I’m not vegan myself, but if the environmental costs of harvesting milk and honey can be offset by producing them in a lab and the products are safe and cost-effective then I’m all for it.
Milk has fairly significant environmental costs (cows are large animals, after all), but bees make honey while they're pollinating plants (including our crops), and we depend on that pollination. I find the idea that humans are cruelly exploiting bees to be hard to wrap my head around. Beekeepers don't rob hives of too much honey, as that would kill them. I've been a vegetarian for 35 years, and I avoid dairy products for the most part (mainly for environmental reasons, but also ethical ones), but honey doesn't seem problematic to me, I'd keep bees myself if my neighbors would let me...
> Beekeepers don't rob hives of too much honey, as that would kill them.
Large scale beekeepers are very willing to harvest the entire store of honey, and feed the bees sugar water over the winter to keep them alive.
The act of beekeeping, no matter how gentle and well-intended the beekeeper, involves killing bees. They're non-native to north america, and negatively impact our hundreds of native bee species in ways that we're just beginning to study and understand. They're not exploited on the same level as cows or pigs, and don't have the same environmental impact as factory farming, but it's not a benign industry.
Ah, that's interesting to learn. That is clearly more exploitative, though again it doesn't sound like killing the hive is the idea. I guess my general skepticism comes from just how far the idea of exploiting other living creatures should go - cows are mammals like humans, chickens are warm-blooded if a little dinosaur-y, but if keeping bees is exploitation, is using yeasts to make bread or beer? Growing plants? The answer to those is 'yes' in a sense, but is it unethical? I hope not...
If you are concerned I'd suggest obtaining your honey from farmers markets and small producers, rather than shareholder profit driven corporates.
In my country it's very popular for individuals to own bee hives, and I can't remember the last time I bought honey in the supermarket. The quality of the honey, the taste and the texture is completely different. Whenever I only have access to commercial honey (e.g. travelling), it just tastes like sugar syrup to me.
> bees make honey while they're pollinating plants (including our crops), and we depend on that pollination
Domesticated honeybees aren't the best pollinators: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1608 "Overall, wild insects pollinated crops more effectively; an increase in wild insect visitation enhanced fruit set by twice as much as an equivalent increase in honey bee visitation."
Well I watched this documentary about honeybee treatment in the US and I came away believing it is a highly abusive and exploitative industry to the bees. Take a look:
EDIT: I should add that buying locally produced small batch honey is a good thing as it supports beekeepers that actually tend to respect the bees. The big industry stuff however is bad news as is the case with all animal industry in the US.
I'm not familiar with how honey is produced large scale, but I can't imagine it's the same image you think of when looking at small scale beekeepers. In order to get that much volume of honey that looks and tastes the same, you're going to need giant fields of monocrops, or maybe blending a massive collection of honey together.
I do know that there a massive issue with honey fraud. Where honey is being diluted with other substances. That's where I see these lab grown producers being better. You're buying from the supplier, or at least know more about where the honey is coming from. If they can compete on price, then companies no longer need to import honey that comes from some country that let's slide some product that doesn't hold true to it's ingredient list. So for mass market products, I'd imagine we'd get higher quality product.
So while not truly "Vegan", idk how far down that rabbit hole many Vegans will be willing to go down in order to adhere to that standard. (I myself eat >90% vegan).
> In order to get that much volume of honey that looks and tastes the same, you're going to need giant fields of monocrops, or maybe blending a massive collection of honey together.
… or add plain old sugar. Which is what most honey what comes from China (they produce & export a lot of it) contains. They are so good at it now that you can't even tell just by tasting it, you need to do chemical analysis, and there it's easily visible if the honey was stretched with sugar or is all natural.
It's important to note that industrial pollinating bees are different from bees used to make honey. (Similar to how leather cows are different from beef and dairy cows) Also, the European Honey Bee used to make honey is a genetic monoculture that has trouble surviving in the wild but competes with wild bees.
[I know this is tangentially related to your point] Do you have a source on "leather cows"? My understanding is that cow leather is nearly entirely a by-product of beef and dairy cows.
The possibility of bio-identical lab-produced dairy is particularly exciting to me. Existing substitutes only resemble the originals in the most superficial ways and fall flat outside of a very narrow band of expectations. Given that the end products are of reasonably high quality I would happily be among early adopters, even if it comes at a bit of a premium.