Honey IS vegan?
14 September 2005

Don’t vegans just love to argue about honey? Today, as I picked up my latest copy of Satya Magazine, I was surprised to see an article by Dr. Michael Greger suggesting that honey is vegan.

Yeah, that’s right. He says that honey is vegan.

The following paragraph sums up his view pretty well:

I’m afraid that our public avoidance of honey is hurting us as a movement. A certain number of bees are undeniably killed by honey production, but far more insects are killed, for example, in sugar production. And if we really cared about bugs we would never again eat anything either at home or in a restaurant that wasn’t strictly organically grown—after all, killing bugs is what pesticides do best. And organic production uses pesticides too (albeit “natural�). Researchers measure up to approximately 10,000 bugs per square foot of soil—that’s over 400 million per acre, 250 trillion per square mile. Even “veganically� grown produce involves the deaths of countless bugs in lost habitat, tilling, harvesting and transportation. We probably kill more bugs driving to the grocery store to get some honey-sweetened product than are killed in the product’s production.

These are good points overall, but they miss one thing: honey is unnecessary cruelty. We may not be able to avoid killing insects when producing crops, driving to the store, or doing other daily activities. But it is really simple to avoid honey, and no one needs it to live. Why should we recklessly abandon our commitment to reducing cruelty in this area of our lives, particularly when it is so easy to avoid? As Dr. Greger points out, we can probably dissect our lives in a million ways to figure out all of the ways that we knowingly or unknowingly exploit animals, and this can lead to pointless navel-gazing. Nevertheless, this isn’t one of those marginal cases like animal products being in tires, or insects being killed to produce food. This is a clear-cut case. Honey kills bees. Honey is easy to avoid. Therefore, if reducing suffering matters to you, you should avoid honey.

Finally, to fend off a common critique:

Veganism isn’t about perfection, but it is about reducing cruelty to the greatest extent possible and respecting the life of other beings when we can. When possible, we should make choices that respect compassion and life. So why eat honey for the sake of expediency? Also, Dr. Greger makes it seem like this will help improve the public standing of vegans. I have my doubts. Most of the world sees us as so marginal to begin with that something like this isn’t likely to improve our standing much. With that being the case, why engage in what is an avoidable form of cruelty?

(p.s. should you doubt that bees deserve some consideration, I’d encourage you to read this article. )

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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