That’s the whole debate, OP. It’s solved with this short exchange.
But they eat animals.
Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Are they vegan?
I think you need to look up the definition of of “vegan.” It’s not based on what your food eats: you can’t call eating a grass-fed cow “vegan.”
Fungi is also not animals.
If a plant has to eat animals to survive then that plant is a product of animal suffering. Thats why vegans don't drink milk or eat eggs too. So if that's the definition of vegan that someone subscibes to then the flytrap is not Vegan.
That’s not the definition of vegan. The definition of vegan is a person who abstains from animal products. Plants are not animal products.
Eating a venus flytrap is also removing a plant that eats animals.
There are plenty of vegans who would tell you they abstain from any products of animal suffering, otherwise they would use products that were tested on animals. Just because you test lipstick on animals, doesn't make the lipstick a product of animals, its a product of animal suffering. Your definition is not the only one and doesn't exclude animal tested products, which many vegans go out of their way to avoid.
Venus fly traps are not animal tested products. They are plants.
And those are both products of animal suffering, a common definition many vegans use. Come on, now you're just being obtuse on purpose.
You’re the one being obtuse. Killing a plant is not killing an animal. Killing a plant that eats animals is not humans doing something to an animal. It’s actually the opposite: it’s humans saving animals.
If you want to get that granular, whatever device you’re using to type your pedantic replies was made of parts that were shipped. At some point, the vehicle they were shipped on killed a bug. You caused way more animal deaths typing your replies to me than anyone ever did killing a venus flytrap, because killing a venus fly trap does not actually kill any animals.
Epic response.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death? No one said killing a plant was killing an animal, What I said was if you avoid products of animal suffering why would you not avoid the biological products of animal suffering? And if humans eating things that harm animals is saving animals then why don't vegans eat carnivorous animals? Because that not what veganism is about. Also the amount of animal death I cause has nothing to do with the debate at hand. One thing does not become vegan simply because something else causes more animal death, I don't even know what point you're trying to make talking about vehicles.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death?
Isn't the logical extension of this that nothing is vegan? Think about it: animals in nature get preyed upon constantly. A wolf kills an elk, eats part of it, and then its corpse decomposes. The carbon from the decomposing body is then used by plants in the biosphere to build new cells. These plants are now the products of dead animals. Are these unethical to eat because they had their cells built from recycled carbon that once belonged to an animal? Probably not. And this is true of all plants everywhere. And if you were to say "yes, but those plants didn't kill any animals themselves," then that argument would also have to apply for humans eating venus flytraps: humans didn't kill any animals themselves; they're just consuming something that did.
humans didn’t kill any animals themselves; they’re just consuming something that did.
But wouldn't that argument only hold up for flytraps found in the wild? Any that have been cultivated by humans, especially for human consumption, would likely be fed by humans to ensure any food the plant gets is not going to negatively effect the quality of the food. But vegans also wouldn't eat eggs found in the wild, even if they could somehow know that they were unfertilized and abandoned. At the very least this is not a black and white case, I think it's very easy to imagine groups of vegans abstaining from these if they were a food product. Not everyone's definition of vegan is the same I've acknowledged that from the beginning, some vegans go as far as some Jainists do, breathing through cheesecloth to avoid killing as many microorganisms as they can. Everyone draws their own line somewhere, I'm just convinced that if people actually ate flytraps, plenty of vegans would abstain.
In that case, your issue seems more to be with a semantic definition of veganism. You've framed it in the terms of "is eating a plant that eats meat non-vegan," but conceptually what you're asking about is the transitive nature of suffering and accountability and how that intersects with a particular, very specific lifestyle choice. Which is a fine and ostensibly interesting discussion to have, but the way you elected to frame that conversation is...less than ideal.
I think it's a stretch to say that a venus fly trap dish is immoral because the venus fly trap ate an animal, which it is literally forced to do by nature. You don't blame a lion either for eating meat, because it is literally a carnivore and cannot survive otherwise. I believe when they say animal suffering they mean suffering resulting from exploitation and so on by humans.
There are two separate concepts your are talking to here.
The first is what a vegan is. A vegan is a defined as
a person who does not eat any food derived from animals and who typically does not use other animal products.
Why they chose that lifestyle is the second concept you are taking about and it does not alter the definition for anything other than the individual person.
