Per the title. If an animal dies out in nature without any human involvement, shouldn’t it be considered vegan to harvest any of the useful parts from it (not nessicarily meat, think hide), since there was no human-caused suffering involved?
Similarly, is driving a car not vegan because of the roadkill issue?
Especially curious to hear a perspective from any practicing moral vegans.
Also: I am not vegan. That’s why I’m asking. I’m not planning on eating roadkill thank you. Just suggesting the existence of animal-based vegan leather.
Hi, ive been vegan for a bit over 10 years. I don’t think animal parts are for us to use at all. I’m not really sure why you’d harvest animals at all, I don’t think normalizing the commodification of others’ bodies is a good thing to be doing. If you really can’t live without animal parts, that’s probably the least harmful way of acquiring them. I wouldn’t recommend eating anyone you find lying on the ground though, that sounds like a good way to contract horrible diseases.
Veganism is about doing the most that is possible and practicable. We probably kill insects just by walking, but it’s not reasonable to never move again to avoid that. Similarly, driving a car for many people is a necessity to be able to access goods and services, and its not at all practicable to avoid driving for them.
Ultimately, veganism is a moral stance about reducing harm to others as much as you can. It’s not a competition, so don’t feel like you have to be perfect at it to do good.
We probably kill insects just by walking, but it’s not reasonable to never move again to avoid that.
There’s this Hindu sect whose adherents wear veils, sweep the floor before them, and/or tread very slowly and carefully to avoid injuring, killing or eating any small insects. As you said, it’s about doing as much as you can, but if it were a competition they’d win for sure.
I think you mean Jainism? It isn’t Hindu.
They also have a very strict vegetarian diet, they won’t even eat root vegetables so burrowing insects aren’t disturbed
Thank you for this perspective!
If you don’t make a moral distinction between humans and other animals, it seems difficult to justify scavenging with any logic that couldn’t also be used to justify grave robbing, cannibalism, or even necrophilia.
This is strawman reasoning. No vegan I’ve ever met belives that there’s no moral distinction between human and non human animals. They believe that non human and have moral worth, and that moral worth is higher than 15 minutes of taste pleasure or shoes, etc.
The basic logic flows like this:
- Non human animals are capable of subjective experiences, which includes the ability to suffer.
- Exploitation of or killing of animals causes suffering.
- It isn’t essential, under normal circumstances in modern society, to cause that suffering for our survival.
- It isn’t morally permissible to cause unnecessary suffering.
If you don’t make any sort of moral distinction between humans and animals then sex might become on interesting topic.
i saw a really interesting video about biking jackets and the design of them, the conclusion is that molecularly leather is the safest material for abrasion and there’s not really any synthetic replacement that comes close.
What does your perspective (in regard to veganism) have on this subject?
https://youtu.be/xwuRUcAGIEU
Btw this channel is REALLY entertaining and well written, I’d recommend watching this channel if you get bored sometimeI’d take the risk with synthetic materials, personally. I don’t think any amount of danger I put myself in would justify killing someone else for their skin. I have a synthetic jacket with elbow and shoulder reinforcement for when I ride, and that’s good enough for me.
I’ll definitely check out the video later when I have more downtime though.
For the western world motorbikes are largely a luxury. Don’t do the luxury thing AND don’t wear a dead animal seems like a reasonable position to take.
For the eastern world motorbikes and mopeds is all everyone has. Far from luxury
I don’t think you understand. Leather jackets are the best for safety, it’s not just a fashion choice
I don’t think you understand.
Not doing the activity that requires protective clothing is safer than doing the activity with protective clothing.
For westerners motorcycle riding and leather jackets are luxuries so it seems the vegan solution would be to not ride and not buy leather.
Thank you for your well rounded and ernest perspective. That final sentence really gave me pause. And it’s nice to find a corner of the internet where vegans aren’t vilified immediately for existing
Not for us to use? Do you mean you don’t think we should or is that something that comes from somewhere “above” (religion, philosophy, something like that)
I don’t think we should, other’s bodies aren’t ours. Just a deeply held moral belief.
That’s understandable
Back in the way way way way way way way day. Human used animal fur for warmth, and the meat to eat.
Veganism isn’t a hivemind. We’re all individuals that came to similar conclusions. And we will have different opinions on the details.
Some folks will say consuming those that died naturally is a-ok. Others will argue that it incentivizes creating conditions under which animals die “naturally” to harvest them.
Personally, I’m part of the group that is probably the largest by a long shot, whose opinion is: Why are we even thinking about that?The vast majority of vegans find corpses gross, much like anything you might derive from corpses.
