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Do vegans reject honey
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WhyDoYouThinkThat lemmy.world WhyDoYouThinkThat@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-05-05
Quote

or eggs or other insect parts

70   Original
uKale lemmy.world uKale@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-05-30
#2 · Quote Reply

Yes.

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zoltanshields lemmy.zip zoltanshields@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-09-18
#3 · Quote Reply

My understanding is most do but it's the subject of occasional controversy.

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blimpkit lemmy.ml blimpkit@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2025-08-26
#4 · Quote Reply

Maybe but honey is far more humane than eggs.

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mannycalavera feddit.uk mannycalavera@feddit.uk
Joined: 2023-07-02
#5 · Quote Reply

What about maple syrup?

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cattywampas lemmy.world cattywampas@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-12-30
#6 · Quote Reply

What about maple syrup?

Maple syrup is not an animal product.

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Hayduke lemmy.world Hayduke@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-09-05
#7 · Quote Reply

Also include some red food dye and shellac (confectioners glaze) made from crushed beetles or beetle excretions, respectively.

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corsicanguppy lemmy.ca corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2023-06-12
#8 · Quote Reply

Maple syrup is not an animal product.

But it's tree vampirism.

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πŸ§Ÿβ€β™‚οΈ Cadaver lemmy.world Ashiette@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-02
#9 · Quote Reply

Maybe but honey is far more humane than eggs.

Depend on the eggs. Farm ? Yes, most of them are unethical. Home chicken ? Not unethical, if there are no roosters.

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Evil_Incarnate sopuli.xyz Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2025-06-04
#10 · Quote Reply

Depends who you ask. I know a guy who's vegan because he likes animals. I asked him about honey and he said "fuck insects".

But opinion differs because bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It's not hurting them and not keeping them confined, so....

Others put the line at no hurting animals ever. I don't ask about fleas or mosquitos or tapeworms though.

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AskewLord piefed.social AskewLord@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-01-16
#11 · Quote Reply

depends

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AskewLord piefed.social AskewLord@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-01-16
#12 · Quote Reply

Maple syrup is not an animal product.

tapping trees for syrup is painful for them

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cattywampas lemmy.world cattywampas@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-12-30
#13 · Quote Reply

But it's tree vampirism.

Trees aren't animals.

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Suck_on_my_Presence lemmy.world Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-07
#14 · Quote Reply

Depend on the eggs. Farm ? Yes, most of them are unethical. Home chicken ? Not unethical, if there are no roosters.

What makes it unethical if there's a rooster?

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crank0271 lemmy.world crank0271@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-17
#15 · Quote Reply

Depend on the eggs. Farm ? Yes, most of them are unethical. Home chicken ? Not unethical, if there are no roosters.

What's unethical about roosters?

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πŸ§Ÿβ€β™‚οΈ Cadaver lemmy.world Ashiette@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-02
#16 · Quote Reply

What makes it unethical if there's a rooster?

It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can't stop a hen from laying eggs.

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πŸ§Ÿβ€β™‚οΈ Cadaver lemmy.world Ashiette@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-02
#17 · Quote Reply

What's unethical about roosters?

It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can't stop a hen from laying eggs.

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Pratai piefed.ca Pratai@piefed.ca
Joined: 2026-02-12
#18 · Quote Reply

tapping trees for syrup is painful for them

LOL!

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deadbeef79000 lemmy.nz deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
Joined: 2023-06-17
#19 · (edited) Quote Reply

No Yes: it's an animal product.

However vegetarianism and veganism are a spectrum and different people will place themselves at various places along it.

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someguy3 lemmy.world someguy3@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-04
#20 · (edited) Quote Reply

Honey: some do, some don't.

Eggs: Vegetarians eat eggs and drink milk. Vegans don't, that's the whole definition.

