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ya im the same actually.... im going to write something about that on my site ...... we have all these "groups" of vegetarians why not make one up so people can still call themselves vegetarian even if they eat cow or pig? i mean we already have one for fish and poultry and they still call themselves vegetarian...... its just fuckin stupid beyond belief

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That's the reason I hate honey and fish. Those 2 point out that titles are useless. The Earth isn't going to get better because I choose to be vegan, the Earth is going to get better because I reduce my water consumption and cut out one trophic level with my food, making myself more efficient.

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I like fish - I think they're pretty, nice, and find them to be almost invariably polite and civil. Honey tends to keep to itself, also (it doesn;t mug old ladies or anything), so I don;t hate it or anything.

 

we have all these "groups" of vegetarians why not make one up so people can still call themselves vegetarian even if they eat cow or pig?

 

The appropriate terminology would be bovo-porco-vegetarian

 

Which should be regarded in the same way as the term "homo-vegetarian" (a person who eats no flesh other than human flesh)

 

I was a baby-on-a-stick vegan for a while.

I couldn;t swallow "exploitation" and "babies on sticks" in the same sentence - but i could swallow just the babies, so that made it all ok ethically. Right ?

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Honey is not vegan. If you eat honey, you are not vegan. You are a strict vegetarian. Veganism is the TOTAL abstinence from all avoidable animal products, and honey is definitely an avoidable animal product.

 

I have a problem from it on an ethics basis; why do we assume we have the right to just take what we want from anyone? The bees sure as hell aren't agreeing to it, and when that happens it's called STEALING.

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Honey is not vegan. If you eat honey, you are not vegan. You are a strict vegetarian. Veganism is the TOTAL abstinence from all avoidable animal products, and honey is definitely an avoidable animal product.

 

I have a problem from it on an ethics basis; why do we assume we have the right to just take what we want from anyone? The bees sure as hell aren't agreeing to it, and when that happens it's called STEALING.

 

Honey isn't strict vegetarian...vegans are strict vegetarians that care about animals...you can work in a fur farm and be a strict vegetarian but you wouldn't eat eggs, dairy, honey, or meat....none of those things are vegetables. A strict vegetarian that eats none of those things isn't a vegan...just someone who watches their diet.

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I have no problem with how insects are treated because I don't believe their nervous systems are developed enough to feel pain. A description of the basics of the nervous system of an insect are here:

 

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/tutorial/nerves.html

 

Just because it moves, that doesn't mean it has a processing center like ours.

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I eat honey (I guess that would make me an "Apiarian?" accoriding to VT magazine. My father keeps bees as a hobby and very few, if any bees are killed during the harvesting of the honey. I think there is an ethical side to keeping bee's as he gets a lot of calls from people who have him get the bees when they swarm onto their properties. I think by keeping them, it would otherwise prevent them from getting destroyed by other means such as insect spray. He also gets offers from local farmers to construct a hive in their fields and fruit orchards to pollinate their crops. If it wasn't for the bee's there wouldn't be enough fruits and nuts for us to eat.

 

I like to put a little honey in my corn flakes in the morning, or have a piece of toast with margerine and honey.

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I have no problem with how insects are treated because I don't believe their nervous systems are developed enough to feel pain. A description of the basics of the nervous system of an insect are here:

 

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/tutorial/nerves.html

 

Just because it moves, that doesn't mean it has a processing center like ours.

 

There are lots of paralized/brain dead people that don't feel pain either but I'm not going to milk them for any of their resources...as for the nervous systems...maybe they don't allow them to comprehend many things but they surely feel pain...otherwise fight or flight wouldn't exhist for them which isn't true

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There are lots of paralized/brain dead people that don't feel pain either but I'm not going to milk them for any of their resources

 

 

A person that is brain dead once had consciousness. A bee is more like a large flying bacteria.

 

 

as for the nervous systems...maybe they don't allow them to comprehend many things but they surely feel pain...otherwise fight or flight wouldn't exhist for them which isn't true

 

I can't find any information on fight-or-flight response in bees - please show me that they exhibit this behavior.

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There are lots of paralized/brain dead people that don't feel pain either but I'm not going to milk them for any of their resources

 

 

A person that is brain dead once had consciousness. A bee is more like a large flying bacteria.

 

Wow, how do you know? Have you ever been a bee in your past life or so?

 

 

I can't find any information on fight-or-flight response in bees - please show me that they exhibit this behavior.

 

Maybe scientists haven't dismembered enough bees to get that information already...

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Honey is not vegan. If you eat honey, you are not vegan. You are a strict vegetarian. Veganism is the TOTAL abstinence from all avoidable animal products, and honey is definitely an avoidable animal product.