It also seriously does not happen often, that animals drop dead in front of you. And there’s nothing on an animal’s body that you can’t find a different alternative for. So, it really just is not a relevant question in our lives…To me it’s not a matter of ethics but a matter of health. Unless you saw the animal die from something that clearly isn’t disease I wouldn’t trust meat I just found laying around.
It doesn’t have to be edible. Glue, gelatin for skin mimicry, clothing, and bones for weapons, etc are all non-edible uses of animals.
Good point. I forgot vegans included all that stuff and not just eating animal products.
For me personally: Veganism is also about signaling to the outside world. Suppose I were to skin an animal that died naturally and make a jacket out of it, this would probably be the most ethical way to produce a leather jacket. But I still wouldn’t wear it, because by doing so I would signal to the outside world that it’s okay to wear the skinned hide of animals. Outsiders can’t know under what circumstances I got the leather.
It might be a bit more radical, which is why I might face hostility, but I also throw away non-vegan foods that I unintentionally receive, instead of giving them to non-vegans. Simply because I don’t want to project to the outside: “Here you go. I would never eat it because I find it unethical, but if you eat it, then that’s okay.”
Neither would I but what about the hide?
This is something that has always bothered me about roadkill animals (esp deer which are particularly prevalent as roadkill in my area).
Its my understanding that the hide can remain in good and usable condition for days to weeks after the animal’s death. It seems that this could be a decent source of blankets and other light-medium cold weather gear.
I’d imagine it largely comes down to the skinning process. The internal organs of dead animals are supposed to get real gross real fast (and that’s in the best case scenario - if anything ruptured when they were hit, then the grossness increasing exponentially) and removing those is the first step towards skinning. Additionally, everything in harvesting the hide would need to be done by hand.
But boy, if we could build one of those Boston dynamics bots to do it…
I trust old meat I find lying around. It may be a different color, but it still spends the same.
If you don’t like broccoli, why don’t you eat it when it’s half rotten?
You missed this part in the post:
“not necessarily meat, think hide”
This. When I was a kid, I asked this same question and it took me years to fully wrap my head around it.
The ELI5 - When we pick food, we often pick it when it’s the most fresh. We want the freshest apples, the healthiest corn. That also applies to meat. We kill animals at their peak, and harvest them for meat.
When you die, it’s because something is rotten. Lung. Heart. Cancer. Its part of aging. If some part of your body was rotten enough to kill you, that means that was circulating through the rest of your body. Say that a rabbit was killed by poison gas. Would you eat it, if technically, the poison was mostly in its lungs?
We kill animals at their peak, and harvest them for meat.
That’s not the case. There’s even different words to the meat depending on the age the animal got slaughtered. There’s no single “peak”.
What if I was the killer using the poison gas
Found RFK, Jr’s Lemmy account
I’m not vegan myself but I had asked a similar enough question to a vegan friend a while ago and liked his answer:
He said for him it’s 2 parts, 1 is that while the animal that died may not have been harmed by humans, the ecosystem that relies on scavenging carcasses will be hurt if humans effectively start removing their entire food source (same way we have driven species to extinction by hunting).
The 2nd part is that with humans everything with even the tiniest loop hole will get abused… Imagine that we say this is okay. Today it may be the odd naturally deceased animal, in a month it’ll start including animals “killed accidentally”, in a year it’ll be someone farming animals with some weird way of culling them so they can claim it’s still natural causes by some twisted logic… at the end of it we’d just not be able to trust any of it anyway so it’s easier to not even entertain the thought - the energy to figure it all out would be better spent on improving alternatives.
I would think driving a car is not vegan because it’s fueled by dead dinosaurs.
From my end, I’m a registered organ donor because I feel that I won’t need this body once I’m done with it, and if anything is useful off it for someone else, then hell, let them have my liver.
However, an animal can’t consent to that and yeah, an argument could be made that who gives a fuck, it’s a pig/chicken/cow, it’s not gonna give a shit, but death is unfortunate for anything and I’d feel more at ease that the carcus is either left for nature to do what it does than me harvesting it for food.
It is going to be eaten no matter what. The chance of it being eaten is essentially 100%. So i can’t see how that’s part of the equation.
Sure, but a person can choose to not be the one who does it.
I think i can understand what you’re saying. Unimportant sidenote, it’s spelled carcass
I’m aware. I’m not the one who misspelled it.
Ope you’re right
Interesting.
(Parent comment was edited)
And such is the circle of life right. I also feel that if we as a species can move beyond meat, then we should. I can live a perfectly normal life on my current vegan diet, and if that carcus is then left for other animals and fauna to have, thus leaving the cycle undisrupted.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that I’d rather let the animals that need those nutrients have it, as I’m already sorted.
