[yesenadam]

Speaking personally (vegan here), that's a good question. Well, vegans tend to be people who think for themselves; there's not one thing vegans think on that or any subject.

I was once in the position of having a couple of sausages on my plate at a wedding, that I knew would be thrown out if I didn't eat them, and I was hungry, so I ate them. The person I was with couldn't believe it, as it seemed to go against my professed veganism. But as eating them didn't add to animal suffering, and they'd otherwise be wasted, it wasn't a conflict for me. I don't think I'd eat them now, as I haven't eaten meat for uh 25+ years. (And never once missed it, surprisingly)

So, sure, I think for vegans generally, animal suffering is the issue, and if somehow that wasn't a factor, the issue is then something like yours would be if you were hungry and came across a person that died accidentally. (See the movie Alive 1993 or read the book)

disclosure: Both my gf and I have shirts saying EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG, featuring the Goya painting of Cronus eating one of his sons.

[Fnoord]

> disclosure: Both my gf and I have shirts saying EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG, featuring the Goya painting of Cronus eating one of his sons.

Hmm, what if the human being died from roadkill? Runs

[yesenadam]

Hehehe well.. I guess that's the point of Alive. It's sometimes the thing to do. Depends how hungry you are. If the alternative's dying, most people would.

For some societies, e.g. Eskimo, being vegetarian would be impossible, while in ours, eating meat or animal products is totally unnecessary for almost everyone. And does a lot of harm to the environment.

[Fnoord]

> Depends how hungry you are. If the alternative's dying, most people would.

Yeah, survival movies like Cast Away, Into The Wild, and 127 Hours (I just saw the latter) underline that people do weird things to survive including diet-wise. But I also saw the voluntary coin of the story in the beautiful documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. An animal lives in freedom and relative peace, until it gets hunted and killed. That's different from ~45 days of prison life a chicken here gets. Can't compare that 1:1 and judge the former as non-vegan. Its as close to vegan as it gets due to being natural.

[yesenadam]

Sure. <Intrepidly goes off-topic> .. Into The Wild was just the guy being a spoiled ignorant delusional dick, I thought, really not impressive. Jungle was far better. You almost persuaded me the guy in 127 Hours ate his arm off the first time I read that haha. (Um he didn't, did he?!) Am writing this in case you didn't see Dersu Uzala (the Kurosawa version), one of my very favourite movies. The world before cities was a different world, like you say. <Totally off topic> Incidentally, it's my theory that Yoda is taken from Dersu. (As Star Wars is a remake of Hidden Fortress)