why honey, Honey?

2 min read

I am not really a consumer of honey, but it’s existence bothers me thousandfold less than meat and dairy industries.

Out of decency, and coherency, I should consider honey a vegan-incompatible product. There is some primitive nervous system in bees, surely they have percepts, could feel pain, and therefore must be taken seriously as feeling organisms. But here’s couple of arguments why I don’t really oppose bee-keeping:

  1. The main reason – bee-keeping might be easily done in a sustainable and ethical way. I might be ignorant here, but I believe majority of bee keepers in Europe are not killing their colonies at the end of the season for economic reasons. Correct me if I’m wrong.
  2. “Bad for wild bee population” – Diversity of lifeforms itself does not constitute a supreme value for me. Life is a form of organised expression of matter, beautiful and interesting in many ways, but I never bought into bio-diversity or preserve-life-at-all-cost arguments. If wild bee populations are endangered by beekeeping, it might be sad, but acceptable as an extension of natural selection (existence of our culture/civilisation is quite natural still).
  3. “Still a cruelty and enslavement” - Level of complexity of insect nervous systems is of totally different magnitude than vertebrates. Bee colony malnutrition1 might result in reduction of vital functions, but there is no reduction of high-level brain functions which happens when advanced brains face similar situations e.g. poor life conditions reducing capacity for love, kindness and creativity.
  4. As much as it somehow resembles enslavement, it does not really show signs of cruelty. And such enslavement is more similar to keeping tomato patch than a meat farm (a.k.a. concentration camp).

In the light of above arguments “dying on this hill” is not really my thing. I believe vegan cause has much more burning topics to focus on, and such radicalism is not worth enlarging the chasm between vegans and non-vegans.

So, maybe let’s silently agree that honey is vegan enough?

By the way, mosquitos and ticks shall be annihilated.

Footnotes

  1. if it even happens, and when it happens you’re probably not a successful bee-keeper ↩

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