• adj16@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        /end thread.

        That’s the whole debate, OP. It’s solved with this short exchange.

      • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netOP
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        8 months ago

        But they eat animals.

        Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Are they vegan?

        • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          I think you need to look up the definition of of “vegan.” It’s not based on what your food eats: you can’t call eating a grass-fed cow “vegan.”

          Fungi is also not animals.

          • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 months ago

            If a plant has to eat animals to survive then that plant is a product of animal suffering. Thats why vegans don’t drink milk or eat eggs too. So if that’s the definition of vegan that someone subscibes to then the flytrap is not Vegan.

            • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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              8 months ago

              That’s not the definition of vegan. The definition of vegan is a person who abstains from animal products. Plants are not animal products.

              Eating a venus flytrap is also removing a plant that eats animals.

              • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                8 months ago

                There are plenty of vegans who would tell you they abstain from any products of animal suffering, otherwise they would use products that were tested on animals. Just because you test lipstick on animals, doesn’t make the lipstick a product of animals, its a product of animal suffering. Your definition is not the only one and doesn’t exclude animal tested products, which many vegans go out of their way to avoid.

            • rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              Vegans also don’t eat honey, which is not really a byproduct of animal suffering. And a vegan also wouldn’t eat eggs, even if they kept and raised their own free range chickens who were laying unfertilized eggs which were just going to rot if not consumed. Because veganism isn’t about the “suffering” of an animal. You could genetically engineer an animal that was incapable of feeling pain or fear and made it so that it felt ecstasy while being butchered, but killing and eating it would still be unethical for a person to do, and still be in violation of veganism’s core principles, because it’s about conscious beings exploiting the labor or nature of animals without their consent. An animal like a wolf or lion (or in this case a venus fly trap) eating meat is not “unethical” because it exists outside of ethics: it’s just a component of an ecosystem in which predation is a natural element. Humans have functionally removed themselves from whatever ecosystem they evolved to be a part of, so our exploitation of animals and their natural behaviors is just that: exploitative.

          • anarchost@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            If you could operate a series of trolley problems regarding sentience for the average vegan, would a somewhat quantifiable hierarchy arise?

            For example, would a vegan save one human over three pigs, or over 100 pigs?

            If a vegan could use vegan means to prevent the death of all mosquitoes without upsetting the ecology of the planet Earth, but the mosquitoes would then start infecting more humans with hazardous but non-deadly diseases, should the vegan attempt those means?

            • xeddyx@lemmy.nz
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              8 months ago

              I can’t speak for other vegans, but as a vegan, I’d pick an animal’s life over a human’s, so your trolly problem is easy for me. Fuck humans, there are over 8 billion of us and we don’t need any more; fewer there are, the better it is for this planet.

          • Trd@lemmy.wtf
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            8 months ago

            Is milk sentience, eggs? Or what about dead fish?