Vegans and bees
Being a dedicated vegan is pretty impressive. It’s not for me, but I really respect people who can pull it off. (Except I hate when people with voluntary dietary restrictions say, “I can’t eat that.” You can, but you won’t.)
But in a veganism discussion at lunch on Friday, we came upon an interesting problem. I know that vegans avoid things like silk and honey since they’re produced by industrialized animals, and they object to the treatment of industrialized animals (right?).
But what about fruit?
Fruit orchards are pollinated by bees, often rented from professional industrial bee farmers. From what I understand, the honey business isn’t very lucrative — the real money is in renting out bees to farms and orchards for pollination, and it’s just an added bonus that bee farmers can also get some honey production out of their hive boxes.
Much of the fruit available to us depends on these bees and wouldn’t be available to us without them.
Did I just ruin fruit for vegans? Or are industrialized bees acceptable? If so, what’s wrong with honey?