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lokalhorst feddit.org lokalhorst@feddit.org
Joined: 2026-04-25
#21 · Quote Reply

Depends who you ask. I know a guy who's vegan because he likes animals. I asked him about honey and he said "fuck insects". But opinion differs because bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It's not hurting them and not keeping them confined, so.... Others put the line at no hurting animals ever. I don't ask about fleas or mosquitos or...

bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It's not hurting them

I don't think this is entirely true. Honey bees are basically factory farmed, we don't just go into the woods and steal honey. They are ecologically problematic as they compete with native bee species. I'm not an expert but look up how bees are being exploited for almond pollination in California for instance.

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crank0271 lemmy.world crank0271@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-17
#22 · Quote Reply

It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can't stop a hen from laying eggs.

That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered. It brings the question of "does life begin at fertilization" into this.

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cattywampas lemmy.world cattywampas@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-12-30
#23 · Quote Reply

tapping trees for syrup is painful for them

Well we gotta eat. Sorry, plants (I'm not sorry).

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Microtonal_Banana lemmy.zip Microtonal_Banana@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-09-30
#24 · Quote Reply

Some do..

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Microtonal_Banana lemmy.zip Microtonal_Banana@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-09-30
#25 · Quote Reply

tapping trees for syrup is painful for them

Wait till you find out what houses are made of.

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Jo Miran lemmy.ml JoMiran@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2023-06-29
#26 · (edited) Quote Reply

I am what I call an "involuntary vegan". I had to go full whole food plant based due to heart health issues. One of the effects that consuming any animal products has on me is significant inflammation. That includes honey. It is bee puke afterall.

That said, I maintain bee friendly gardens wherever I can because bees rule. Honeybees are grea for the environmen and bee is good for most people, so I would never chastise anyone for having it.

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NaibofTabr infosec.pub NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
Joined: 2023-06-18
#27 · Quote Reply

tapping trees for syrup is painful for them

How exactly do you define "pain" in this context?

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snooggums piefed.world snooggums@piefed.world
Joined: 2025-07-08
#28 · Quote Reply

Wait till you find out what houses are made of.

Bricks?

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CanadaPlus lemmy.sdf.org CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-12
#29 · Quote Reply

It has been fertilized so, if you are vegan, might qualify as murder because th egg is technically viable. No rooster, no fertilisation, no murder : ethical in principle because you can't stop a hen from laying eggs.

You would have to be a life-begins-at-conception, anti-abortion kind of person, as well, for that.

It's not an impossible or unnatural combination, intellectually, but demographically speaking, being radical in two directions at once is rare.

A vegetarian would be fine with a backyard coop. Vegans might say that your chickens are kind of like slaves - they make stuff for you, and can't leave - and that's bad.

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CanadaPlus lemmy.sdf.org CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-12
#30 · Quote Reply

LOL!

One "joke". You only have that one "joke".

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CanadaPlus lemmy.sdf.org CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-12
#31 · (edited) Quote Reply

How exactly do you define "pain" in this context?

I mean, it's going to be bullshit they don't actually practice.

Somehow, pretty few of these people would personally kill or torture a cat or dog, but would pull up a weed or mow a lawn no problem.

I think there's a short answer to this somewhere, that you can just copy and paste, but I don't have it on hand.

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CanadaPlus lemmy.sdf.org CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-12
#32 · (edited) Quote Reply

They're against domestic animals as a concept, so you'd think. The basic idea is that animals are independent beings, and benefiting from them, with the massive power imbalance in play, is wrong.

Vegetarians are just against slaughter as a practice. And then you might land in between, if you don't like the way battery hens are treated, for example.

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πŸ§Ÿβ€β™‚οΈ Cadaver lemmy.world Ashiette@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-02
#33 · (edited) Quote Reply

You would have to be a life-begins-at-conception, anti-abortion kind of person, as well, for that. It's not an impossible or unnatural combination, intellectually, but demographically speaking, being radical in two directions at once is rare. A vegetarian would be fine with a backyard coop. Vegans might say that your chickens are kind of like slaves - they make stuff for you, and can't leave - ...

You're right on that, I can't deny it. But then again, I had some vegans friends that had hens that were saved from the slaghterhouse. They had no barriers at all and their hens roamed free. Yes, a hen is a product of human selection, and on that aspect the line between ethical and practical is really fine and more suitable to philosophical debates, but since the hens were saved, they were better off their fate and in that regard, harvesting eggs was not an act of torture per se. But I'm not a vegan and can't speak for them, just give an insight on a non-dicheotomic point of view.

