this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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I'm not sure what anyone could call the "official" definition of being vegan, but I think a reasonable definition is that a vegan is someone who tries to live such that they cause the minimum amount of suffering to animals possible.
Buying meat is obviously bad because it creates a market for meat, but finding meat does not create a market for meat, and therefore wouldn't increase animal suffering. It doesn't matter if someone hit it on purpose or if the animal suffered while it died, your actions haven't caused that. Utilizing scavenged meat does not cause suffering to more animals (and in fact, it likely reduces it).
I would even argue that if you find a mortally wounded animal, it's kinder to put it out of its misery than to leave it be, but that's literally the trolley problem, and it's up for debate.
This is all somewhat moot, though, cause I'd wager that 99.9% of all vegans are also just dietarily vegetarian in that they don't want to consume meat even if it was ethically sound.
Vegan just means nothing from animals - no meat obviously, no cheese, milk, eggs, etc
The reasoning behind it is different for each person
Some just don't like meat for instance or can't stomach diary products.
What about honey?
What about jellyfish?
Obviously not vegan...?
Fair enough about honey, but with jellyfish I think it starts to get into the idea that the distinction between plants and animals isn't as clear cut as people imagine.
Jellyfish are classified animals, in the same phylum as coral, sea anenomes, and a parasite that lives inside the cells of fish.
Obviously we need to classify them somewhere, but in terms of the ethics of eating them for food they seem closer to plants than mammals to me. After all plants can also communicate, and respond to stimuli including sending out warning signals when they're being eaten (are they suffering? No way of knowing, consciousnessis not well defined).
Personally, honey is for me less an animal, because it's an animal product
Jellyfish is an animal in itself
But to be honest, I'm a carnivore, so I'm just talking out of my ass and anyone else can probably give more educated answers
Edit: and as far as I understand, it's not about mammals, it's just if it lives.
For me the border is also hard to draw, because, as you say, plants communicate and seem to feel stress (which could be interpreted as pain)
It's a personal thing anyway.
Edit 2: there are also grades of vegetarian/veganism
Like only eating fruits/nuts, that already dropped from the living plant. Which would probably the most strict and consistent philosophy.
But food is always also a psychological thing.
I went for raw vegan food for some time (until mandatory military killed my diet), and all my allergies were gone
But a friend of mine was starving on the same diet and looked like shit.
Everyone is different...
Hmmm...Shoplifting meat doesn't create a market, in fact it discourages the market from carrying meat because they lose money on it....