Can you be a pure vegan?

You can't escape from it in the bath- gelatine is often used in bath soaps, other products may be tested on animals and even if they say they aren't, the original ingredients that were used to create the product probably have been tested on animals.

I know just how many rabbits, mice, voles and small mammals are killed when we harvest our crops (grew up on a farm, work on a farm) cleanin the blades on a combine harvester can sometimes be a grissley task. Those animals died, so that we could grow crops, which vegans choose to eat to save animals. Not to mention all the insects that die - but vegans don't care about insects, they only care about creatures they think are "cute"Also this

Whereas you don't care about even them? It's not true that vegans 'don't care' about insects and small animals; vegans as a group tend to care about all animals (if we didn't care about insects, why would we reject honey?) And we care about the dangers of big-business agriculture. But there is a difference between the collateral damage implied in a wheat harvest, and the industrial breeding, exploiting, and slaughtering of animals for their food, milk, eggs, and skin. If you don't see this difference, I'd put it to you that you are being obdurate.

No, it's "all or nothing" - the fact that you claim to care about these things, and yet still use a computer and the internet (powered by, amoungst other things, millions of tons of coal being burned which directly contributes to deforestation, the loss of homes and deaths of many animals a year) just tells me that in reality, you only care as far as it is convinient for you to care, or care just enough to uphold your status, or label as a vegan.

And while we're on the subject of bees (which the pesticides we spray on crops kill, oops) Why don't vegans like eating honey? Do they even understand the honey making process?

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% against the abuse, mistreatment, improper slaughtering and all other kinds of animal cruelty. However comma, most business do comply with all the rules and regulations put in place to prevent this kind of thing.

Question for you: If you were in a restauraunt and ordered the ceaser salad with no chicken, and it came out with chicken, would you sigh, think "that's not what I wanted" and then consume it anyway, or would you send it back?

You are saying that just because we can't be perfect, we should throw up our hands and do no good at all; we should all behave as badly as we want because we can't all behave perfectly. Where does that leave progress? I don’t remember anyone arguing against the abolition of slavery because 'there are all these other bad things still happening so what's the point.' Progress is achieved one step at a time. Everyone can choose to go vegan if they want to; or they can join Greenpeace and campaign against deforestation; or they can do both. We’re human beings, we’re capable of caring about more than one thing at a time (though not of solving everything all at once, sadly).

Personally I don't give a toss about being labelled vegan (I don’t even have any vegan friends in real life, apart from my partner); I just think that exploiting animals is wrong , so I have as little as possible to do with it, so I don’t buy stuff from people who profit from harming / using animals. I do find it amusing, though (and irritating) when people get so defensive about this that they accuse me of 'using the internet'. Modern life is not, and never can be, about 'all or nothing' states of being - unless you join some extremist cult, of course (which is always tempting, hey ). Trying to be a good person and not cause unnecessary harm is as much as we can do, and to this end, going vegan is a step in the right direction. Most people, deep down, don’t *really* want animals to be hurt.



I just think that bees make the honey for themselves, not for humans to take. Mass-produced honey comes from bee factory farms, where many bees are crushed, driven around trailers (stressful for them), the Queens are routinely killed, they are burned alive in their hives if infection breaks out, and more productive (exotic) species are favoured, often endangering local, less aggressive species in the process if they escape (which happens). We rely on bees enough as it is – we need them to pollinate our plants – so I don’t see why we should do this to them as well, really.



The regulations are an ingenious marketing ploy to make people feel better about eating animals. The public doesn’t really know what goes on in the meat, dairy, egg industries (to name only those), and most don’t want to know, as it would make them feel guilty and might make them want to stop consuming the products. The standards set for UK farmers, even when they are met (which is not always, given that checks are made roughly once a year at prearranged times, are signed off by local vets whose livelihoods depend on the farms being there, and fail to pick up systematic abuse such as that recently revealed at Harling Pig Farm) are still low and exploitative, and imports from unregulated countries are also a massive and largely unchecked problem (especially in pre-made goods like quiches and cakes, and in cheap mass-produced woollen and leather clothing etc). Not to mention the exports – dairy calves sent to veal farms in France, because while it’s illegal to produce veal here, it’s not illegal to provide the industry with calves, or to serve it in UK restaurants.

