honey—its summarily banned, along with bee pollen, bee venom, propolis, and royal jelly. The hard-liners argue that beekeeping, like dairy farming, is cruel and exploitative. The bees are forced to construct their honeycombs in racks of removable trays, according to a design that standardizes the size of each hexagonal chamber. (Some say the more chaotic combs found in the wild are less vulnerable to parasitic mites.) Queens areimprisoned in certain parts of the hive, whilecolonies are split to increase production and sprinkled with prophylactic antibiotics. In the meantime, keepers control the animals bypumping their hives full of smoke, whichmasks the scent of their alarm pheromones and keeps them from defending their honey stores. And some say the bees arent making the honey for us, so its removal from the hive could be construed as a form of theft. (Last years animated feature, Bee Movie, imagined the legal implications of this idea.) So, any vegan who eats honey but avoids milk is making the tacit assumption that the pain experienced by a bee counts for something less than the pain experienced by a cow. Its exactly the sort of compromise that so appalled Watson and the early vegans. Once youve allowed yourself to equivocate on animal suffering, how do you handle all the other borderline cases of insect exploitatio
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 02:15:37 +0000
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