Vegans also don't eat honey, which is not really a byproduct of animal suffering. And a vegan also wouldn't eat eggs, even if they kept and raised their own free range chickens who were laying unfertilized eggs which were just going to rot if not consumed. Because veganism isn't about the "suffering" of an animal. You could genetically engineer an animal that was incapable of feeling pain or fear and made it so that it felt ecstasy while being butchered, but killing and eating it would still be unethical for a person to do, and still be in violation of veganism's core principles, because it's about conscious beings exploiting the labor or nature of animals without their consent. An animal like a wolf or lion (or in this case a venus fly trap) eating meat is not "unethical" because it exists outside of ethics: it's just a component of an ecosystem in which predation is a natural element. Humans have functionally removed themselves from whatever ecosystem they evolved to be a part of, so our exploitation of animals and their natural behaviors is just that: exploitative.
If you could operate a series of trolley problems regarding sentience for the average vegan, would a somewhat quantifiable hierarchy arise?
For example, would a vegan save one human over three pigs, or over 100 pigs?
If a vegan could use vegan means to prevent the death of all mosquitoes without upsetting the ecology of the planet Earth, but the mosquitoes would then start infecting more humans with hazardous but non-deadly diseases, should the vegan attempt those means?
I can't speak for other vegans, but as a vegan, I'd pick an animal's life over a human's, so your trolly problem is easy for me. Fuck humans, there are over 8 billion of us and we don't need any more; fewer there are, the better it is for this planet.
Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants.
I bring this up too. What my kid asks, "what is vegan?", and my wife says, "someone who eats plants", then I shout from across the room, "and fungi!" Tbh no one is amused but me.
There's nothing hypocritical about eating fungi! I just want recognition for the fungal contribution.
Venus fly traps are not animals.
/end thread.
That’s the whole debate, OP. It’s solved with this short exchange.
But they eat animals.
Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Are they vegan?
I think you need to look up the definition of of “vegan.” It’s not based on what your food eats: you can’t call eating a grass-fed cow “vegan.”
Fungi is also not animals.
If a plant has to eat animals to survive then that plant is a product of animal suffering. Thats why vegans don't drink milk or eat eggs too. So if that's the definition of vegan that someone subscibes to then the flytrap is not Vegan.
That’s not the definition of vegan. The definition of vegan is a person who abstains from animal products. Plants are not animal products.
Eating a venus flytrap is also removing a plant that eats animals.
There are plenty of vegans who would tell you they abstain from any products of animal suffering, otherwise they would use products that were tested on animals. Just because you test lipstick on animals, doesn't make the lipstick a product of animals, its a product of animal suffering. Your definition is not the only one and doesn't exclude animal tested products, which many vegans go out of their way to avoid.
Venus fly traps are not animal tested products. They are plants.
And those are both products of animal suffering, a common definition many vegans use. Come on, now you're just being obtuse on purpose.
Venus flytraps aren’t products. They’re organisms.
You’re the one being obtuse. Killing a plant is not killing an animal. Killing a plant that eats animals is not humans doing something to an animal. It’s actually the opposite: it’s humans saving animals.
If you want to get that granular, whatever device you’re using to type your pedantic replies was made of parts that were shipped. At some point, the vehicle they were shipped on killed a bug. You caused way more animal deaths typing your replies to me than anyone ever did killing a venus flytrap, because killing a venus fly trap does not actually kill any animals.
Epic response.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death? No one said killing a plant was killing an animal, What I said was if you avoid products of animal suffering why would you not avoid the biological products of animal suffering? And if humans eating things that harm animals is saving animals then why don't vegans eat carnivorous animals? Because that not what veganism is about. Also the amount of animal death I cause has nothing to do with the debate at hand. One thing does not become vegan simply because something else causes more animal death, I don't even know what point you're trying to make talking about vehicles.
Isn't the logical extension of this that nothing is vegan? Think about it: animals in nature get preyed upon constantly. A wolf kills an elk, eats part of it, and then its corpse decomposes. The carbon from the decomposing body is then used by plants in the biosphere to build new cells. These plants are now the products of dead animals. Are these unethical to eat because they had their cells built from recycled carbon that once belonged to an animal? Probably not. And this is true of all plants everywhere. And if you were to say "yes, but those plants didn't kill any animals themselves," then that argument would also have to apply for humans eating venus flytraps: humans didn't kill any animals themselves; they're just consuming something that did.
