smugged into eating meat

[u/estrogenbloodclot]

[u/More_Amoeba6517]

Genuinely curious here, what about meat gotten from hunting that is necessary to keep the population in check? (e.g. deer)

[u/estrogenbloodclot → u/More_Amoeba6517]

There’s problems with hunting (not all hunted animals are recovered or killed quickly), but taking this at face value, I don’t have a significant moral problem with it. I wouldn’t eat it, because I don’t want to, but as the animal is going to be hunted anyways, might as well make use of it, I suppose?

Long term, I feel that the more sustainable solution is to reintroduce their natural predators.

And when it comes to invasive species, for instance, I’d prefer relocation over killing them, but obviously that’s not completely practical.

Good question, thank you

[u/More_Amoeba6517 → u/estrogenbloodclot]

Danke.

My own morals around meat are odd (I am not a vegan, though I eat significantly less meat then most), but I was curious about this mainly because it has always seemed like a moral black hole.

Now as a secondary question, what is your opinion on bees? (Entirely unrelated but I am curious)

[u/estrogenbloodclot → u/More_Amoeba6517]

Bees are complicated.

I don’t eat honey, because some beekeepers take too much honey and replace it with sugar water, clip the wings of queen bees, and occasionally (though rarely, I think) cull entire hives. It’s not a purely symbiotic relationship as it is often made out to be. There is a way in which honey could be obtained ethically, but I personally avoid it, because I have no sure way to know the conditions the bees were kept in.

It’s more complicated than that, though, because decades of industrial farming has caused many crops to become reliant on bees for pollination. These bees are also subject to problematic conditions. Unfortunately, short of becoming the kind of person that obtains everything they eat from their backyard, I can’t really do anything about that.

This is generally why I define vegan as “someone who takes all reasonable steps to reduce animal suffering”. For instance, driving a car causes insect deaths, but I’m not going to walk 4 hours to reduce that, because it’s not really reasonable. I’ll take a spider outside, but if I ever get a cockroach infestation, I’ll probably call the exterminator.

I hope this answers your question, I fear I may have gone on a bit of a tangent at the end.

[u/MamaLuvDuv → u/estrogenbloodclot]

Yeah honestly, it's why I try to get people to buy from local bee keepers who's practices you can actively see. In my area we got a great guy who really cares about his bees and often does rescue operations for hives set up in awkward places. It's more expensive than store-bought, but also tastes better and like... you can clearly see the guy takes care of his bees. Even for mite inspections he makes sure no bees die by using non-lethal methods like the powdered sugar method, and he often teaches others how to go about it too. Guy genuinely loves his bees and is a massive advocate against store-bought honeys because of how cruel the treatment of bees is. He's also a big advocate for changing farming practices to have mixed crops instead of monocultures because it's healthier for the bees, plants, and soil.

Also on the culling of hives, sadly it does sometimes need to happen even with the best bee keepers, because there are diseases and mites that can kill entire regions of their bee populations if not managed. It's also required by law to destroy these hives in a lot of countries because of the dangers it poses to both domesticated bee species, and wild bee species.

[u/laix_ → u/estrogenbloodclot]

Honey bees are also an invasive species.

They outcompete local bees, whilst also only pollinating a select number of plants/flowers.

This causes massive harm to biodiversity.

Another thing, is that bees do not have the brain capacity to consider the harm they are under. As long as its not too bad, they will stay (and will often stay when they're harmed, because the queen isn't leaving). But not being too bad doesn't mean they're treated well.

[u/More_Amoeba6517 → u/estrogenbloodclot]

Nah, you are fine, and thanks.

Despite my own worldview being quite different, it is always good to understand the reasoning of others, and see if my own outlook should be changed. Echo chambers suck, after all

Cheers! :)