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HubertManne piefed.social HubertManne@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-03-13
#34 · Quote Reply

yes. the reason the term vegan came about was because of the looseness of vegetarian. vegetarian would inply no eggs or insect unless it had a rider. like lacto/ovo vegetarians will ingest milk and eggs. honey was usually not to much of an issue. so vegan started being used for people who don't eat animals or anything that came from an animal like honey or milk. There is a thing called fruitarian that theoretically will only eat the parts of the plant that the plant made to be eaten. Like fruits. Steve jobs was into it before he died. I think he thought it would cure or help his cancer or something.

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Fleur_ aussie.zone Fleur_@aussie.zone
Joined: 2025-04-23
#35 · Quote Reply

I have never met a vegan who was okay with honey but I have had plenty of non vegan mother fuckers constantly bring this up as if its this huge edge case point of conflict. Its made and taken involuntarily from animals. It ain't that hard to figure out.

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spittingimage lemmy.world spittingimage@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-20
#36 · Quote Reply

I know a vegan who has ex-battery hens as pets. She's against taking eggs away from them because it may cause distress, but often they'll lay an egg wherever they happen to be, and walk away. Those ones are fair game because the chickens have abandoned them, and they need to be collected before they rot in any case.

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TryingToBeGood reddthat.com TryingToBeGood@reddthat.com
Joined: 2026-03-31
#37 · Quote Reply

Some do, some don’t.

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CanadaPlus lemmy.sdf.org CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-12
#38 · Quote Reply

You're right on that, I can't deny it. But then again, I had some vegans friends that had hens that were saved from the slaghterhouse. They had no barriers at all and their hens roamed free. Yes, a hen is a product of human selection, and on that aspect the line between ethical and practical is really fine and more suitable to philosophical debates, but since the hens were saved, they were bett...

Yes, a hen is a product of human selection

Actually, layers are pretty close to natural red junglefowl, as far as I can tell. It's not like turkeys or cows, where they can't really exist in the wild. Although, the wild sucks too...

I'm in the picture FWIW, as a vegetarian who's cared for backyard hens. They seemed fine and happy, if a little bored in the winter, and were pretty great and easy-to-care-for pets. If there was any money in fixing the gender ratio problem, that bit about what happens to the male chicks would probably be solved, as well.

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Denjin feddit.uk Denjin@feddit.uk
Joined: 2025-07-30
#39 · Quote Reply

I know a vegan who has ex-battery hens as pets. She's against taking eggs away from them because it may cause distress, but often they'll lay an egg wherever they happen to be, and walk away. Those ones are fair game because the chickens have abandoned them, and they need to be collected before they rot in any case.

That's stupid because chickens don't give a shit about their eggs. It's a good idea to feed them egg shells to give them back some nutrients but you have to smash the shells up because if they recognise the eggs as food they will enthusiastically eat their own freshly laid ones.

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r0ertel lemmy.world r0ertel@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-03-27
#40 · Quote Reply

I know a vegan who has ex-battery hens as pets. She's against taking eggs away from them because it may cause distress, but often they'll lay an egg wherever they happen to be, and walk away. Those ones are fair game because the chickens have abandoned them, and they need to be collected before they rot in any case.

I find this one interesting. I knew a farmer who only had hens and so all of the eggs were unfertilized.

Of course, its always possible that there's some sort of immaculate conception and a hen will lay a fertilized egg, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen.

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Vandals_handle lemmy.world Vandals_handle@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-14
#41 · Quote Reply

yes. the reason the term vegan came about was because of the looseness of vegetarian. vegetarian would inply no eggs or insect unless it had a rider. like lacto/ovo vegetarians will ingest milk and eggs. honey was usually not to much of an issue. so vegan started being used for people who don't eat animals or anything that came from an animal like honey or milk. There is a thing called fruitari...

Strict vegetarian used to be the term for not eating any animal products. Vegan denoted lifestyle, not just diet. A vegan would not have leather shoes of wool sweaters.

