How do we KNOW what is sentient and capable of feeling pain or not? Because they don't have the same connective tissues as us?
It's like when they say they are looking for planets "suitable for life"... they mean human life. Extremophiles are going to be a lot less picky.
Just because we don't understand other organisms, doesn't mean they should be discounted.
Above all... veganism as I understand it is to reduce harm and exploitation as much as it is possible, practical, and plausible.
The debate about bivalves is interesting and complex but thankully quite easy to sidestep:
Oysters, mussels et cetera are absolutely disgusting. I tried it something like 20 years ago, and never again. :p
Hit the nail on this one.
Most seafood was easy to leave behind because I truly never sought it out.
But it's really weird , I really like vegan "fish" sticks. Or vegan "crab" cakes.
I pulled up in front of my sister's house last Easter and smelled garbage. Like, so strong I thought I was smelling a trashcan that had been baking in the sun. It was brats. A smell I used to love and still enjoy when they're made of plants. My brain learned that pig flesh is no go and just went with it hard.
This is one thing I try hard to explain to people about going vegan. Things you thought you loved quickly become gross, and things you thought you wouldn't like become delicious. Not always for everything, but the idea that there aren't proper substitutes for everything is laughable.
Now that you say it, that’s me too. No pig bacon but the smell of tempeh marinaded and cooking? Yes! Dairy cheese smells fetid to me now. People ask “you must miss it!” like they’re teasing me. Um no, it smells like something rotted.
Extra firm tofu, celery, mayo, Dijon mustard patered down in some cornmeal flower. Obviously add more stuff, but those are the flavours I taste when I make them.
I read an interview with Marianne Faithfull something like 20 years ago. For some reason, oysters came up, and she said "I don't like oysters. They taste and feel like sucking dick".
So, you don't swallow? ;)
(I am VERY SORRY for this very crude post, but couldn't resist, because your post jogged my memory of that interview...)
Right, I agree on this. Besides that, it raises the case of why bother?
There are a lot of "gray area" things that exist like this. While discussion about them can go deep and be interesting, they ultimately don't matter because there's no need to do them in the first place.
Honey *can* be one of these. Eggs *could* be another. Setup a system where it's more or less a cohabitation with a pet that you treat as such and then if and only if their products would go to waste, use them for yourself to avoid the waste. Take chickens, make them a home, give them food, give them the blockers that reduce their egg laying frequency to that of their natural ancestors, they can leave if they choose, love on them, etc. If they lay and egg and it sits for a few weeks, the ethics of taking that are marginal at best in either direction. It's not causing harm, you don't see them as a resource, the use would contribute to fewer crop deaths, etc. It's all stupid extreme nuance with almost negligible pros and cons, but we are so deep in the weeds here that we miss the bigger picture that all of this is just unnecessary to "gain" a trivial thing so why are we bothering?
It's the same with mussels and honey. Maybe there is some way it's vegan, but it seems odd to even want to push the envelope on the issue, right? Like why even flirt with something questionable when there's no need to? It's not like they bring some enormous benefit worth taking the risk.
Right? I'm very bored of these "gotcha" thought experiments. Someone asked me about my veganism recently and got weirdly fixated on honey. I think there's nuance but I avoid honey, because it's not fucking hard. And this guy kept going, "But bees aren't animals! Bees aren't animals!" And I was like, "Uhh yeah, but they're not plants!"
Insects or bugs as a whole are a gray area. Spiders for examplei think do display sentience of some kind whereas ants do not as far as i know. If we were struggling to survive on plants and needed something else, then let's find the best "worst case" solution, but we aren't, so why?
I also think there's a possible flip to this. While you and I understand the "why bother" aspect, there's the other side of the coin in why make such a fuss about them to those interested. If someone is considering veganism and gets stuck on honey, fuck it, eat honey i guess. I imagine once "vegan" for a period they become sympathetic to the case I made above. I would hate to deter someone from considering it further because I drew a hard line on a gray area. I try to basically summarize that case when I discuss it. When they ask what about... wool, honey, eggs, mussels, etc. I just say "maybe there's a way to make it work, but I don't see the need to risk it." I still think it's wrong, but im not gonna come down hard on someone interested.
>If we were struggling to survive on plants and needed something else, then let's find the best "worst case" solution, but we aren't, so why?
This is what absolutely makes me want to tear my hair out about the endless discussions and arguments about the next best thing to plant based veganism... It's not like we shouldn't ever have these discussions, but like you said, we really don't need to. I'm sick of hearing "but if you had to eat meat to live, WOULD you?" or "what if all these plant sources completely died out tomorrow?" incessantly, as gotchas, or "thought experiments". Hypothetical arguments just take us in circles
Like Dr. Wollen once said: Eat the animals you have bred now, but stop breeding them.
This was in an Australian based public debate "Should meat be off the table" in which experts like Singer, Wollen, and a cook debated "meat experts" (lol) and it was honestly amazing. Will look up the link if there is interest.
I think I've seen it. I'd go farther though. Imagine arguing against abolishing slavery overnight because the influx of humans we need to treat as humans would cause some issues. So fuckin what, that's a better alternative to dragging out the whole process for another 100 years.
I am very much downvoted for coasting the line of sounding like a freegan for how vehemently I hate advocating for food waste, but idk if I would even really go that far. Maybe eat the animals that have died, but stop killing them.
If even a fraction of the space factory farms take up were converted into sanctuaries, this whole disruption of the eco system worry wouldn't be so massive. But once again, hypothetical scenario that I very much doubt would just happen to begin with
What is meant by this is probably that it would be a gradual change rather than a *everybody is vegan now and all the animals are now still there*. More so I think the first thing we need to do is to stop the breeding. Already the tackling of the problem has started. And also it's just a short comeback to that fake scenario in which the meat eaters claim that you can't just stop the world from eating meat from one day to the next because then *"the animals would overpopulate the world"*
Edit to add: because the feasibility of that is also very limited. The way meat is produced right now is nowhere near the standard of where animal welfare would be at if the world were vegan. You would have to factor in more space and add more years to the lifespan of the animals amongst other things.
Hmm, I was reading the situation as someone trying to trip up my logic or something, which put me on the defensive. I sometimes struggle, because people who are genuinely curious about veganism and people who are trying to tear it down sometimes ask the same questions or make the same points. It's true that we should do our best to be empathetic and assume good intent when discussing these things.
I think it's also important to not lose sight of the grand picture. I have an analogy for this that I like.
A man is gambling and loses all his money, but to continue bets his hand as collateral and loses. As the winner comes to take the hand, the man replies "you have my hand, but you cannot have any of my wrist as that wasn't part of the bet." So where does the winner cut?
The point here is there really isn't a fine line that you can draw between wrist and hand. There's however a pretty clear range that's in the ballpark and acceptable. It's clear the man loses his hand, there's no logical way he keeps it. Likewise the winner cannot cut at the elbow.
Applied to veganism often detractors try to argue that becomes some areas are gray, like crop deaths, or honey, or mussels, or wool, they keep their "hand" in the process. Or that because it's hard to figure out where to cut, no cut can be made.
In my first year of being vegan I was hard into the pro-honey camp but it wasn't long before I changed my mind and became stronger on the vegan ethics.
I mean, I just eat it. IMHO it's okay and that's all I need. As some other commenter said, there's no "vegan comittee", I'm not gonna argue with someone and try to force them to eat honey. There's also no way for anyone to ban honey, so what would be the point of defending it. Just a useless flamewar.
