Wednesday 25 March 2009

Veganism is crazy over the honey issue!

I'm not vegan, but I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian. That means that I eat a plant based diet with dairy and eggs. However, I am really turned off by the attitude that a lot of vegans have over the honey issue. Vegans say that honey is an animal product and that anyone who consumes it should not call themselves a vegan. Others disagree and say that honey is really processed flower nectar. Unlike meat, dairy and eggs, honey is a product that bees process, not produce from their bodies like the other three.

I believe that the vegan community should stop making a federal case over the honey issue, and accept people who call themselves vegan that use honey personally that still agree with the rest of the vegan philosophy. Making a major case over the honey issue makes the vegan movement look very dogmatic to outsiders and turns people off from considering becoming vegan. This attitude also hurts the cows, pigs, sheep, etc because less people join the vegan movement over the honey issue.

Fortunately, there are some vegan associations who are not dogmatic over the honey issue such as Vegan Outreach:
article

I hope that someday, the definition of the word vegan will be officially changed to allow for honey consumption. In actual practise, that may have largely happened already.