Dave Smith wrote:
> jmcquown wrote:
>
> >
> > To my understanding, Vegans don't eat any animal products at all.
Strictly
> > vegetables and grains. No butter, no nothing that has anything to
do with
> > animals including butter or milk from cows or goats. Strict Vegans
also
> > won't eat honey although I have no idea what this has to do with
"animal"
> > products since bees aren't animals. Vegetarians are more moderate,
using
> > dairy products including cheese, butter but won't eat meat, fish or
poultry.
>
> From what I can gather, veganism is a way of living that excludes all
forms of
> exploitation of animals.
>
> BTW.... Bees are animals. Their view is that bees are enslaved and
exploited in
> order to produce honey. In reality, and that may be a difficult
concept for
> vegans to wrap their heads around, only one bee in a hive is
enslaved. That is
> the queen. The rest of the bees are free to come and go as they
please. If
> something happens to the queen the whole hive will get up and move.
>
> It is fascinating that something like honey can not be vegan because
it involves
> the exploitation of an animal that has a natural tendency to live
wherever there
> is a queen and spends its entire live flying back and forth to gather
pollen
> without any training at all. Yet Vegans generally espouse the virtues
of organic
> farming. That means that they use shit for fertilizer. Most of that
shit comes
> from cows and other animals on farms that are raising them for meat,
or milk.
>
> I wonder how they would ever have survived in the 19th century,
before the days
> of mechanized tractors. Farmers generally used horses or oxen to work
their
> fields. They used them to pull plows, the haul wagons, to operate
various types
> of farm equipment. The entire agricultural system replied almost
entirely on the
> exploitation of animals.

Most of the world still exploits animals for farming, the human
animal.... besides all the world's rice paddys lookit all those illegal
beaners pickin' veggies... even if they ain't quite human they are
indeed animals.

Anyways, there ain't any such thing as a vegetarian/vegan, every last
one of them
cheats regularly.

Sheldon