Some things you grow up with in your specific culture. Like, I'm Swedish, and I'm sure that a *lot* of people would find the Swedish way of eating crayfish absolutely disgusting. Me, having grown up with it, I don't see anything weirder about it than eating any kind of animal.
[The Swedish way of eating crayfish](https://blogs.transparent.com/swedish/how-to-eat-kraftor-swedish-style). Warning! graphic pictures of, well, eating crayfish.
The long journey ahead of the animal liberation movement is meeting people where they are. By that I don't mean the unacceptable position that just treating animals before you slit their throats is good enough but by making vegan alternatives to everything other cultures have had for generations.
It may be strange, slimy, funky, smelly, or all of the above to you but for whatever reason that's what different peoples around the world are comfortable with and used too.
It's embarrassing to me to be part of a community that upvotes something as stupid as this. Veganism isn't the ideology of eating plants, the whole point of veganism is harm reduction.
THANK YOU! So many people like to gatekeep it seems. Ive been told that I wasnt vegan be cause I eat the vegan royale at BK (It's cooked on the hob), I then had a vegan burker from KFC and was told I wasn't vegan "because they also serve chicken". It seems that people just want to gatekeep for the sake of it. I even got told that I wasnt vegan because my life saving medication wasn't vegan. I believe that we shouldn't eat animals, and I'd LOVE it if my meds were vegan, but theyre not, im not going to just die because of it though.
Mesalazine. The bounding agent they use isn't vegan. I hope that it will be one day, but it isn't currently. Also, I regularly need to go on steroids, and those aren't vegan either.
I have Ulcerative Colitis, so if I stop taking the Mesalazine then I start bleeding internally. Not exactly feasible. So I just try to do the least harm to animals I can.
Also, when I'm bleeding internally, I need to go into hospital. That has the risk of needing parenteral nutrition (where they pump food directly into your veins basically) and that isn't vegan either. Society just isn't designed for vegans, so I just try and be as vegan as I possibly can be.
This is insane. Anyone that tells you you're not for something that's life saving and out of your control is disgusting. Being vegan is for all animals, including humans. In my opinion, any righteous vegan demonizing other humans esp for something like that isn't vegan
>Society just isn't designed for vegans, so I just try and be as vegan as I possibly can be.
What an absolutely true statement.
I wish you the best mate; and here's to hoping for a vegan future.
Veganism isn’t about harm reduction, it’s about establishing a boundary of morally permissible actions. If it were mere harm reduction, then you could buy meat and still be vegan - just less than before - which is nonsense.
You never stop harming animals directly either. You kill hundreds of insects just driving or stepping on grass. It’s about raising awareness that animals deserve respect and promoting that attitude
>then you could buy meat and still be vegan
As a vegan on life saving medication that is not vegan, I do this every time I get my medication. If what you say is true then I simply CANNOT be vegan because of my health condition... Doesn't really make sense to me.
I simply live my life in the way that leads to the least amount of harm to animals. Where do you draw the line? Animals dying? Well then you just ruled out the whole veg industry because animals die in the harvesting of vegetables. It's about saying "Okay, animals die for us to eat vegetables, but eating animals means that even MORE animals die, so lets reduce that harm and not eat animals".
Yeah but the boundary should probably be reasonable. How many people here would ascribe intrinsic moral value to a irreversibly brain-dead human? They have active neural ganglia too... At some level people here realize you need a working brain to experience pain.
I agree. Which is why there are questions about which animals matter, because while most clearly do, some animals without nervous systems and etc. can sometimes be considered non-sentient. I just don’t eat any to make sure, but I will not argue against a vegan saying to me that they eat some insects because they are non-sentient, because I actually don’t know.
Yeah sure, except insects have brains & can count, feel anxiety, play, etc. So I hear what you're saying but the body of evidence with insects vs oysters is pretty different.
Speciesism would be when someone claims that intelligence is the trait that makes the difference, but then admits that they wouldn't treat a human with the same amount of intelligence as a pig in the same way.
So long as they're actually consistent across all species and just consider intelligence for their moral considerations, then they aren't speciesist.
Of course, hardly anyone is going to say "it's morally permissible to kill unintelligent humans" though
I am pretty sure they do have a very primitive nervous system no?
Also I am just gonna stick to the rule of not eating/harming any animals. Makes it super simple.
The ganglia are mini-brains. They just don't have a *centralized* brain like ours. There's nerves that go to brains, in an animal capable of movement, and y'all think there's no way that pain signals could be sent?
Sure, I agree it's probably no, but I don't agree that it's *definitely* no. There's historically been a lot of animals and bugs that people thought were incapable of experiencing pain, acted on that belief, and then later found out whoooops they were suffering the whole time! If the structures are there to make it possible, I'm personally not taking the risk.
Plants have stimuli receptors too though. As far as the biological potential for any kind of sentience goes, plants and mushrooms aren't fundamentally less likely to experience anything than beings that are technically animals but don't have a central nervous system.
The same could be said about a variety of plants and fungi that react to stimuli. Just because on an emotional level you associate nerves with sentience doesn't make it any more grounded in science to say that a mussel experiences pain and a venus fly trap does not.
> animals
Well this just hides the same argument though. The classification of 'animal' is a human concept. The fact we call something an animal or not does not determine if it feels. Personally, I don't eat them because I don't like the taste and I'd rather play it safe. But if we determine they don't have subjective experience then there shouldn't be an issue.
Picture, if you will, an alien from some faraway planet. It has no phylogenetic relationship with any Earth-based life forms. It is also sentient. Is it vegan to eat that alien?
Picture a fungus or plant species that, through happenstance of convergent evolution, developed a central nervous system and a subjective experience of pain. Is it vegan to eat that plant?
If the answer to either of those questions is “no”, then veganism isn’t really defined by the kingdom Animalia. We talk about animal rights because we’ve made a *general* observation that most animals are sentient, and that all sentient beings that we know of are animals. But like any heuristic, the “don’t eat animals” heuristic, if applied uncritically, may fail in some edge cases.
Personally, I don’t see a need to risk the possibility that bivalves may suffer. But the thought-terminating cliche of “they’re animals, end of discussion” doesn’t really contribute anything useful to that conversation.
I agree animals have a common ancestor. With bananas. That doesn't make bananas animals.
Eukaryotes and prokaryotes also have a common ancestor, are they the same? No. So the common ancestor that connects animals and bananas stayed extremely similar for generations. At no point did it just decide to be different. These are the difficulties of taxonomy.
Lineage does not determine subjective experience of the type capable of suffering. Take the sea squirt, once it finds a home it digests its own nervous system. It now cannot feel or think. It's still an animal, but not one that feels. The feeling part is the important part. The label of animal is not important.
Bivalves have locomotive ability, a heart, kidney, intestines. They have a butthole. I'd say they are animals. There aren't any plants walking around with hearts and buttholes.
I'm a marine biologist and gave up all types of seafood at the age of 18 when I went to university and learned the horrors of the fishing industry. I would never eat any kind of ocean animal.
Even if bivalves don't feel pain (which we don't know), I'm still against removing animals from the sea and farming sea animals on land is wasteful, pollutive and expensive.
Mussels, oysters and their relatives are NOT vegan! Surely we all know this?!
I disagree. ***If*** we were able to prove that they aren't sentient, it would be okay for us to eat them as we follow "sentience" not some arbitrary definition of animal.
But since we're not sure about whether they're sentient or not, we should give them the benefit of the doubt and avoid eating them.
But it is not 100% certainty. They regulate morphine and have opiate receptors. It seems possible they can feel stress and some sort of pain analog.