 

I have a problem from it on an ethics basis; why do we assume we have the right to just take what we want from anyone? The bees sure as hell aren't agreeing to it, and when that happens it's called STEALING.

 

I am totally with you on this subject! Thanks for pointing it out!

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Wow, how do you know? Have you ever been a bee in your past life or so?

 

No, but I'm pretty sure that consciousness, thought, decision making, emotion and pain can all be tied to processes within an evolved brain; something that a bee lacks.

 

Maybe scientists haven't dismembered enough bees to get that information already...

 

Behavior is an observable phenomenon and doesn't require dissection. If it did psychology would be responsible for many more deaths.

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they have eyes, legs, wings, etc = animal ... that animal makes a product then you take it = non-vegan

 

Bees can perform learning tasks that go beyond simple conditioning. Bees were trained to enter a simple Y-shaped maze that had been marked at the entrance with a particular color. Inside the maze was a branching point where the bee was required to choose between two paths. One path, which led to the food reward, was marked with the same color that had been used at the entrance to the maze, while the other was marked with a different color. Bees learned to choose the correct path, and continued to do so when a different kind of marker (black and white stripes oriented in various directions) was substituted for the colored markers. When the experimental conditions were reversed, rewarding bees for choosing the inner passage marked with a symbol that was different from the entrance symbol, the bees again learned to choose the correct path.

 

In one test reported in a 1983 issue of Science News, he moved a supply of sugar water 25% further away from a hive each day. The bees communicated to each other as usual on its location. Then he placed the sugar water on a boat anchored in the middle of a small lake. When scouts returned to the hive to communicate their find, other bees refused to go with them, not expecting to find food in the middle of a lake, even though they frequently flew over the lake to reach pollen sources on the opposite shore.

 

In another test related in the August 1986 issue of Discover ("A Honey of a Question: Are Bees Intelligent?"), Gould lured some bees to a dish of artificial nectar, then gradually moved it farther from the hive after they became accustomed to it. He marked the addicted bees, placed them in a darkened jar, and relocated them to a spot where the hive was still visible, but not the dish. When released one by one, the bees would appear disoriented for a few seconds, then fly directly for the covert dish. 73 of 75 bees reached it in about 28 seconds. They apparently accomplished this feat by devising a new flight path based on a cognitive map of visible landmarks.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_learning_and_communication

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Wow, how do you know? Have you ever been a bee in your past life or so?

 

No, but I'm pretty sure that consciousness, thought, decision making, emotion and pain can all be tied to processes within an evolved brain; something that a bee lacks.

 

 

The most bees I know are pretty smart when trying to steel the jelly from my toast

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Thank you Kathryn for that article and I will use the end of it to respond to endcruelty and Atilla. Though I had read the wikipedia information already, I had formed the same opinion as this person:

 

It is clear that much of the honeybee behavioural repertoire is pre-programmed as instinct. The basic tools used for navigation and communication are all hardwired. It is onto this framework that the many memories unique to each individual are hung. Despite this capacity for memory and their canny navigational ability, honeybees are probably not capable of true intelligent insight. They are certainly not conscious in the way higher mammals are. Their behaviour, amazing as it is, most likely emerges from the interaction of lots of little rules which have been fine tuned by evolution over many millennia.

 

 

As far as giving the benefit of the doubt, I see no reason to. We have scientific criteria that determines what can and cannot possess consciousness and feelings. If we didn't then we would all be careful about how we treat rocks and trees and give them the benefit of the doubt also.

 

Insects behave like complicated robots and it's a marvel to understand why, but it's silly to equate their mental capacity with ours.

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We need not look at mental capacity...its all reason. There are people with no mental capacity at all and I'm not gonna give them medication to lactate so I can drink their milk...or milk them for sperm if I like their genes

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I am not speaking about people. All people lacking mental capacity have experienced mental capacity previous to their state. I have never once heard of a baby that went into such a state before ever experiencing life consciously.

 

People are not the same as bees.

 

I will gladly "exploit" a fruit tree and eat it's contents as I will "exploit" it's seeds and plant another.

 

There is a very large gap between a bee and a human being and it is completely ignorant to equate the two.

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I keep babies in my basement in a state of neglect, so that i can drink their vomit. I have to kill them before doing so, but it's ok because before it was disproven there was a lot of scientific evidence to suggest that they are non-sentient, and much like complicated robots in composition.

Obviously, their mental capacity is a lot below mine, so i reckon that makes it all ok.

 

I view them as being kind-of like a soggy squishy large type of bacteria.

