Is human flesh vegan if given freely by its owner?

July 10, 2006 3:35 AM

Is human flesh vegan if given willingly by its owner?

If you care to, please enlighten me about anything else from a human who is not being exploited. Breast milk, too.

Would a dead human's flesh be vegan? How about animal carrion?

posted by redteam to Food & Drink (33 answers total)

Veganism is about the ethics of cruelty and exploitation, so if something is given with free consent, it is vegan. If cows could talk and wanted to be eaten (ala the Simpsons), they too would be vegan. Breast milk is vegan, so long as it is not from factory farmed women.

Carrion (human or not) is vegan, but I suggest you not eat it except if it is absolutely necessary.
posted by beerbajay at 3:49 AM on July 10, 2006

Does that mean that fruit is only vegan if it's windfall fruit? Because if you're picking the apples off the tree, then you're stealing them. The tree didn't give them up willingly.
posted by talitha_kumi at 4:03 AM on July 10, 2006

Some fruitarians will eat only what falls (or would fall) naturally from a plant: fruits, seeds and nuts.
posted by slimepuppy at 4:07 AM on July 10, 2006

Fruitarians are idiots. Plants and vegetables need not give consent as they are not sentient.
posted by beerbajay at 4:10 AM on July 10, 2006

Human flesh is still meat. The difference between plant and animal cells lie in chloroplasts, vacuoles, glyoxysomes and plastids. Vegans eschew animal matter, including flesh, bone marrow, and fatty cells. Carrion is still flesh as well, as it's the remains of a dead animal, or rather, inactive animal cells. Breast milk is a byproduct of mammals, which are composed of animal tissue and do not lay eggs outside their body when giving birth. Birds, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and insects are still part of the animal kingdom, as they do not carry chloroplasts, vacuoles, glyoxysomes and plastids in their cells.

There is a type of microscopic organism named after the mythical hydra, which carries the properties of plant and animal cells alike. It it still considered an animal in terms of its order in the universe; drinking a glass of liquid containing several hydra would be technically considered as (animal) protein, but wouldn't be called meat in everyday terms, as hydra are too small to be considered sustainable for large organisms, such as humans, or anything considerably larger than say, a mite. (Mites are still considered animals.) A Godzilla-sized hydra, chopped up into burgers would be considered meat, as would an enormous mite served as a meal.

There are some who feel that there are classifications of "vegan" sustinence in Goth culture, for example, but this is a misnomer for the reasons stated above. The rare exceptiuon of an "actual" vegan vampire would be the cartoon character Count Duckula; as Duckula is a duck, he is still technically considered meat, in this case, fowl, which is a term to describe certain forms of "game" meat. Game meats aren't gamey, which is a term for spoiled meat, but rather, are forms of meat hunted as game.

Drinking Duckula's blood, even after he feasted on vegan sustinence, would be considered animal protein, due to the amount of duck blood (duck animal cells) that the duck would have, haven eaten plant matter or otherwise.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:12 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Fruit is designed to be eaten... it is made by plants so that animals and insects will eat them and spread the seeds.

As a vegan, you can keep your end of this ancient bargain by eating only fertile fruit (not infertile hybrids) and planting seeds occasionally in good places.
posted by Malor at 4:16 AM on July 10, 2006

No.
The Vegan Society of the UK says "In dietary terms it [veganism] denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." They do not make an exception for products freely given, whether by animal or human. If they considered the eating of freely-given human flesh to be compatible with being vegan, they would say so.
The American Vegan Society says "Vegans exclude flesh, fish, fowl, dairy products (animal milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, etc.), eggs, honey, animal gelatin, and all other foods of animal origin." If they considered it OK to eat freely-given human flesh, they would say so.
Veganism is not just about cruelty and exploitation. If you're truly interested, redteam, I suggest you join the Bay Area Vegetarians at one of their many monthly dinners, as your profile says Santa Cruz is one of your locations.
posted by mistersix at 4:17 AM on July 10, 2006

I'm sure there is some technical sense in which the answer to this question is yes, but 99.999% of vegans-on-the-street would say no.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 4:30 AM on July 10, 2006

from the British Vegan Society: the Society remains as determined as ever to promote vegan lifestyles - that is, ways of living that seek to exclude, as far as is possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. (emphasis added)

There is no exploitation if there is free consent.
posted by beerbajay at 4:31 AM on July 10, 2006

Anyway, mistersix, what you're saying is that it isn't 'vegan' for babies to drink their mother's breast milk. I'm sure virtually no vegan could object to this baby's actions, however.