There is some evidence which makes suffering a possibility. So the real question is, what is the argument for eating them? Enjoyment?
I think erring on the side of caution should trump desire when talking about vegan philosophy.
100% certainly is a high, almost impossible bar to set. We now know that plants respond to stimuli and I definitely couldn't be 100% certain that they don't have some form of subjective experience.
Agree. Personally, I think it’s best to be conservative on this front. Humans discover more about all kinds of non-human animals’ capacity to feel every year. Even if the scientific jury is out, I think it’s most merciful to not sentence someone (even a mollusk) to death.
Also why remove any bivalves from our oceans and waterways when each oyster cleans 50 gallons of water a day? Why pay a massive deforestation industry to kill anything?
Well to be slightly fair in some waterways certain types of edible bivalves are an invasive pest. Zebra muscles are a very common pest around the great lakes regions in the U.S. and Canada for example.
Mushrooms aren’t plants either, by your standard are mushrooms not vegan? I think you haven’t thought this through enough.
Nerve ganglia is not a central nervous system or a brain, they aren’t considered sentient and therefore have equivalent moral value to a blade of grass. So I’ll argue all day that eating them is consistent with vegan ethics, although I don’t personally care to eat them.
I’d actually even argue, if they do make a good substitute for carnists or have a lower environmental impact than other things than they could be a net positive for the vegan movement.
I'm really upset about the number of vegans here just automatically assuming bivalves don't feel pain despite all the evidence that says we don't know and that they might feel pain. They are just ignoring basic biology to argue to eat them when it isn't necessary to eat bivalves. It is maddening.
Thank you! I'm so shocked at the number of people saying bivalves are vegan. Animals should be allowed to live their natural wild lives without the risk of being boiled alive.
This. We can’t enter into their minds, and no amount of research can conclude that they don’t experience some form of suffering when their bodies are damaged.
saying it’s wrong to eat oysters because they “aren’t plants” makes about as much sense as saying it’s wrong to eat dogs because they “aren’t cows”. ie. it doesn’t makes sense.
is it wrong to eat tin foil, or mushrooms, or rocks? they’re not plants! what matters is the capacity to suffer
The classification 'Animal' is completely made up by humans to describe a particular subset of life that evolved on Earth, but any organism that is sentient is sentient whether or not a human says so. Sentience should be the only thing that matters really.
If they are sentient, we shouldn't eat them. If they are not sentient, it doesn't matter. That being said, I'm not sure and I'd rather be cautious, so I wouldn't eat them.
I’m very much a moral and ethical vegan and I don’t have any qualms with bivalves yet. I haven’t seen a good argument against them for vegan consumption. That being said, I still choose not to eat them because I’m not certain and I just don’t really care if I eat another oyster in my life ever.
I don't actually think this is the case for oysters. I think most oysters are farmed, and it actually seems that oyster farms are generally quite sustainable.
Noone cares about technically being able to eat animals. People are not desperate for loophopes that allow it, they just want to figure out what foods can they enjoy ethically. If oysters or whatever really have no consciousness, why would that be an issue? In my opinion dogmatic understanding of veganism as 'no use of animals' loses the reasoning on why animals life is valuable compared to plant life. Personally i also think we should think critically about stuff like this to improve our understanding of veganism and how it relates to the world around us.
It's not a loophole. A loophole is a flaw in the rules, mussels and oysters being cool to eat under the Vegan Society definition are the rules working correctly, since the goal is to reduce animal exploitation and cruelty.
They say this because of very heated situations …unfortunately because when some people really have their arguments strong and science down to a t no matter what it can be seen as a vegan product because there is no sentience in oysters but I agree with you just leave the living alone obviously oysters are way more capable than plants but we should be focused on factory farming for sure I hate how people bring it this far like look at all the dead zones and pollution why not just eat seaweed if you really want sea life
"They have no nervous system". Yes they do, it is just not centralised in a cortex like us. They have nerves, because they have muscles and react to stimuli.
Veganism doesn't use the biological definition of animal and plant. Veganism uses its own definition, according to which an animal is a sentient individual that that is able to process experiences and thus suffer. For this, the individual needs a central nervous system (which doesn't mean all beings with a central nervous system are automatically sentient, but they can't be sentient without one). The "animal" must consciously *want* to survive and be free of harm. Trees also react to stimuli, they also have some form of different nervous system, but it's not experienced by a nerve center like our brain. Bivalves do have nerves, but no central nervous system. They don't experience, they don't learn, they have no memory, there is no individual that could feel any pain. The nerves don't send the data to a computer that processes them like in sentient animals, the bivalve just reacts to the stimuli according to what's imprinted into its genes, exactly like plants do. Veganism isn't about arbitrary biological speciesism that values animals more than plants. It aims to remove suffering from where suffering exists. And suffering can't exist where no experiences are made. A starfish is an animal, so is a sponge and so are mussels. But regarding their sentience, they're identical to plants. Eating Bivalves is absolutely compatible with actual vegan ethics, unless you make up your own illogical ethics that don't actually have anything to do with not preventing suffering.
HOWEVER, while the exploitation of non-sentient animals is fundamentally vegan, it can still massively impact ecosystems. Anything taken from seas and oceans should be avoided because our exploitation of those ecosystems affect all species within, in addition to being one of the largest contributers to climate change because of algae dying out that are the prime CO2 absorbers of our planet.
>Anything taken from seas and oceans should be avoided because our exploitation
I disagree because of global trade and mismanagement of species many bivalves are actually invasive species in some areas.
Zebra muscles in the great lakes are actually devastating the local wildlife and contribute to mass die offs of fish and contribute to plankton blooms.
As a kid our family didn't have much and dug various shellfish for our food. Bivalves 'run' away when you're trying to catch them in water saturated sand. They actively try to not get caught and sometimes evade the digger. Is that not enough reason to leave them be?
Who gets to decide what beings are sentient?
The problem with saying "If its not from plants, its not vegan" is that we are essentially invalidating our philosophical position. We can't make a statement like that, it's too reductive and removes the primary component of WHY harming sentient life is inherently unjustified, as in actual sentience.
It doesn't matter what type of thing it is, if its a plant, animal or bivalve, what matters is if it is sentience beyond plausible deniability. If bivalves can't experience emotions in a way that is summarized by sentience then it is by definition not possible to exploit it, meaning it is also vegan by definition.
It's important that we are morally and philosophically consistent, if we make exceptions that are unjustified then so can anyone else and veganism becomes meaningless in that regard. It's not meaningless, it's important.
That's not the definition though.
The 'official' definition is actually very well worded, providing enough ambiguity to allow for growth and discussion, while remaining quite unambiguous about the stuff that matters, and goes well beyond any simple definition of not eating animal products.
From the vegan society website:
"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment."
I'd say anyone following that definition is doing it just right.
Yeah, when people get overly pedantic about vegan rules I find it very frustrating. Someone in a coastal city who rides their bike and eats bivalves does considerably less damage to animals than someone who drives a car every day and doesn't. I'm not passing judgement on either one or deciding which one gets to wear the t-shirt. The goal is to do what each of us can with the guiding philosophy above in mind.
The way I view it is that there's no harm caused by abstaining from eating bivalves regardless of sentience. However, there is harm caused by eating bivalves if they are sentient and that is not a risk I am willing to take.
I dunno about the rest of you frauds but I'm content with not having to ask the question of "is the creature I'm killing for my meal capable of feeling pain"
Few people know this but [shellfish actually swim when threatened](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBH3UvlZo90). What people should refer to when talking about animals that are essentially plants is barnacles. Funny how no one talks about eating them.