A lot of the time they just sort of lie there and gurgle when i go down to shuriken them into submission, or cleave them in two with a katana, so i guess they don't have any fight or flight response to what i'm doing.

 

I guess i could assume that they are sentient until proven otherwise, but why give them the benefit of the doubt ?

 

They just don;t have very well-evolved brains (thus why they spend their days producing an assortment of body fluids and being entirely incapable of surviving on their own) so I don;t see what the big deal is.

 

 

 

edit -

People are not the same as bees.

I will gladly "exploit" a fruit tree and eat it's contents as I will "exploit" it's seeds and plant another.

There is a very large gap between a bee and a human being and it is completely ignorant to equate the two.

 

 

and there isn't an even bigger gap between bees and fruit trees ?

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There is a lot of evidence that bees can feel pain -- for example, they produce endorphins (a natural painkiller) when they are shocked, and they become significantly more likely to sting (anger, anyone?). Also go to http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm for more information and sources for studies.

 

Also, some idiots say fish can't feel pain either -- they're obviously wrong. (Fish have virtually identical pain receptors to ours, and display physical symptoms of being in pain, as do bees.)

 

If you eat honey, you're not a vegan and you shouldn't be in this forum.

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Medical "professionals" are not adverse to the "You don't look in pain, so you are not in pain" approach, when encountering ill people in great pain, who are not easy to treat with drugs (such as those with Fibromalgia or M.E)

 

With an approach like that, it's not surprising that they have the same attitude towards other animals.

 

There are also many people who subscribe to the 'free choice is all an illusion' philosophy with regards to humans and the paths they take through life.

 

But even if free choice IS all an illusion, and all we do is go through life following what is expected , in accordance with what has already happened to us in the past and how that influences future choices, would that make it ok to abuse humans however i wish - if i were to want to do that ?

 

I don;t think so, but perhaps some others here disagree.

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and there isn't an even bigger gap between bees and fruit trees ?

 

Actually, it's 30 steps in the evolutionary tree to go from Bee to human but only 18 to go from Bee to Tree, so no.

 

I keep babies in my basement in a state of neglect, so that i can drink their vomit. I have to kill them before doing so, but it's ok because before it was disproven there was a lot of scientific evidence to suggest that they are non-sentient, and much like complicated robots in composition.

 

Actually there's a lot of evidence to prove that babies are sentient so your situation makes no sense. Once again, we are talking about bees.

 

They just don;t have very well-evolved brains

 

Human babies have very evolved brains it is safe to say. Again, think bees. Bees are not humans.

 

 

There is a lot of evidence that bees can feel pain -- for example, they produce endorphins (a natural painkiller) when they are shocked, and they become significantly more likely to sting (anger, anyone?). Also go to http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm for more information and sources for studies

 

The link that you provided does not prove that bees have an endorphinic system. Though morphine is commonly used for pain relief in humans it works by shutting off receptors in the nervous system. In addition to releaving pain (in animals that can feel pain), it also depresses the respiratory system (Link). It is also important to note that drugs do not work the same on different animals. If this were the case then animal experimentation would have greater standing.

 

Also, what does the likelyhood to sting have to do with anger, and what does anger have to do with pain?

 

Also, some idiots say fish can't feel pain either -- they're obviously wrong. (Fish have virtually identical pain receptors to ours, and display physical symptoms of being in pain, as do bees.)

 

We were not discussing fish. We were discussing bees.

 

Please cite a study that proves bees display physical symptoms of pain.

 

 

Astrocat:

 

Please leave philisophical garbage out of a scientific discussion. No one reads minds and it is ridiculous to claim to know what people believe.

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We can't know for sure either way about what a bee 'feels' or 'thinks'. As there is absolutely no reason to eat honey in the first place, it seems safest and most logical to just avoid it. Is eating honey really such a big part of anyone's life that they feel any kind of consequence by not eating it? The risk is that if someone really believes that bees are not sentient / capable of thinking / feeling, and then consumes honey, they are taking the risk that they're wrong and that bees actually are sentient and are suffering because of the person's honey consumption. On the other hand, not eating honey has no risks whatsoever, if bees turn out to be non-sentient, then all those years of not eating honey have no consequence.

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There's no risk involved when we have science to show that:

 

1. Bees do not have a nervous system capable of processing pain.

2. Bees do not exhibit behavior indicating pain.

 

Invertebrates (which bees are) do not feel pain:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/lega-e/witn-e/shelly-e.htm

http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/03/03/stories/2005030301751500.htm

http://www-phil.tamu.edu/~gary/awvar/lecture/pain.html

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