Sweet, decadent, and best served over a piece of toast - the origins of honey and how it actually makes it way onto our shelves is, in fact, rather sour. Many are aware that vegans avoid meat, dairy, and eggs, but the exclusion of honey from the vegan diet often comes as a surprise. Although honey is commonly viewed as a “natural” and cruelty-free product that doesn't harm bees, animal rights activists present a different perspective (1). So, what is honey, how do bees make it, and why is the honey industry so harmful?
Honey is a golden viscous substance produced by bees for sustenance. It predominantly consists of sugar, with glucose and fructose making up about 70 to 80 percent of it (1). The rest is made up of water (around 17 percent), along with traces of minerals and pollen. This composition provides honey with its characteristic sweetness, which has prompted humans to incorporate it into various food and beverages for hundreds of years (1). Honey is also an ingredient in many cosmetics and beauty products.
The process of making honey is arduous one, and a bee’s life purpose. Honeybees are known to visit upwards of 1500 flowers to gather sufficient nectar to fill their stomachs. They then return to the hive, where the bee will regurgitate and chew on the nectar, transforming it from complex to simple sugars. They repeat this cycle thousands of times during the spring and summer. A single bee yields only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, with every drop “fundamental” to their hive, as per the Vegan Society (2). To produce a single pound of honey, bees must fly around 55,000 miles and pollinate over two million flowers. Although pollen is a honeybee’s main source of nutrition, honey provides their only sustenance in the colder months when other alternatives are unavailable (3). The honey doesn’t simply feed an individual bee - it feeds the entire colony in the winter, made up of 10,000 worker bees and their queen (1).
Regrettably, akin to factory farm practices, many beekeepers resort to inhumane methods to ensure personal safety and meet production targets. It is not uncommon for large-scale honey producers to clip the queen bee’s wings to keep her in the colony or to subject her to artificial insemination using a bee-sized version of the “rape rack” used in factory farms. When a keeper wants to relocate a queen to a new colony, she is accompanied by “bodyguard” bees, whom - should they survive transport - will all be killed by the bees in the new colony. Bee may also have wings and legs torn off, or even killed, due to careless handling. While humans have been harvesting honey since around 15,000 B.C., it didn’t become an ethical issue until the 20th century when bee were transformed into factory-farmed animals (4).
Insects usually get less empathy and concern than mammalian peers. But despite this, significant evidence that they are indeed sentient and emotional. In entomologist Stephen Buchmann’s 2023 book, What a Bee Knows, he states that bees are highly intelligent, exhibit self-awareness, and have a “primitive form of consciousness”. An article in The Guardian last year highlighted the book’s discussion, pointing out that the intriguing observations of bees recognising human faces, processing long-term memories during sleep, and feeling scared, optimistic, and playful raises “complex ethical questions” about our treatment of bees. The concerns echo those raised the previous year, when the Queen Mary University of London conducted a study that determined that bees feel pain, and make decisions about enduring suffering for food or not. Researchers emphasised that these findings impose on humans “an ethical obligation not to cause [bees] unnecessary suffering.” (1)
While the Bee Movie may have told a story about how bees suffered when we stopped taking honey from them, the film shouldn’t be taken to be literally about the honey industry - it’s more about “not changing something unless you know why it exists”. In reality, the consumption of honey is problematic for many reasons and not factory farming it would leave it to the bees (not a problem in real life despite the film’s depiction).
So why is it that vegans avoid honey? Well as honey production involves the use and exploitation of non-human animals and vegans strive to minimise their contribution to animal exploitation within a predominantly non-vegan society, honey is ethically unsuitable for consumption. Similar to how a cow’s milk is for its calf, not cheese, bees produce honey for the sustenance of their colonies, not for humans. As the Vegan Society says: “honey is made by bees for bees” (2).
Thankfully, there are countless alternatives to honey that are easy to come by and just as sweet. Some examples of sweeteners that can replace honey in many recipes include; maple syrup, molasses, organic cane sugar, and sorghum. It’s a simple switch with a substantial impact, and puts us one step closer to a more peaceful world, keeping your diet bee-free.
Citations
1 Webber, Jemima. “Is Honey Vegan, and Is It Ethical? The Not-so-Sweet Truth.” Plant Based News, 22 Aug. 2023, plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/is-honey-vegan-the-not-so-sweet-truth/.
2 “The Honey Industry.” The Vegan Society, www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan/honey-industry. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.
3 “Animal Cruelty - Honey.” Vegan Peace, www.veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/honey.htm#:~:text=Problems with the Honey Industry,to get through the winter. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.
4 “What’s Wrong with Eating Honey?” PETA, 24 Jan. 2020, www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/whats-wrong-with-eating-honey/.
コメント