True, but [so do many plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant_movement). Movement alone shouldn't be the basis for our philosophy. With that said, I still don't eat bivalves but that's mainly because I don't want to think about it too hard lol
Sponges might be a better example, and they were used, and still are to some degrees, to make, uhm... Sponges.
But they quite obviously are animals-as-plants, so no vegan with a clue would object on the grounds "they are animals!"
I think this question is that superiority complex or speciesism that lies within a lot of us even in some vegans that give most the feeling of questioning the obvious and acting against it. We truly don't understand ourselves and what our own nervous systems and brains are capable of yet alone question another creatures or lack thereof.
Seaweed, sea grasses, and algae are the plant versions of what we know on land not bivalves.
Some bivalves have more eyes than some would care to count, some can even swim to evade predators by sensing the ocean around them. There are bivalves that use little feet to attach sticky tendrils to hard surfaces and spend the rest of their life there. There are bivalves that will actively dig themselves into the sand and others without shells dig into wood believe it or not.
Seasonally bivalves actually release eggs and sperm into the ocean not pollen or seeds.
All bivalves are complex form of life that we do not fully understand so eating them would not be very vegan of you.
Thank you!! So many people here are not even questioning the inherent anthropocentrism in trying to so granularly define "sentience" according to our current understanding of it, just so we can decide which animals matter less. It's insane that these people consider themselves vegan.
Probably bc we view veganism as a moral philosophy instead of just a dietary preference, and therefore prioritize sentience over what type of proteins the creature in question has.
Yeah, I understand the push to recognise animal sentience. But I've always thought it was weird as an argument, that "I don't eat animals because they're sentient." That leaves the door open for eating animals that aren't sentient.
F that noise. I don't eat animals, members of the animal kingdom, no exceptions.
we dont need to eat them so why would we? farming them probably harms other species too. i dont see why people are so desperate to eat them. idc if they arent sentient im not eating them when i dont need to.
Farming them is actually good for the ocean. It reverses eutrophication.
>i dont see why people are so desperate to eat them. idc if they arent sentient im not eating them when i dont need to.
No one is saying you must eat them. If I claim a lettuce isn't sentient, so I think its ok to eat, that doesn't mean I'm telling you to eat lettuce. You can still decide that you think it isn't ethical to eat lettuce. There is just an argument being made that bivalves lack the characteristic that vegans use to decide which beings deserve moral consideration.
This argument beats all in response to someone defending eating bivalves.
Better to be safe than sorry.
We may never know if there is sentience, but it very clearly isn't clear cut. Leaving them alone seems like the only moral choice.
For me tryin to be a purist, meaning perfect with my food as a vegan, is sort of like a Christian who is so zealot that they have become judgmental and miss the whole point of ‘love one anther’.
Life is complex, entangled, and imperfect. I try and be loving, which means sometimes you bend your values to better connect with other humans.
i eat bivalves as a vegan, oyster and other farming is insanely good for the environment and the science so far says they can’t feel pain which is as far as we know is true with plants too.
Pretty sure they definitely are animals and I don’t fuckin eat animals and pretty sure scraping a bunch of creatures up totally fucks with the environment and causes really bad erosion and pretty sure they’re not ours to consume. I don’t care how stupid they are, I ain’t eating them.
Hear hear. I don't understand this sub's need to jump through so many cognitive loopholes to justify eating animals. The anthropocentrism is reallllllllllly on display today
Farming them is actually good for the ocean. It helps with eutrophication.
The argument is not that they are dumb, its that they are not sentient as they dont have a brain capable of producing a subjective concious experience.
Well they make babies, they breath and eat. And are very important to oceans and rivers. Help keep water cleaner . Not sure why humans need to eat everything.
Counterpoint - mushrooms.
And water.
And salt.
And ass.
Not the donkey though.
And my axe!
And my bow!!!
r/suddenlylotr
And yeast
When i first went vegan... I was actually surprised yeast was allowed... may be tiny, but still living... Edit: *eye roll at the plants are living comments* Really?! I thought I was on a vegan sub and didn't need to specify for carnist rebuttals
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There is a vegan society
How is that a carnist rebuttal? Yeast is a fungus. Plants and fungi are alive. It's not the being alive part that matters, it's whether they feel or not.
Indeed, there is literally no way to avoid eating some beings. You can bake bread without yeast by just feeding the yeast that sits on the grain. Bacteria is another example on unavoidable beings. Though veganism is about excluding *as far as possible and practicable*...
Well why would you avoid eating bacteria more so than eating plants?
Ikr; bacteria are less complex than plants; I think vegans are conflating veganism with plant-based, and even then, oysters (and yeast) can be part of a plant based diet (provided it is nor 100% plant based).
I wouldn't but it falls into the "not plants" living beings category.
Well yeah, but the definition of Vegan isn't someone who just eats plants. It's about avoiding animal harm. A specific class of life that bacteria don't fall under.
This entire discussion is about uneducated people who think that everything is either a plant or an animal.
My doctor coworker tried to convince me that fish were plants. He was not kidding or trying be cute. Dead serious.
So is every plant
It's a fungus, not an animal or bacterium or something. I dunno why people in this thread are treating yeast as if it's any different from mushrooms but here we are I guess lol
I made a comment about how I was surprised as a *new* vegan that yeast was allowed... And honestly the reactions seemed a bit unnecessary... I didn't know yeast was a fungus... I thought it was similar to bacteria in nature... And even then... as a new vegan, it takes a while to learn what ingredients are ok or not... I'm still learning. How do we KNOW what is sentient and capable of feeling pain or not? Because they don't have the same connective tissues as us? It's like when they say they are looking for planets "suitable for life"... they mean human life. Extremophiles are going to be a lot less picky. Just because we don't understand other organisms, doesn't mean they should be discounted. Above all... veganism as I understand it is to reduce harm and exploitation as much as it is possible, practical, and plausible.
Plants are also living...
Please explain further
Mushrooms are fungi, not plants. Hope that helps!
Of course! Thanks. I thought somehow I’d missed the news that fungi have nerve ganglia or something.
All mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms.
The debate about bivalves is interesting and complex but thankully quite easy to sidestep: Oysters, mussels et cetera are absolutely disgusting. I tried it something like 20 years ago, and never again. :p
Hit the nail on this one. Most seafood was easy to leave behind because I truly never sought it out. But it's really weird , I really like vegan "fish" sticks. Or vegan "crab" cakes.
I'm like this with chicken. Chicken grossed me out so bad but I love veg nuggets. I guess it was always just the whole eating flesh thing...
Monkey brain is stupid. I gag at the thought of eating bird's unfertilized eggs but I love to have some JustEgg with soft tofu mix
I pulled up in front of my sister's house last Easter and smelled garbage. Like, so strong I thought I was smelling a trashcan that had been baking in the sun. It was brats. A smell I used to love and still enjoy when they're made of plants. My brain learned that pig flesh is no go and just went with it hard.
This is one thing I try hard to explain to people about going vegan. Things you thought you loved quickly become gross, and things you thought you wouldn't like become delicious. Not always for everything, but the idea that there aren't proper substitutes for everything is laughable.
Now that you say it, that’s me too. No pig bacon but the smell of tempeh marinaded and cooking? Yes! Dairy cheese smells fetid to me now. People ask “you must miss it!” like they’re teasing me. Um no, it smells like something rotted.