But wouldn't that argument only hold up for flytraps found in the wild? Any that have been cultivated by humans, especially for human consumption, would likely be fed by humans to ensure any food the plant gets is not going to negatively effect the quality of the food. But vegans also wouldn't eat eggs found in the wild, even if they could somehow know that they were unfertilized and abandoned. At the very least this is not a black and white case, I think it's very easy to imagine groups of vegans abstaining from these if they were a food product. Not everyone's definition of vegan is the same I've acknowledged that from the beginning, some vegans go as far as some Jainists do, breathing through cheesecloth to avoid killing as many microorganisms as they can. Everyone draws their own line somewhere, I'm just convinced that if people actually ate flytraps, plenty of vegans would abstain.
In that case, your issue seems more to be with a semantic definition of veganism. You've framed it in the terms of "is eating a plant that eats meat non-vegan," but conceptually what you're asking about is the transitive nature of suffering and accountability and how that intersects with a particular, very specific lifestyle choice. Which is a fine and ostensibly interesting discussion to have, but the way you elected to frame that conversation is...less than ideal.
I think it's a stretch to say that a venus fly trap dish is immoral because the venus fly trap ate an animal, which it is literally forced to do by nature. You don't blame a lion either for eating meat, because it is literally a carnivore and cannot survive otherwise. I believe when they say animal suffering they mean suffering resulting from exploitation and so on by humans.
There are two separate concepts your are talking to here.
The first is what a vegan is. A vegan is a defined as
Why they chose that lifestyle is the second concept you are taking about and it does not alter the definition for anything other than the individual person.
Vegans also don't eat honey, which is not really a byproduct of animal suffering. And a vegan also wouldn't eat eggs, even if they kept and raised their own free range chickens who were laying unfertilized eggs which were just going to rot if not consumed. Because veganism isn't about the "suffering" of an animal. You could genetically engineer an animal that was incapable of feeling pain or fear and made it so that it felt ecstasy while being butchered, but killing and eating it would still be unethical for a person to do, and still be in violation of veganism's core principles, because it's about conscious beings exploiting the labor or nature of animals without their consent. An animal like a wolf or lion (or in this case a venus fly trap) eating meat is not "unethical" because it exists outside of ethics: it's just a component of an ecosystem in which predation is a natural element. Humans have functionally removed themselves from whatever ecosystem they evolved to be a part of, so our exploitation of animals and their natural behaviors is just that: exploitative.
Veganism is about sentience
If you could operate a series of trolley problems regarding sentience for the average vegan, would a somewhat quantifiable hierarchy arise?
For example, would a vegan save one human over three pigs, or over 100 pigs?
If a vegan could use vegan means to prevent the death of all mosquitoes without upsetting the ecology of the planet Earth, but the mosquitoes would then start infecting more humans with hazardous but non-deadly diseases, should the vegan attempt those means?
I can't speak for other vegans, but as a vegan, I'd pick an animal's life over a human's, so your trolly problem is easy for me. Fuck humans, there are over 8 billion of us and we don't need any more; fewer there are, the better it is for this planet.
Ecofascism? That you?
Is milk sentience, eggs? Or what about dead fish?
Specifically it’s about the consent of any sentient beings involved in the production.
Milk and eggs are fine as long as you’ve acquired them via free market exchange with the animal that produced them. n
Like, breast milk from a woman is okay for a vegan to eat as long as it wasn’t forcibly taken from her.
Which, to be clear, .00001% of human consumed milk doesn’t involve torturing cows and stealing their babies
Right. Until uplift, cow’s milk can’t be vegan because cows can’t consent.
Is this a joke or are you a moron? We forcibly impregnate cows and steal their children… and then do it over and over again until they die
I’m not vegan, but do you seriously not get how animal suffering works? Go watch Earthlings or Dominion if you’re curious
Dead fish? Do yiu think most people are eating them alive?
Yes
I bring this up too. What my kid asks, "what is vegan?", and my wife says, "someone who eats plants", then I shout from across the room, "and fungi!" Tbh no one is amused but me.
There's nothing hypocritical about eating fungi! I just want recognition for the fungal contribution.