Welfare issues aside though, most vegans are abolitionist – even if the welfare was awesome and every chicken had its own personal trainer, animals are not ours to be used and killed. They belong to themselves; they feel pleasure, pain, and fear, and we shouldn’t be enslaving and killing them. It’s unnecessary, wasteful, and cruel. That’s basically what all vegans agree on, and it’s the reason I went vegan.



No, I wouldn’t eat it (wouldn’t order caesar salad anyway as the sauce and parmesan are not vegan). At a restaurant last year (when I was vegetarian but not yet vegan), I bit into what was supposed to be a veggie spring roll, to find it had chicken in it. I spat it out on my plate (discreetly, but it was still rather embarrassing), and of course didn’t eat it. The restaurant apologised and didn’t charge for the starter. It is a horrible feeling, and it really surprised me how strongly I reacted, as I had only been veggie for a few months then and had eaten chicken all the time before that. But the idea of having a dead animal in my mouth, and the taste of it, felt awful. A lot of veggies feel like that soon after they quit meat, if they've done it for ethical (not health) reasons.

Just on this point, you can get toiletries etc that *haven't* been tested on animals, and this is what vegans do. Original Source shower gel (which - omg - I love, especially the chocolate mint kind, and the raspberry and vanilla); Superdrug's own brands aren't animal tested, so that takes care of things like toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant and the like. The Vegan Society's Animal Free Shopper has lots of useful information on what's vegan and what's not.

As to your main point though, yes it's impossible right now to be *totally* animal free (most roads and car tyres contain animal-derived substances). But eating animals and using products that exist because animals have been harmed is a choice, and the point is to minimise your partcipation in animal-harming industries by not giving them money. If nobody ate cows, selling their byproducts to unrelated companies wouldn't mke any economic sense. Veganism is the only way to move towards that goal.

A lot of what you say is typical propganda from vegans and veggies, stuff that if I asked you to link sources for they would probably be from biased websites etc, so please spare me that. I could mimic you by saying "lots of parents abuse their children, and the authourities regularly fail to spot this abuse, so we should remove parenting and let kids fend for themselves" but that would slightly mental.

Realy the only thing you have said that makes sense, and the only thing I can accept as a logical reason to be a vegan/veggie is the mention of your own personal morals, considering an animals life to be "it's own" etc is something that isn't true or false, it's mereley one of those "personal truths" I just happen to think it's totally isane. But you don't respect the personal truths of others? Using terms like "crazy cult" when I mention people who choose to avoid modern technology in order to prevent damage to the enviroment or the ecosystem. This is really only a step up from what you do, which is only a step up from what vegetarians do, which is a step up from what I do (nom the meat but feed the occasional stray" etc etc.

If you were looking for some more moral paths to follow you could hit up Janism, or even more hardcore Fruitarian (allthough I hear these guys tend to go hungry pretty quick) :O

Just to give you a bit of background I've been a vegetarian for 17 years and thought about going vegan but it's a bit too challenging for me. I ask this question out of curiosity, not to offend.

However I am trying to say that the ingredients used in products 'not' tested on animals will have ingredients that have been tested. e.g if you see an ingredient in the list it likely will have been tested on animals at some point in time.

Paractemol and ibuprofen will be tested but people don't refuse these.
I don't openly buy products not tested on animals for this reason.

I'm in a bit of a pickle atm actually as I bought some medicine from the doctors recently, explained I was vegetarian (it came up in conversation) but got given tablets with a gelatine coating. Now the ethical part of me is saying don't eat them, you know they aren't veggie but the financial side of me is saying I can't afford to take them back/exchange for 'veggie' ones (if they even exist).

It sure would suck for their boyfriends, or rather, therein lies the problem.

I can't be the only person who is vegan due to mass farming practices rather than the belief that eating or killing animals is inherently wrong.

If I hunted a wild animal or raised my own stock on a small-holding I'd be fine with it, in fact I think that is better than being vegan. Since I can't do these things I find it easier to just be vegan and eat wild caught fish. I just can't bear the thought of not knowing where my food came from, having no relationship with the cow or pig or chicken etc that was born purely to feed humans and killed for my benefit. It just seems greedy, lazy and unattached to reality.

So, you know, you can be 'pure vegan' in those terms but perhaps I fall under a different banner I'm unaware about.

Vegans perform fellatio. Veganism is about stopping cruelty, not weird beliefs about sex.