So what makes the actual consuption of said breast milk ethically sound or not? Consent of the woman from whom it flows.
posted by beerbajay at 4:40 AM on July 10, 2006

And finally, I, as a vegan, have no ethical problems with eating carrion or human flesh if it is given freely. So I guess I'm part of the 0.001%.
posted by beerbajay at 4:43 AM on July 10, 2006

mistersix, I'm pretty sure that even if a Vegan Society was okay with cannibalism where the victim volunteers, it would be smart enough not to say that on their website if they wanted any form of mainstream acceptance.
posted by jacalata at 4:45 AM on July 10, 2006

True, but we're still omnivirous regardless. If someone decided to drink their own urine, it would certainly count as the free dispersal of animal matter for self-consumption, but it wouldn't be vegan. Human urine contains dead animal cells, as humans are mammals, which are animals. Regardless of how much juice o water one would drink, you'll still be drinking your own (mammilan) urine, freely offered or forcibly extracted.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:49 AM on July 10, 2006

Veganism isn't just about consuption of animal cells. If that were the case, virtually nothing would actually be vegan. Consider that any mass processed food has some trace amounts of insect or woodland creature, and additionally that most processed foods are made in facilities which also process non-vegan foods containing milk or eggs, which will inevitably end up (a cell here or there) in the vegan product.
posted by beerbajay at 4:53 AM on July 10, 2006

As the current answers have already shown, there are lots of different reasons for being vegan, and so you'll get different answers to this depending on why the askee is vegan.
posted by brett at 5:23 AM on July 10, 2006

So what makes the actual consuption of said breast milk ethically sound or not?

People's subjective values. Veganism is a social construct, so there's no objective answer to this question. You might as well be asking if people who murder in war are sinning under Christianity, or if people who live for decades in a foreign country are still American, or if someone is practicing nudism while taking a shower. Vegans hold a variety of beliefs, just like all other people. Very few of them have spent any time thinking about their ethical stance on eating people, so there is no answer here that will reflect the beliefs of most - much less all - vegans.
posted by scottreynen at 5:29 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

brett writes "As the current answers have already shown, there are lots of different reasons for being vegan, and so you'll get different answers to this depending on why the askee is vegan."

beerbajay is the only one (repeatedly) espousing the "free consent" nonsense, which I have never heard despite being part of vegetarian/vegan communities for years. In fact, it sounds much closer to freeganism than true veganism.
posted by youarenothere at 5:35 AM on July 10, 2006

Veganism is a social construct, so there's no objective answer to this question.

Seconded. This is a semantics question with an open-ended answer.
posted by rolypolyman at 6:22 AM on July 10, 2006

the "free consent" nonsense, which I have never heard despite being part of vegetarian/vegan communities for years.

But why would anybody talk about animals giving their free consent to be eaten? That would be absurd - humans are the only animals who we can understand, and therefore the only animals who can give meaningful consent, and most people just aren't going to consider eating humans. So not hearing about it is to be expected.

I would say that consumption of breast milk is vegan, because the vegan restrictions on (cow) milk generally stem from concerns about the exploitation of animals and/or environmental impact of factory farming, neither of which is a concern with human milk. The vegans I know have no issue with breast-feeding.

