• adj16@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      /end thread.

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

    • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netOP
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      1 year ago

      But they eat animals.

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

      • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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        1 year 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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          1 year 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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            1 year 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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              1 year 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.

                • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  And those are both products of animal suffering, a common definition many vegans use. Come on, now you’re just being obtuse on purpose.

                  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    Venus flytraps aren’t products. They’re organisms.

                    You’re the one being obtuse. Killing a plant is not killing an animal. Killing a plant that eats animals is not humans doing something to an animal. It’s actually the opposite: it’s humans saving animals.

                    If you want to get that granular, whatever device you’re using to type your pedantic replies was made of parts that were shipped. At some point, the vehicle they were shipped on killed a bug. You caused way more animal deaths typing your replies to me than anyone ever did killing a venus flytrap, because killing a venus fly trap does not actually kill any animals.

                  • MadMaurice@discuss.tchncs.de
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                    1 year ago

                    I think it’s a stretch to say that a venus fly trap dish is immoral because the venus fly trap ate an animal, which it is literally forced to do by nature. You don’t blame a lion either for eating meat, because it is literally a carnivore and cannot survive otherwise. I believe when they say animal suffering they mean suffering resulting from exploitation and so on by humans.

              • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                There are two separate concepts your are talking to here.

                The first is what a vegan is. A vegan is a defined as

                a person who does not eat any food derived from animals and who typically does not use other animal products.

                Why they chose that lifestyle is the second concept you are taking about and it does not alter the definition for anything other than the individual person.

          • rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
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            1 year 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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          1 year 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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            1 year 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.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Specifically it’s about the consent of any sentient beings involved in the production.

            Milk and eggs are fine as long as you’ve acquired them via free market exchange with the animal that produced them. n

            Like, breast milk from a woman is okay for a vegan to eat as long as it wasn’t forcibly taken from her.

            • jeffw@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Which, to be clear, .00001% of human consumed milk doesn’t involve torturing cows and stealing their babies

          • jeffw@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Is this a joke or are you a moron? We forcibly impregnate cows and steal their children… and then do it over and over again until they die

            I’m not vegan, but do you seriously not get how animal suffering works? Go watch Earthlings or Dominion if you’re curious

      • hallettj@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants.

        I bring this up too. What my kid asks, “what is vegan?”, and my wife says, “someone who eats plants”, then I shout from across the room, “and fungi!” Tbh no one is amused but me.

        There’s nothing hypocritical about eating fungi! I just want recognition for the fungal contribution.