• Manticore@lemmy.nz
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      3 months ago

      Depends on the vegan you’re talking to.

      Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture. Much like honey or milk, the fact you don’t eat the animal’s flesh might still defy the spirit of ‘no animal exploitation’. Most pollinators do not explicitly perish as part of pollination; figs are one of the foods vegans may disagree on.

      The good news is that there are a small number of fig varieties that can be fertilised without the wasp (either by hand, or self-pollinating clones). In a lot of countries this is the variety that may be grown because importing wasps could be ecologically dangerous.

      • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture.

        That’s still different to animal exploitation. Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. This is not contrary to that, “milk” and “honey” are produced by the animals for a specific reason, namely their young. Even if it were possible to obtain them without harming the animal (and there isn’t, both require animal death if they are to be produced in consumer quantities) there still is the problem of consent. It is clear that bees and cows under normal circumstances do not want to give away their milk/honey. The wasp however is already dead, it is not harmed by eating the fig and it’s consent is no longer part of the equation.

        If the fig cultivation reaches a level where the wasps have to be kept under circumstances similar to the bees then yes I wouldn’t consider the figs that require these wasps to be vegan.

        • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          Not completely true. There’s a tick which can make you allergic to animal cell structures, basically making you vegan. So lab grown meat would still be a no no. For me, I want to eat plant (and fungi) based products so I don’t want lab grown meat (although I would like to try it once). I think lab grown meat is amazing, because people who desperately want to eat meat can do so without feeding the fucked up meat industry. Less livestock means less chance on virus mutation, so less chance of pandemics. I think this is the most important reason to reduce global livestock.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            3 months ago

            Were you to try poisoning me to make me stop eating meat, I would eat fish, and birds

              • psud@aussie.zone
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                3 months ago

                They don’t have the same sugars in their blood as mammals, the tick borne allergen that makes people allergic to meat only makes them allergic to mammal meat, and really only for a few years

                • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  3 months ago

                  Depends. There is also a severe version where you get allergic to all animal cells, so including milk and eggs. I think there’s a vegan who created this tick after years of development in their basement hehe