But for human meat... I'm not sure what sane person would carve bits of themselves off so you could eat them - "free consent" implies that the one giving that consent isn't compelled by some mental illness or delusion. I guess somebody might give their consent to be eaten after they die naturally, and here I have to agree with the people saying "that depends on the vegan."
posted by joannemerriam at 7:44 AM on July 10, 2006

Veganism is a social construct with generally accepted ideas of what it means, with a little wiggle room. Most vegans, from a dietary perspective won't eat animal products. The obvious products are eggs, milk/cheese, and all kinds of meat. There is a bit of a difference of opinion when you get to things like beer, honey and things like white sugar that can require bone meal in order to process them, and you can get more specific from there. Very few vegans that I know split hairs down to this detail, they just do the best job they can given what is available. It's not math. That said, I know few vegans who wouldn't breast feed, or who wouldn't eat animal products of they were starving. I don't see this as a glaring inconsistency.

beerbajay may be referring to vegan philosophy but veganism as it's generally practiced is pretty much "no animal" not "no cruelty." This question is not a debate about vegan ethics, it's a pretty straightforward question about vegan practice, as I read it.
posted by jessamyn at 7:47 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

I had a discussion about this with the Vegan Society. They stated on their website that vegans do not eat placenta's. I said that I could think of no ethical reason as to why not, unless the women who give birth are locked up in cages for their placenta's. They agreed and said that this could be an exception to the rule.

I think the rule is incorrect. As a vegan I think breastmilk is the perfect food for baby's. I also know no vegans who have ethical problems with "using" sperm.

The most important issue for many vegans is the exploitation of animals. There are quite often discussions on vegan message boards whether it is vegan or ethical to eat, for example, a rabbit who was killed by a car, or eggs from free living chicken. Some vegans actually have no problems with this. Most do, because it sets the message that animals are products that you can eat, or because the eggs that you eat are not eaten by someone else, who will buy them in a grocery store.

I actually think one of the big difference between vegetarians as a group and vegans as a group is that vegans are much more concerned about suffering (that's why we do not use beeswax and wool for example), whereas vegetarians are more concerned about eating flesh per se.
posted by davar at 8:19 AM on July 10, 2006

Veganism is about the ethics of cruelty and exploitation

It's also about health. I have no idea how healthy human flesh is.

People like to try to trap vegans in contradictions. Pretty pointless pursuit IMHO.
posted by scarabic at 8:24 AM on July 10, 2006

I'm a former vegan, and when I was a vegan I was pretty hardcore, attending regular EarthSave potluck meetings, making most of my food from scratch, etc. Anyway, jessamyn's answer is exactly right. People are vegans for different reasons, but being a vegan means that you don't consume anything made out of, or made from, animals.

It's got nothing to do with 'consent' - as joannemerriam aptly puts it - since getting consent isn't an issue. For me, it was to a large extent about health. Yes, it also bothered me that I was indirectly harming animals, but that had more to do with issues around how they were treated and slaughtered than the actual fact of consumption.

When I was a vegan, I did go to a lot of trouble to avoid foods that could possibly contain fragments of bone, insects, or whatever. For example, certain kinds of apple polish supposedly contain insects, so I only ate apples that were not shiny. I also didn't wear leather or silk clothing and in general tried to stay as pure about the whole lifestyle as possible.

Carrion, though, is not vegan. It's still animal flesh. In a sense, meat that you buy in the supermarket is carrion, because it's dead when you find it, and whoever or whatever killed it has only a very indirect relationship to you. Also, for many vegans, part of the whole issue is a disdain/distaste for eating flesh in general, and many also pride themselves on the fact that they have a zero-cholesterol diet.

Breast milk is in a completely different category. Feeding young humans is what human breast milk is for; there is no ambiguity about that. Nothing is being harmed, and nothing is being diverted from its natural use; nobody is consuming something that it isn't natural for them to consume, or that they wouldn't be consuming in essentially the same state and the same way if they had been born in a cave.

Cannibalism is not vegan, and consent has nothing to do with it.

All of this is not to say that most vegans wouldn't consume animal products in order to stay alive if absolutely necessary.
posted by bingo at 8:28 AM on July 10, 2006

On a related note, I've never heard/read a convincing argument as to whether a vegan can give oral sex and be consistent with their philosophy. To be fair, I suppose "vegan philosophy" is a misnomer since the movement isn't monolithic, but many people define vegans as people who don't eat animal products.