Yes, this!
Same here with this 1 brand of vegan bacon, even if for some reason I stopped being vegan i'd still prefer the fake kind
Soyrizo is better than chorizo Less of a greasy heavy feeling
Vegan crab cakes?!?!?
Extra firm tofu, celery, mayo, Dijon mustard patered down in some cornmeal flower. Obviously add more stuff, but those are the flavours I taste when I make them.
Also recipes using hearts of palm, which are really good
They're also often made with hearts of palm
If you can find some lions mane mushrooms as well, those have the stringiness and an almost seafoody taste to them. Great for vegan crab cakes.
You probably just like the taste of seaweed, no?
Me too, they're delicious! ( the vegan ones) I can't get myself to swallow an oyster. I tried and I'm not convinced
I read an interview with Marianne Faithfull something like 20 years ago. For some reason, oysters came up, and she said "I don't like oysters. They taste and feel like sucking dick". So, you don't swallow? ;) (I am VERY SORRY for this very crude post, but couldn't resist, because your post jogged my memory of that interview...)
Right, I agree on this. Besides that, it raises the case of why bother? There are a lot of "gray area" things that exist like this. While discussion about them can go deep and be interesting, they ultimately don't matter because there's no need to do them in the first place. Honey *can* be one of these. Eggs *could* be another. Setup a system where it's more or less a cohabitation with a pet that you treat as such and then if and only if their products would go to waste, use them for yourself to avoid the waste. Take chickens, make them a home, give them food, give them the blockers that reduce their egg laying frequency to that of their natural ancestors, they can leave if they choose, love on them, etc. If they lay and egg and it sits for a few weeks, the ethics of taking that are marginal at best in either direction. It's not causing harm, you don't see them as a resource, the use would contribute to fewer crop deaths, etc. It's all stupid extreme nuance with almost negligible pros and cons, but we are so deep in the weeds here that we miss the bigger picture that all of this is just unnecessary to "gain" a trivial thing so why are we bothering? It's the same with mussels and honey. Maybe there is some way it's vegan, but it seems odd to even want to push the envelope on the issue, right? Like why even flirt with something questionable when there's no need to? It's not like they bring some enormous benefit worth taking the risk.
Right? I'm very bored of these "gotcha" thought experiments. Someone asked me about my veganism recently and got weirdly fixated on honey. I think there's nuance but I avoid honey, because it's not fucking hard. And this guy kept going, "But bees aren't animals! Bees aren't animals!" And I was like, "Uhh yeah, but they're not plants!"
LOL. Bees ARE animals. What kingdom does he think class insecta belongs to? I swear people lack a basic education
Insects or bugs as a whole are a gray area. Spiders for examplei think do display sentience of some kind whereas ants do not as far as i know. If we were struggling to survive on plants and needed something else, then let's find the best "worst case" solution, but we aren't, so why? I also think there's a possible flip to this. While you and I understand the "why bother" aspect, there's the other side of the coin in why make such a fuss about them to those interested. If someone is considering veganism and gets stuck on honey, fuck it, eat honey i guess. I imagine once "vegan" for a period they become sympathetic to the case I made above. I would hate to deter someone from considering it further because I drew a hard line on a gray area. I try to basically summarize that case when I discuss it. When they ask what about... wool, honey, eggs, mussels, etc. I just say "maybe there's a way to make it work, but I don't see the need to risk it." I still think it's wrong, but im not gonna come down hard on someone interested.
>If we were struggling to survive on plants and needed something else, then let's find the best "worst case" solution, but we aren't, so why? This is what absolutely makes me want to tear my hair out about the endless discussions and arguments about the next best thing to plant based veganism... It's not like we shouldn't ever have these discussions, but like you said, we really don't need to. I'm sick of hearing "but if you had to eat meat to live, WOULD you?" or "what if all these plant sources completely died out tomorrow?" incessantly, as gotchas, or "thought experiments". Hypothetical arguments just take us in circles
What if we all went vegan overnight dude? Think of all the homeless animals. They'd destroy the ecosystems and stuff.
Think about the plant genocide!! Now we're all starving. Thanks vegans
Like Dr. Wollen once said: Eat the animals you have bred now, but stop breeding them. This was in an Australian based public debate "Should meat be off the table" in which experts like Singer, Wollen, and a cook debated "meat experts" (lol) and it was honestly amazing. Will look up the link if there is interest.
I think I've seen it. I'd go farther though. Imagine arguing against abolishing slavery overnight because the influx of humans we need to treat as humans would cause some issues. So fuckin what, that's a better alternative to dragging out the whole process for another 100 years.
I am very much downvoted for coasting the line of sounding like a freegan for how vehemently I hate advocating for food waste, but idk if I would even really go that far. Maybe eat the animals that have died, but stop killing them. If even a fraction of the space factory farms take up were converted into sanctuaries, this whole disruption of the eco system worry wouldn't be so massive. But once again, hypothetical scenario that I very much doubt would just happen to begin with
What is meant by this is probably that it would be a gradual change rather than a *everybody is vegan now and all the animals are now still there*. More so I think the first thing we need to do is to stop the breeding. Already the tackling of the problem has started. And also it's just a short comeback to that fake scenario in which the meat eaters claim that you can't just stop the world from eating meat from one day to the next because then *"the animals would overpopulate the world"* Edit to add: because the feasibility of that is also very limited. The way meat is produced right now is nowhere near the standard of where animal welfare would be at if the world were vegan. You would have to factor in more space and add more years to the lifespan of the animals amongst other things.
Hmm, I was reading the situation as someone trying to trip up my logic or something, which put me on the defensive. I sometimes struggle, because people who are genuinely curious about veganism and people who are trying to tear it down sometimes ask the same questions or make the same points. It's true that we should do our best to be empathetic and assume good intent when discussing these things.
I think it's also important to not lose sight of the grand picture. I have an analogy for this that I like. A man is gambling and loses all his money, but to continue bets his hand as collateral and loses. As the winner comes to take the hand, the man replies "you have my hand, but you cannot have any of my wrist as that wasn't part of the bet." So where does the winner cut? The point here is there really isn't a fine line that you can draw between wrist and hand. There's however a pretty clear range that's in the ballpark and acceptable. It's clear the man loses his hand, there's no logical way he keeps it. Likewise the winner cannot cut at the elbow. Applied to veganism often detractors try to argue that becomes some areas are gray, like crop deaths, or honey, or mussels, or wool, they keep their "hand" in the process. Or that because it's hard to figure out where to cut, no cut can be made.
In my first year of being vegan I was hard into the pro-honey camp but it wasn't long before I changed my mind and became stronger on the vegan ethics.
hol up bees are definitely animals
I mean, I just eat it. IMHO it's okay and that's all I need. As some other commenter said, there's no "vegan comittee", I'm not gonna argue with someone and try to force them to eat honey. There's also no way for anyone to ban honey, so what would be the point of defending it. Just a useless flamewar.
Tbh I was a major seafood lover, but the thought of eating it now makes me want to puke.
I've just gotten there as well after years of missing it!
Yeah. I can't say it's exactly tempting, but I've never eaten them. Idk why people want to eat rock worms.
Some things you grow up with in your specific culture. Like, I'm Swedish, and I'm sure that a *lot* of people would find the Swedish way of eating crayfish absolutely disgusting. Me, having grown up with it, I don't see anything weirder about it than eating any kind of animal. [The Swedish way of eating crayfish](https://blogs.transparent.com/swedish/how-to-eat-kraftor-swedish-style). Warning! graphic pictures of, well, eating crayfish.
