What about honey / insects killed by pesticides or during harvest?What is a vegan? The general definition of a vegan is "someone who does not use animal products." And one reason to avoid these products is to prevent pain and suffering. But it is not clear which organisms are considered animals, nor which organisms can experience pain and suffering.
The behavior of animals is probably the criterion most people use to base their opinions on whether animals feel pain. Most people agree that cats, dogs, and other mammals feel pain. In fact, when some people say 'animal,' they mean 'mammal'. Even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary lists mammal' as a synonym for 'animal.'
It is not as easy for everyone to agree if birds, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates feel pain. On the other hand, many people seriously claim that plants feel pain. Therefore, defining 'animal' by what people generally believe is not going to be productive.
An alternative way to define 'animal' is to use a scientific definition. But even a scientific definition of 'animal' has problems:
Constructing a good definition of animals is not as easy as it might first appear. There are exceptions to nearly every criterion for distinguishing an animal from other life forms.
Biology, 3rd Ed, Campbell, 1993
If vegans are going to follow a technical or scientific definition of the word 'animal,' then sponges (Porifera) are included. Though considered animals, sponges lack true tissues and have no nervous system. They cannot feel pain or suffer any more than plants. So what would be the point of including sponges in a vegan definition of 'animal'?
Instead of trying to define 'animal,' we should simply try to avoid products that cause suffering and harm to nonhuman organisms by figuring out as best we can which feel pain.
It is possible to understand what goes on in certain portions of the human brain, and then compare the human brain to the brains of animals that are closely related to the animals from which humans have evolved. In so doing, all vertebrates (i.e., fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds) appear to have what is necessary to feel certain types of pain. Vertebrates are also the animals involved in most of the practices to which vegans object.
Invertebrates (such as insects, mollusks, crustaceans, and silkworms) are different because their evolutionary history diverged from ours long before the evolution of fish, the oldest vertebrates. In fact, we are more closely related to starfish (invertebrates with no brain) than to cephalopods (squid and octopi), who have the largest brains of all the invertebrates. Since their nervous systems developed along a different path, it is very hard to know what they do and do not feel.
Bivalves (a class of mollusk; including oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops) are much more complex than sponges. They don't have a brain, but rather very basic nerve ganglia (bunches of nerves). It is doubtful that their nervous systems are developed enough to be conscious of pain. Because they have nervous tissue, there is an argument to be made for avoiding products that may have harmed bivalves.
Insects (including bees) do have brains. But their brains are not highly developed, and they are likely not large enough to facilitate the consciousness of pain.
So is honey vegan? Our best answer is "We don't know." If one is concerned about doing harm to insects, it's not clear that the production of honey involves any more pain for insects than the production of most vegetables or alternative sweeteners, since the harvesting and transportation of all crops involves some insect deaths.
How should vegans treat this issue publicly? We tend to think that making an issue about honey allows people to marginalize vegans as being in favor of ‘insect rights.' Most people won't yet face the pain and suffering involved in meat. Equating meat with honey probably makes the vegan case nonsensical to the average person.
Saying that honey is a significant ethical issue brings in a range of other issues that people can easily dismiss veganism, reducto ad absurdum. Can't eat honey? Can't kill cockroaches? Can't swat mosquitoes? Squashing flies with your car is the same as eating veal?
At this point in history, the obvious and undeniable issues should receive our focus. We should probably cut people some slack when it comes to insects, even if we ourselves see value in the avoidance of harming them.
And this brings us back to the original question of what is a 'vegan'? Perhaps instead of defining a vegan as "someone who does not use animal products," we should define a vegan as "someone who reasonably avoids products that cause suffering to nonhumans."
This might upset some people who feel that without a dogmatic approach (i.e., a governing body making rules for everyone else), veganism will become meaningless as people will be rationalizing all sorts of behavior. But as the situation stands now, veganism's dogmatic overtones not only
drive people away, but make them not even consider giving up many animal products. If we allowed people to call themselves 'vegan' and let them decide what is reasonable, we could then try to convince them using reason, rather than dogma. How can we scare people away by telling them to do what they think is most reasonable? We think the animals would be much better off with this approach both in the short and long run.
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