I suppose this is (perversely) similar to the breast-milk question, but in this case, there are no significant survival or health benefits, and the "consumer" (for lack of a better word) might be a vegan rather than an infant with parents which would like to raise it to be vegan.
posted by JMOZ at 8:48 AM on July 10, 2006

I am not vegan, but I am a fairly serious amateur semanticist... and I think that anyone who asserts that veganism could not encompass the sort of cannibal volunteerism explicit in the question *because* none of the authoritative sources on what veganism don't say that it could are being horribly disingenuous.

Of *course* they don't say that, for the same reason that, as Jeff Foxworthy points out, you don't have to *teach* your children "now, son, mustn't eat your playmates".

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
posted by baylink at 9:53 AM on July 10, 2006

As jessamyn said, in practice, veganism means "don't eat animals" but when you start asking about consuming human flesh, it becomes mostly academic. The philosophical reasons for eating (or not) humans should be influenced much more by your feelings towards humanity or the person who is offering you their flesh than your veganism.

For myself; I am vegan for ethical reasons with respect to exploitation and harm to animals and the environmental impact of animal farming. I perceive that there are some health benefits to being vegan, but these are mostly coincidental to the diet and would not justify avoiding leather, for example. If you think about veganism as trying to minimize harm, you at some point come to a threshold where it is no longer very productive to be splitting hairs regarding whether something is vegan or not. For me that threshold is when you start debating waxes, glues, or filtration agents. The amount of direct harm done by these things pales in comparison to the amount of harm done by, say, the human production of your shoes. At that point (yours may differ) you start to tread in the waters of religious fundamentalism. Beware.

There is no ethical dilemma with breast milk, oral sex, or carrion. Veganism is not a religion. Don't be stupid. Eat it.
posted by beerbajay at 9:54 AM on July 10, 2006

As an 8-year-veg, I can say that the central concern for me is the inability of animals to express their desire coupled with the readily available abundance of veg-friendly foods. If it came down to it, post-apocalypse or desert island, serve me up a steak!

As humans have the ability to consent- and as long as they do- I suppose it'd be fine, barring local laws and regulations on this kind of thing.

A few years ago, a resturant near my house claimed to have "vegan" lobster. The reasoning was that all of the lobsters they had for sale had crawled out of the ocean to die on the rocks, hence making them vegan. Outside of the very gross idea of eating a thing which had died very long ago on a rock, I passed on this culinary delight.
posted by GilloD at 10:21 AM on July 10, 2006

Mod note: a few comments removed, please take LOL VEGANZ! comments to metatalk or email
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:09 AM on July 10, 2006

is no one else given the creeps from this question?
posted by crewshell at 11:33 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

I was a vegan for two years and am with beerbajay -- in my book it's about enslavement and exploitation of animals, not about molecular structure or mode of growth (also why honey was not vegan in my book -- its theft from bees). So I'd say freely given human flesh, etc, and carrion would have met my standard. Similarly, a roommate of mine cleaned and prepared a roadkill deer and a lot of "vegetarians" in the area ate it.
posted by salvia at 2:18 PM on July 10, 2006

Response by poster: Thank you all for your answers. If anyone has anything else to add, please feel free.
posted by redteam at 3:08 PM on July 10, 2006

jessamyn: This question is not a debate about vegan ethics, it's a pretty straightforward question about vegan practice, as I read it.


I don't understand this, I don't see how it can be about vegan practice unless vegans regularly eat carrion?
posted by funambulist at 3:27 PM on July 11, 2006 [1 favorite]

i'm with beerbajay and the other seemingly rational vegans here (though I'm not a strict vegan).

for me, it was about institutionalized (and most importantly, unnecessary) cruelty to animals. humans were pretty much out of the equation, except in our actions toward animals. i would have no problem eating my girlfriend's skin or blood if that's what she was really into. ok, maybe not *no* problem ...
posted by mrgrimm at 5:19 PM on July 11, 2006