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Lab-Grown Salmon Hits the Menu at an Oregon Restaurant as the FDA Greenlights the Cell-Cultured Product
(www.smithsonianmag.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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I'm a bit curious is purists like yourself also don't take nearly all modern medicine. Like legit curious.
I can't speak for anyone else, but no, I don't use or recommend drugs.
Does that include vaccines then?
And where is the line drawn? Like what about petrochemical derived products or fuels?
When it comes to ethical decisions based on veganism, I draw the line at exploitation of non-human beings, as per the first published definition of veganism.
As I wrote, I don't use drugs, so I haven't really looked into whether any particular drugs are vegan. Common sense would say that anything made directly from a plant (e.g. opium, cocaine) or exempt from animal testing requirements (e.g. penicillin, nembutal) would be possible to get in a vegan formulation, but I doubt that that would apply to any vaccines. (Even the etymology of the word suggests otherwise.)
There are some excellent reasons not to use products that are destructive to the forest or that poison the water, but that's outside the scope of veganism.
But virtually all medicine was tested on animals. It's not about if the medication itself is made with/without animal products, it's that animals were harmed or killed in testing to make sure they were safe for humans. Or used animal cell lines.
Or what about vaccines that save animals, but used animals to create, like the rabies packets?
Likewise, if you're using plastic, you're using something made of oil, which the extraction and use of is causing catastrophic environmental damage and harming untold amounts of animals. You could then easily argue that the wanton exploitation of nature is very much the exploitation of animals, even to a far greater degree than certain animal husbandry techniques or raising styles.
Lastly, where do insects fall? Some insects have a decent level of intelligence, if that's a criteria. And there's also things like hives which are unique intelligences.
If we go by the first published definition of veganism, it would seem to me the only way to truly abide by it would be to live without any modern technology, in the wild, with only materials made without pesticides or machinery.
That's why I'm wondering where the line is drawn.
If something is tested on animals, then the vegan thing to do is to avoid it, to not partake, to not fund it, to not reward unethical behaviour.
Veganism is not a form of consequentialism. There are probably numerous ways that exploiting X number of animals could benefit X+n number of animals, but exploitation is unethical regardless. One could just as easily argue that killing human babies would save many animals as well as improve the quality of life of many other humans due to less competition for finite resources, but you probably won't be campaigning for infanticide any time soon, because the end doesn't justify the means.
The line is drawn at exploitation of animals. "Nature" is not sentient, so it cannot be exploited in the same sense that animals can. Doing something that is destructive to nature does not necessarily involve exploiting animals, even if it would be unwise or unethical for other reasons, one of which is the reckless endangerment of many animals.
Insects are animals.
There's no need to overthink this. If the term exploitation is confusing, you can think of it in terms of not treating other animals as resources to be used.
I'm trying to understand it because for example I, if faced with something like the Trolley problem, would pull the lever so that whatever ends up being less deaths in the long term is the rail selected.
But based off the second paragraph you wrote, it sounds like you'd either never pull the lever or would choose the rail that kills the least even if more die in the long run.
For example, you mention infanticide would be bad. But if you don't use vaccines because it uses chicken eggs, you could hypothetically still lead to dead infants via the spread of disease.
And then there's the insects part - wouldn't this omit farming that uses pesticides then? How do you know which did or didn't? It would also include I'd imagine farms that say release ladybugs to control other insects since it required the exploitation of ladybugs.
re: trolley problem, realistically, I wouldn't pull any lever.
Hypothetically, if not using vaccines led to dead infants, then I would simply need to accept that, just as everyone did before vaccines were invented.
Defending one's food supply is not exploitation, but blanketing an entire landscape in poison is ill-advised for several reasons, including the danger that it poses to peaceful animals.
That would be exploitation and therefore not vegan, correct. Sometimes it isn't possible to know which farm does what, and without knowing, every option is equivalent, and ethics doesn't come into it at all. But if one knows, for example, that Farm A exploits ladybugs, Farm B uses fish emulsion fertiliser, and Farm C sprays nicotine-based insecticide on the crop, then given only those three options, the "correct" choice in the context of veganism would be Farm C, as it does not involve exploitation. In practice, Farm C may kill orders of magnitude more animals, but all is fair in self-defence, which extends to one's food and shelter.
If you're concerned about the number of animals killed in crop production, then you should know that the most effective way to reduce it is to live vegan and grow your own food in an environment over which you have complete control. If growing your own food isn't possible, then living vegan and making informed choices about where you buy your food is the next best option, as the vast majority of animals killed in crop production are killed in the production of feed crops for cows, pigs, chickens, farmed fish, and so on.