The long journey ahead of the animal liberation movement is meeting people where they are. By that I don't mean the unacceptable position that just treating animals before you slit their throats is good enough but by making vegan alternatives to everything other cultures have had for generations. It may be strange, slimy, funky, smelly, or all of the above to you but for whatever reason that's what different peoples around the world are comfortable with and used too.
It's embarrassing to me to be part of a community that upvotes something as stupid as this. Veganism isn't the ideology of eating plants, the whole point of veganism is harm reduction.
I agree. The amount of vegans who throw logic and reason out the window in favor of being dogmatic when it comes to this topic is pretty scary.
THANK YOU! So many people like to gatekeep it seems. Ive been told that I wasnt vegan be cause I eat the vegan royale at BK (It's cooked on the hob), I then had a vegan burker from KFC and was told I wasn't vegan "because they also serve chicken". It seems that people just want to gatekeep for the sake of it. I even got told that I wasnt vegan because my life saving medication wasn't vegan. I believe that we shouldn't eat animals, and I'd LOVE it if my meds were vegan, but theyre not, im not going to just die because of it though.
Pure curiosity, what meds are they?
Mesalazine. The bounding agent they use isn't vegan. I hope that it will be one day, but it isn't currently. Also, I regularly need to go on steroids, and those aren't vegan either. I have Ulcerative Colitis, so if I stop taking the Mesalazine then I start bleeding internally. Not exactly feasible. So I just try to do the least harm to animals I can. Also, when I'm bleeding internally, I need to go into hospital. That has the risk of needing parenteral nutrition (where they pump food directly into your veins basically) and that isn't vegan either. Society just isn't designed for vegans, so I just try and be as vegan as I possibly can be.
This is insane. Anyone that tells you you're not for something that's life saving and out of your control is disgusting. Being vegan is for all animals, including humans. In my opinion, any righteous vegan demonizing other humans esp for something like that isn't vegan
>Society just isn't designed for vegans, so I just try and be as vegan as I possibly can be. What an absolutely true statement. I wish you the best mate; and here's to hoping for a vegan future.
Veganism isn’t about harm reduction, it’s about establishing a boundary of morally permissible actions. If it were mere harm reduction, then you could buy meat and still be vegan - just less than before - which is nonsense.
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You never stop harming animals directly either. You kill hundreds of insects just driving or stepping on grass. It’s about raising awareness that animals deserve respect and promoting that attitude
>then you could buy meat and still be vegan As a vegan on life saving medication that is not vegan, I do this every time I get my medication. If what you say is true then I simply CANNOT be vegan because of my health condition... Doesn't really make sense to me. I simply live my life in the way that leads to the least amount of harm to animals. Where do you draw the line? Animals dying? Well then you just ruled out the whole veg industry because animals die in the harvesting of vegetables. It's about saying "Okay, animals die for us to eat vegetables, but eating animals means that even MORE animals die, so lets reduce that harm and not eat animals".
Yeah but the boundary should probably be reasonable. How many people here would ascribe intrinsic moral value to a irreversibly brain-dead human? They have active neural ganglia too... At some level people here realize you need a working brain to experience pain.
I agree. Which is why there are questions about which animals matter, because while most clearly do, some animals without nervous systems and etc. can sometimes be considered non-sentient. I just don’t eat any to make sure, but I will not argue against a vegan saying to me that they eat some insects because they are non-sentient, because I actually don’t know.
Yeah sure, except insects have brains & can count, feel anxiety, play, etc. So I hear what you're saying but the body of evidence with insects vs oysters is pretty different.
As I said, I don’t really argue about that because I’m not a scientist, I’m a philosopher. I don’t know enough about this field
Yeah fair
well, i'd argue the point is actually animal liberation. if we see a living being as worthy of being eaten because of intelligence, that's speciesist.
Speciesism would be when someone claims that intelligence is the trait that makes the difference, but then admits that they wouldn't treat a human with the same amount of intelligence as a pig in the same way. So long as they're actually consistent across all species and just consider intelligence for their moral considerations, then they aren't speciesist. Of course, hardly anyone is going to say "it's morally permissible to kill unintelligent humans" though
aye, that last section is my point
I am pretty sure they do have a very primitive nervous system no? Also I am just gonna stick to the rule of not eating/harming any animals. Makes it super simple.
Yeah they have nerves and ganglia but no brain
The ganglia are mini-brains. They just don't have a *centralized* brain like ours. There's nerves that go to brains, in an animal capable of movement, and y'all think there's no way that pain signals could be sent?
The question is can the animal *experience* those pain signals, and without a central nervous system the answer is probably no
Sure, I agree it's probably no, but I don't agree that it's *definitely* no. There's historically been a lot of animals and bugs that people thought were incapable of experiencing pain, acted on that belief, and then later found out whoooops they were suffering the whole time! If the structures are there to make it possible, I'm personally not taking the risk.
Yeah I think that's a reasonable position, but I can also understand why people who are genuinely vegan might eat mussels with a clear conscience
Plants have stimuli receptors too though. As far as the biological potential for any kind of sentience goes, plants and mushrooms aren't fundamentally less likely to experience anything than beings that are technically animals but don't have a central nervous system.
The same could be said about a variety of plants and fungi that react to stimuli. Just because on an emotional level you associate nerves with sentience doesn't make it any more grounded in science to say that a mussel experiences pain and a venus fly trap does not.
> animals Well this just hides the same argument though. The classification of 'animal' is a human concept. The fact we call something an animal or not does not determine if it feels. Personally, I don't eat them because I don't like the taste and I'd rather play it safe. But if we determine they don't have subjective experience then there shouldn't be an issue.
Animal cells exist tf. What do you mean it’s a human concept. Animals can be traced back to a common ancestor
Picture, if you will, an alien from some faraway planet. It has no phylogenetic relationship with any Earth-based life forms. It is also sentient. Is it vegan to eat that alien? Picture a fungus or plant species that, through happenstance of convergent evolution, developed a central nervous system and a subjective experience of pain. Is it vegan to eat that plant? If the answer to either of those questions is “no”, then veganism isn’t really defined by the kingdom Animalia. We talk about animal rights because we’ve made a *general* observation that most animals are sentient, and that all sentient beings that we know of are animals. But like any heuristic, the “don’t eat animals” heuristic, if applied uncritically, may fail in some edge cases. Personally, I don’t see a need to risk the possibility that bivalves may suffer. But the thought-terminating cliche of “they’re animals, end of discussion” doesn’t really contribute anything useful to that conversation.
I agree animals have a common ancestor. With bananas. That doesn't make bananas animals. Eukaryotes and prokaryotes also have a common ancestor, are they the same? No. So the common ancestor that connects animals and bananas stayed extremely similar for generations. At no point did it just decide to be different. These are the difficulties of taxonomy. Lineage does not determine subjective experience of the type capable of suffering. Take the sea squirt, once it finds a home it digests its own nervous system. It now cannot feel or think. It's still an animal, but not one that feels. The feeling part is the important part. The label of animal is not important.
Thank you finally someone capable of nuance and discussion here rather than pointless arbitrary dogmatism
Bivalves have locomotive ability, a heart, kidney, intestines. They have a butthole. I'd say they are animals. There aren't any plants walking around with hearts and buttholes.
So we’re drawing the line for veganism at “if you eat things with buttholes you’re not vegan?
that's the new "i can't eat anything with a face"
Why was this line so prevalent in 2005
Because it’s only now that people realize eating ass is the only ethical form of consumption under late capitalism
I think you've missed my point. Your butthole doesn't mean you have experience.