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solitaire404 lemmy.zip solitaire404@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-10-04
#42 · Quote Reply

Used to be vegan for 5ish years.

It is a grey area and personal preference. Are you vegan for morality, health, global sustainability, etc....

It depends why someone is vegan (diet, not movement).

I was vegan for health reasons, and local honey helps with allergies so I ate it.

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HubertManne piefed.social HubertManne@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-03-13
#43 · Quote Reply

Strict vegetarian used to be the term for not eating any animal products. Vegan denoted lifestyle, not just diet. A vegan would not have leather shoes of wool sweaters.

I feel like someone strict enough to not eat honey is going to be thinking about their clothing choices though. I mean I was not a part of the subculture honestly but from an outside perspective that is what it felt like to me.

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TheJesusaurus piefed.ca TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
Joined: 2025-10-20
#44 · Quote Reply

Bricks?

This guy 3 little pigs

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katy ✨ piefed.blahaj.zone cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone
Joined: 2025-06-06
#45 · Quote Reply

not all vegans are the same but personally i use agave over honey

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Alsjemenou lemy.nl Alsjemenou@lemy.nl
Joined: 2024-03-04
#46 · Quote Reply

Yes.

Honeybees (outside their native habitat) are outcompeting native pollinators. They are counter to restoring nature.

They became useful as pollinators in by monoculture destroyed habitats. And have been normalised to the point where we assume they are native, helpful and wholesome. Which is fucked up. But all of animal agriculture is fucked up.

There aren't enough honeybees in the world to produce all the honey in the stores. So most of the time when people think they are consuming honey, they are more often than not eating rice syrup or other syrups. There is no way of controlingbthis since there is no fucking difference.

It's just sugar. No magic. Just bad.

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Shellbeach lemmy.world Shellbeach@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#47 · Quote Reply

Yes, a hen is a product of human selection Actually, layers are pretty close to natural red junglefowl, as far as I can tell. It's not like turkeys or cows, where they can't really exist in the wild. Although, the wild sucks too... I'm in the picture FWIW, as a vegetarian who's cared for backyard hens. They seemed fine and happy, if a little bored in the winter, and were pretty great and easy-t...

Turkeys do live in the wild

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Soggy lemmy.world Soggy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#48 · Quote Reply

bees are pretty much free to go about their lives and we just steal the honey every now and then. It's not hurting them I don't think this is entirely true. Honey bees are basically factory farmed, we don't just go into the woods and steal honey. They are ecologically problematic as they compete with native bee species. I'm not an expert but look up how bees are being exploited for almond polli...

That's a valid position, but it applies equally to most kinds of land use. Agave plantations are not less ecologically problematic. Agriculture has an impact.

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Soggy lemmy.world Soggy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#49 · Quote Reply

That's stupid because chickens don't give a shit about their eggs. It's a good idea to feed them egg shells to give them back some nutrients but you have to smash the shells up because if they recognise the eggs as food they will enthusiastically eat their own freshly laid ones.

Also, there's a distinct difference between normal and brooding behavior. A broody hen gives a shit about her eggs (well, not specifically her eggs just the concept of sitting on and hatching eggs) but if they aren't fertilized it rapidly becomes a problem. And they'll lay another in a day or two regardless.

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Soggy lemmy.world Soggy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#50 · Quote Reply

They're against domestic animals as a concept, so you'd think. The basic idea is that animals are independent beings, and benefiting from them, with the massive power imbalance in play, is wrong. Vegetarians are just against slaughter as a practice. And then you might land in between, if you don't like the way battery hens are treated, for example.

They’re against domestic animals as a concept, so you’d think.

Except the great many vegans who keep pets, as if that was somehow different.

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Tywèle piefed.social Tywele@piefed.social
Joined: 2024-08-08
#51 · Quote Reply

That's a valid position, but it applies equally to most kinds of land use. Agave plantations are not less ecologically problematic. Agriculture has an impact.

And animal agriculture uses even more land than eating plants directly. We have to eat something to survive and eating plants has the least impact.

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