I think it would depend who you ask. I consider myself vegan and would have no major issue with someone using roadkill for parts. I mean, I would find it disgusting and could never myself, but if they want to and still call themselves vegan, I see no problem with it as the harm has already been done to the animal. Seems the same as harvesting bones from the forest - what’s dead is dead.
Seems the same as harvesting bones from the forest
Umm… Wut? Why are you being a bone harvester, what do you need them for??
Bone stuff, why are you asking so many questions?
Whatever I want.
If you die in the woods I will find you.
Witchcraft
Because animals that died naturally are animals
So is the point to NOT eat animals or not cause suffering?
I’m all for #2 but #1 seems arbitrary given nature.
Being vegan means not consuming animal products. The reasons are irrelevant in the definition
The reasons are not irrelevant to the question being asked though. Vegan for health reasons? Sure the question is irrelevant if you get sick from any animal products. You aren’t going to eat them. Same way celiac avoids gluten.
Vegan for ethical reasons? Then the question is very relevant. Is it ethical to have a pet cat? They are carnivores and will suffer and die on the wrong food. No pets at all would be most ethical. Are you concerned about mass farming of vegetables? If machinery is used, field mice and such are getting killed to harvest your vegan diet. Are you concerned about human trafficking of migrant workers or just farmed animals? If a bear kills a deer in your yard in Montana, eats half and fucks off, is it ethical for you to eat the rest? You had no hand in it’s death and suffering. You’ll have to do something with the carcass or you’ll have more predators in your yard. Are you only eating locally grown, in season fruits and vegetables, hand harvested by fairly paid workers?
If ethics is the reason, it’s fully legitimate to debate and figure out where your personal line is drawn. We live in an imperfect world and there’s no perfect solution.
The question asked why vegans don’t eat animals that died naturally. The reason is because vegans don’t eat animals.
Well that’s just dumb.
Why don’t you eat humans if they’ve already died?
Because I’m not allowed in the morgue anymore.
You made me literally laugh out loud. Thank you
prion disease lol
I would totally try it if it was legally allowed and there wasn’t a risk of diesease from eating human flesh. 🤷♂️
And, if in a situation like the Donner Party: That’s generally what happens. They don’t kill someone just to eat 'em.
i hear children taste the best. maybe we should adopt a system of indefinitely milking mothers while eating their children like is done with cows. Double Bonus. Tastiest meat plus milk.
They have to die on their own tho. And I’m not sure it would be safe to eat unvaccinated children who died of preventable illnesses.
What a humble proposal. You could almost call it modest.
Because of the karma loss 🙄
Really depends on which lens of veganism you view it through. I usually judge things by the economic lens, where veganism is the response to capitalism incentivising the exploitation of animals. It’s probably one of the easiest ways to think about it, but essentially it goes like “As long as you don’t pay money for exploitation, you’re fine”
So roadkill would be fine. Saving food that would be thrown out is fine. Shoplifting is fine. Served the wrong thing at the restaurant- Complain and get your money back. Second hand down jacket from a relative who would have thrown it away otherwise - gross but fine. Stealing chickens from a factory farm and eating some of their eggs- fine. Et cetera.I don’t think that sort of logical line can be applied to anything but individuals though. I still wouldn’t be buying leather from a company that claims to only use roadkill, as my money would still be a financial incentive to expand the operation.
Vegan just means causing as little animal suffering as possible. Us existing in a capitalist society causes suffering for animals. But where it is possible to avoid it, it should be avoided is what vegans want. Like if a vegan drives a car and a squirrel runs in front of the car the person does not suddenly stop being vegan
You mean it’s not Scott Pilgrim rules?
Cars and roads cause a lot of suffering for animals in general
Humans especially. I wouldn’t have to go to work if the roads all vanished
In fact, the numbers are estimated to be around 2 billion animals a year globally.
As for people
What if that person had no remorse for the squirrel?
Idk much about vegan philosophy and it is a philosophy not a diet to be clear. However, personally I see it as stealing from the vultures. The vegan solution is of course, to limit roadkill to negligable levels by making cars a redundant and antiquated form of transportation.
Also I wouldn’t trust roadkill to be safe for consumption
I’ve wondered about this myself since like age 7, when our otherwise perfectly healthy horse Sissy got struck by lightning while standing under a pine tree out in the field in a storm. 😢
Living out in deer hunting country, they could have given the neighbors a shout and basically be like hey the meat’s fresh, y’all come help cut it up and stock like 10-20 freezers for free…
🤷
You probably don’t want to eat horse meat these days due to the drugs that are often given to horses, (mostly wormers). They tend to not flush out of the horses system no matter how long you wait.