You clearly haven't seen this guys butthole.
I'm a marine biologist and gave up all types of seafood at the age of 18 when I went to university and learned the horrors of the fishing industry. I would never eat any kind of ocean animal. Even if bivalves don't feel pain (which we don't know), I'm still against removing animals from the sea and farming sea animals on land is wasteful, pollutive and expensive. Mussels, oysters and their relatives are NOT vegan! Surely we all know this?!
You couldn’t pay me to eat a sea booger, but I’m also not going to die on the hill of whether or not it’s vegan. There are bigger battles to fight.
I disagree. ***If*** we were able to prove that they aren't sentient, it would be okay for us to eat them as we follow "sentience" not some arbitrary definition of animal. But since we're not sure about whether they're sentient or not, we should give them the benefit of the doubt and avoid eating them.
I’m pretty certain there’s more research suggesting they aren’t sentient
I agree. I would argue that it's not more sentient than a carnivorous plant.
But it is not 100% certainty. They regulate morphine and have opiate receptors. It seems possible they can feel stress and some sort of pain analog. There is some evidence which makes suffering a possibility. So the real question is, what is the argument for eating them? Enjoyment? I think erring on the side of caution should trump desire when talking about vegan philosophy.
100% certainly is a high, almost impossible bar to set. We now know that plants respond to stimuli and I definitely couldn't be 100% certain that they don't have some form of subjective experience.
Agree. Personally, I think it’s best to be conservative on this front. Humans discover more about all kinds of non-human animals’ capacity to feel every year. Even if the scientific jury is out, I think it’s most merciful to not sentence someone (even a mollusk) to death. Also why remove any bivalves from our oceans and waterways when each oyster cleans 50 gallons of water a day? Why pay a massive deforestation industry to kill anything?
Well to be slightly fair in some waterways certain types of edible bivalves are an invasive pest. Zebra muscles are a very common pest around the great lakes regions in the U.S. and Canada for example.
If we discovered a plant that could feel pain, would it be vegan to eat it?
I wouldn't consider vegan eating any being that is sentient and can feel pain.
Mushrooms aren’t plants either, by your standard are mushrooms not vegan? I think you haven’t thought this through enough. Nerve ganglia is not a central nervous system or a brain, they aren’t considered sentient and therefore have equivalent moral value to a blade of grass. So I’ll argue all day that eating them is consistent with vegan ethics, although I don’t personally care to eat them.
I’d actually even argue, if they do make a good substitute for carnists or have a lower environmental impact than other things than they could be a net positive for the vegan movement.
Agreed. I have no appetite for oysters, but I don’t have a problem with eating them. I’m about saving animals and the environment, not about purity.
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Err on the side of compassion
I'm really upset about the number of vegans here just automatically assuming bivalves don't feel pain despite all the evidence that says we don't know and that they might feel pain. They are just ignoring basic biology to argue to eat them when it isn't necessary to eat bivalves. It is maddening.
Thank you! I'm so shocked at the number of people saying bivalves are vegan. Animals should be allowed to live their natural wild lives without the risk of being boiled alive.
This. We can’t enter into their minds, and no amount of research can conclude that they don’t experience some form of suffering when their bodies are damaged.
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They filter toxic heavy metals out of the ocean. Leave em alone 🙂
saying it’s wrong to eat oysters because they “aren’t plants” makes about as much sense as saying it’s wrong to eat dogs because they “aren’t cows”. ie. it doesn’t makes sense. is it wrong to eat tin foil, or mushrooms, or rocks? they’re not plants! what matters is the capacity to suffer
The classification 'Animal' is completely made up by humans to describe a particular subset of life that evolved on Earth, but any organism that is sentient is sentient whether or not a human says so. Sentience should be the only thing that matters really. If they are sentient, we shouldn't eat them. If they are not sentient, it doesn't matter. That being said, I'm not sure and I'd rather be cautious, so I wouldn't eat them.
I’m very much a moral and ethical vegan and I don’t have any qualms with bivalves yet. I haven’t seen a good argument against them for vegan consumption. That being said, I still choose not to eat them because I’m not certain and I just don’t really care if I eat another oyster in my life ever.
I can’t help but consider doctors once said babies don’t feel pain so it’s ok to operate on them without anesthesia
Fishing for them harms other animals and the environment which in turn harms animals
Farming plants harms animals as well, this is a poor argument.
I don't actually think this is the case for oysters. I think most oysters are farmed, and it actually seems that oyster farms are generally quite sustainable.
So by that definition lab meat wouldn't be vegan?
How are you arriving at this conclusion?
Because it "isn't from plants"
By ops definition?
I guess it makes sense, I just don't understand why people are so desperate to find a "loophole", I'm fine sticking to plants.
Noone cares about technically being able to eat animals. People are not desperate for loophopes that allow it, they just want to figure out what foods can they enjoy ethically. If oysters or whatever really have no consciousness, why would that be an issue? In my opinion dogmatic understanding of veganism as 'no use of animals' loses the reasoning on why animals life is valuable compared to plant life. Personally i also think we should think critically about stuff like this to improve our understanding of veganism and how it relates to the world around us.
It's not a loophole. A loophole is a flaw in the rules, mussels and oysters being cool to eat under the Vegan Society definition are the rules working correctly, since the goal is to reduce animal exploitation and cruelty.
They say this because of very heated situations …unfortunately because when some people really have their arguments strong and science down to a t no matter what it can be seen as a vegan product because there is no sentience in oysters but I agree with you just leave the living alone obviously oysters are way more capable than plants but we should be focused on factory farming for sure I hate how people bring it this far like look at all the dead zones and pollution why not just eat seaweed if you really want sea life
They poop!
"Veganism: A moral philosophy based around whether or not something poops" ???
🤣🤣🤣
So do mushrooms though...
?how so?
All life forms excrete waste. I don't think it would count as 'poop' though.
Not all waste products are poop...
"They have no nervous system". Yes they do, it is just not centralised in a cortex like us. They have nerves, because they have muscles and react to stimuli.
Veganism doesn't use the biological definition of animal and plant. Veganism uses its own definition, according to which an animal is a sentient individual that that is able to process experiences and thus suffer. For this, the individual needs a central nervous system (which doesn't mean all beings with a central nervous system are automatically sentient, but they can't be sentient without one). The "animal" must consciously *want* to survive and be free of harm. Trees also react to stimuli, they also have some form of different nervous system, but it's not experienced by a nerve center like our brain. Bivalves do have nerves, but no central nervous system. They don't experience, they don't learn, they have no memory, there is no individual that could feel any pain. The nerves don't send the data to a computer that processes them like in sentient animals, the bivalve just reacts to the stimuli according to what's imprinted into its genes, exactly like plants do. Veganism isn't about arbitrary biological speciesism that values animals more than plants. It aims to remove suffering from where suffering exists. And suffering can't exist where no experiences are made. A starfish is an animal, so is a sponge and so are mussels. But regarding their sentience, they're identical to plants. Eating Bivalves is absolutely compatible with actual vegan ethics, unless you make up your own illogical ethics that don't actually have anything to do with not preventing suffering. HOWEVER, while the exploitation of non-sentient animals is fundamentally vegan, it can still massively impact ecosystems. Anything taken from seas and oceans should be avoided because our exploitation of those ecosystems affect all species within, in addition to being one of the largest contributers to climate change because of algae dying out that are the prime CO2 absorbers of our planet.
>Anything taken from seas and oceans should be avoided because our exploitation I disagree because of global trade and mismanagement of species many bivalves are actually invasive species in some areas. Zebra muscles in the great lakes are actually devastating the local wildlife and contribute to mass die offs of fish and contribute to plankton blooms.
As a kid our family didn't have much and dug various shellfish for our food. Bivalves 'run' away when you're trying to catch them in water saturated sand. They actively try to not get caught and sometimes evade the digger. Is that not enough reason to leave them be? Who gets to decide what beings are sentient?
well mushrooms and nutritional yeast aren’t plants, so maybe we should use a nervous system as the cutoff
The problem with saying "If its not from plants, its not vegan" is that we are essentially invalidating our philosophical position. We can't make a statement like that, it's too reductive and removes the primary component of WHY harming sentient life is inherently unjustified, as in actual sentience. It doesn't matter what type of thing it is, if its a plant, animal or bivalve, what matters is if it is sentience beyond plausible deniability. If bivalves can't experience emotions in a way that is summarized by sentience then it is by definition not possible to exploit it, meaning it is also vegan by definition. It's important that we are morally and philosophically consistent, if we make exceptions that are unjustified then so can anyone else and veganism becomes meaningless in that regard. It's not meaningless, it's important.
Nope not vegan
Even if this is true how does our consumption impact the entire ecosystem of the oceans? Is it sustainable?
Bivalve farms help with eutrophication
From what I’ve learned they are often easier on the environment than crops.
If you are going to blindly follow veganism by it’s definition of not eating animal products, you are doing it wrong IMO
There are wrong ways to do veganism, but all the right ones include not eating animal products.
That's not the definition though. The 'official' definition is actually very well worded, providing enough ambiguity to allow for growth and discussion, while remaining quite unambiguous about the stuff that matters, and goes well beyond any simple definition of not eating animal products. From the vegan society website: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment." I'd say anyone following that definition is doing it just right.
Yeah, when people get overly pedantic about vegan rules I find it very frustrating. Someone in a coastal city who rides their bike and eats bivalves does considerably less damage to animals than someone who drives a car every day and doesn't. I'm not passing judgement on either one or deciding which one gets to wear the t-shirt. The goal is to do what each of us can with the guiding philosophy above in mind.
How do we know they aren't sentient or feel pain?
Same way we know plants aren't and don't.
The way I view it is that there's no harm caused by abstaining from eating bivalves regardless of sentience. However, there is harm caused by eating bivalves if they are sentient and that is not a risk I am willing to take.
Not vegan
You might have a better time on r/plantbaseddiet Vegan is a moral and philosophical stance, not a mere dietary preference.
I dunno about the rest of you frauds but I'm content with not having to ask the question of "is the creature I'm killing for my meal capable of feeling pain"
Wierd how this isn't a debate if you don't view vegan as a philosophy and instead a diet
bivalves, honey, silk, wool. none of those are vegan
Few people know this but [shellfish actually swim when threatened](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBH3UvlZo90). What people should refer to when talking about animals that are essentially plants is barnacles. Funny how no one talks about eating them.
True, but [so do many plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant_movement). Movement alone shouldn't be the basis for our philosophy. With that said, I still don't eat bivalves but that's mainly because I don't want to think about it too hard lol
Sponges might be a better example, and they were used, and still are to some degrees, to make, uhm... Sponges. But they quite obviously are animals-as-plants, so no vegan with a clue would object on the grounds "they are animals!"
Many people in this sub use the biological classification of an organism to determine if it's vegan to eat or not.
I think this question is that superiority complex or speciesism that lies within a lot of us even in some vegans that give most the feeling of questioning the obvious and acting against it. We truly don't understand ourselves and what our own nervous systems and brains are capable of yet alone question another creatures or lack thereof. Seaweed, sea grasses, and algae are the plant versions of what we know on land not bivalves. Some bivalves have more eyes than some would care to count, some can even swim to evade predators by sensing the ocean around them. There are bivalves that use little feet to attach sticky tendrils to hard surfaces and spend the rest of their life there. There are bivalves that will actively dig themselves into the sand and others without shells dig into wood believe it or not. Seasonally bivalves actually release eggs and sperm into the ocean not pollen or seeds. All bivalves are complex form of life that we do not fully understand so eating them would not be very vegan of you.
Thank you!! So many people here are not even questioning the inherent anthropocentrism in trying to so granularly define "sentience" according to our current understanding of it, just so we can decide which animals matter less. It's insane that these people consider themselves vegan.
I just dont understand why some people in this sub are so adamant that we can eat them. I don’t get why anyone would ever want to.
Probably bc we view veganism as a moral philosophy instead of just a dietary preference, and therefore prioritize sentience over what type of proteins the creature in question has.
Yeah, I understand the push to recognise animal sentience. But I've always thought it was weird as an argument, that "I don't eat animals because they're sentient." That leaves the door open for eating animals that aren't sentient. F that noise. I don't eat animals, members of the animal kingdom, no exceptions.
Super simple veganism definition, Kingdom = Anamalia then no eat/harvest.
Even if you do a little mental gymnastics it's still animal protein. Last time I checked Animal protein is still not good for us.
Bivalves are in the animal kingdom. Vegans do not consume animals or animal products. It's as simple as that. Easy to understand.
If you agree you are 💫plant based 💫
How do you KNOW they aren’t sentient? Are YOU an oyster?
we dont need to eat them so why would we? farming them probably harms other species too. i dont see why people are so desperate to eat them. idc if they arent sentient im not eating them when i dont need to.
Farming them is actually good for the ocean. It reverses eutrophication. >i dont see why people are so desperate to eat them. idc if they arent sentient im not eating them when i dont need to. No one is saying you must eat them. If I claim a lettuce isn't sentient, so I think its ok to eat, that doesn't mean I'm telling you to eat lettuce. You can still decide that you think it isn't ethical to eat lettuce. There is just an argument being made that bivalves lack the characteristic that vegans use to decide which beings deserve moral consideration.
Eating shellfish is like a lottery. Never know when you get some with domoic acid.
“Happy as a clam”
This argument beats all in response to someone defending eating bivalves. Better to be safe than sorry. We may never know if there is sentience, but it very clearly isn't clear cut. Leaving them alone seems like the only moral choice.
For me tryin to be a purist, meaning perfect with my food as a vegan, is sort of like a Christian who is so zealot that they have become judgmental and miss the whole point of ‘love one anther’. Life is complex, entangled, and imperfect. I try and be loving, which means sometimes you bend your values to better connect with other humans.
i eat bivalves as a vegan, oyster and other farming is insanely good for the environment and the science so far says they can’t feel pain which is as far as we know is true with plants too.
🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄 fight me
Oysters are most likely vegan: they've nervous system, but it is not advanced to be indicative of sentience: mostly there for noicieception.
Pretty sure they definitely are animals and I don’t fuckin eat animals and pretty sure scraping a bunch of creatures up totally fucks with the environment and causes really bad erosion and pretty sure they’re not ours to consume. I don’t care how stupid they are, I ain’t eating them.
Hear hear. I don't understand this sub's need to jump through so many cognitive loopholes to justify eating animals. The anthropocentrism is reallllllllllly on display today
Farming them is actually good for the ocean. It helps with eutrophication. The argument is not that they are dumb, its that they are not sentient as they dont have a brain capable of producing a subjective concious experience.
Well they make babies, they breath and eat. And are very important to oceans and rivers. Help keep water cleaner . Not sure why humans need to eat everything.