'Is it OK to eat an animal-Died of natural causes?'

[3axap]

Some of you might not be on my side, hopefully i atleast wouldnt get banned for my views.

So recently i got into a somewhat local vegan community, like 500 people or so.
And while having discussions about different things one of the people were describing how they were arguing with their non-vegan friend about something i thought had an easy answer, but evidently it seems that im wrong.
the subject was: Is it okay to eat an animal' that died of natural causes?

So for the most of my life and years of being vegan i thought that this is an acceptable question to say yes to, because i saw many discussions on reddit talking about it, so i never even thought that this is a debate, because usually most people agree that it is technically still vegan.

Needless to say i was made fun of and frankly clowned on for even suggesting that such thing can be acceptable, and not even for a second a single person in that group had a thought of changing their mind or even considering it, which is just crazy to me because im a person that will always listen to anybody and think about what they said no matter how hot their take is.
It just felt like i was talking to non-vegans about veganism, nobody even cared about what i said, its just like talking to a wall.

Is my stance wrong? am i in the wrong for thinking that a corpse should have less rights than an alive animal?

 

[1956]

Some of you might not be on my side, hopefully i atleast wouldnt get banned for my views.

So recently i got into a somewhat local vegan community, like 500 people or so.
And while having discussions about different things one of the people were describing how they were arguing with their non-vegan friend about something i thought had an easy answer, but evidently it seems that im wrong.
the subject was: Is it okay to eat an animal' that died of natural causes?

So for the most of my life and years of being vegan i thought that this is an acceptable question to say yes to, because i saw many discussions on reddit talking about it, so i never even thought that this is a debate, because usually most people agree that it is technically still vegan.

Needless to say i was made fun of and frankly clowned on for even suggesting that such thing can be acceptable, and not even for a second a single person in that group had a thought of changing their mind or even considering it, which is just crazy to me because im a person that will always listen to anybody and think about what they said no matter how hot their take is.
It just felt like i was talking to non-vegans about veganism, nobody even cared about what i said, its just like talking to a wall.

Is my stance wrong? am i in the wrong for thinking that a corpse should have less rights than an alive animal?

Hello @3axap
While I will disagree with you that eating an already dead animal is Vegan, I most certainly won’t make fun of you…
In my view eating Any animal or their byproducts is not Vegan…
However, if someone is starving or living in an impoverished environment I would understand if they felt the need to eat an animal that was already dead…

 

[silva]

Wow, I don't think there should even be a 'right' answer. To me, there is nothing that impacts the animal, and unless you're taking food from it's natural predators, nothing that causes harm. I would consider it as a personal purity thing.
Every living thing is food for someone. Vegans don't consider animals their food--but--people do go vegan with different standards and if someone wanted to only eat say, roadkill, (we have had that Convo here!) and stayed within vegan ethics I would be .... ok with that

I was about 11 or 12 when I read Soylent Green and thought the idea of eating the dead seemed like the only reasonable thing to do--everyone dies, why are we breeding animals just to kill them for food? That was my first introduction to being vegetarian

 

[Graeme M]

Many vegans take the definition to be a black and white thing - no animal-sourced products can be used or eaten. Regardless of where they came from, hence conversations about say second-hand leather.

However, if we look at the genesis of modern veganism, we find that the motivation has become more about animal rights and liberation. That's because of the direction of the Vegan Society once people like Leslie Cross became influential in the original Vegan Society, and then later discourse and development by animal rights advocates and liberationists. In the very beginning, veganism was mostly the practice of not eating meat and dairy - it was an even more strict form of vegetarianism. Donald Watson and his immediate group thought a purely plant-sourced diet was the healthiest diet and while animal welfare mattered to them, they also thought animal-sourced food was not good for us.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it is possible to argue for whatever stance you want to take about eating already dead animals. But within Leslie Cross's conception, I don't think it would be wrong or not vegan to do that because his real goal was freedom for animals - liberation.

 

[ewomack]

One can measure the health of a community by its tolerance for considering challenging questions. Those who dismiss probing questions blithely without any consideration are arguably contributing to an unhealthy community. Belief communities - and veganism is essentially another community bound by belief - often risk evolving into unthinking walled cities of dogma. At least some elements of the vegan community seem to have reached this level. In one of those bizarre and tragic twists of human nature, those who seek toleration sometimes have a tendency to become virulently intolerant themselves.

The ethical status of eating an already dead animal, one that died naturally, is a good question. It's a complicated one, and it's one that deserves serious attention. It's not insulting, it's exploring the essence of what veganism really means. If it was dismissed jokingly as described (I don't know for sure because I wasn't there), that's possibly a sign of a more dogmatic and closed community than an open and accepting one. A healthy community would welcome such a question and have a respectful discussion around why or why not one should accept it.

The question also raises the underlying subject of "what does it mean to be vegan?" Does it mean never eating or using animal products ever under any circumstances whatsoever? Or is the definition more fluid or amorphous? Do "it depends" qualifiers apply? Or are no "it depends" accepted? One needs to define one's own fundamental principles of why they've chosen this path to really answer this question. Peter Singer, known for "Animal Liberation," recently claimed the fundamental principle of his veganism is avoidance of suffering. This delves into controversial territory when he claims that bivalves feel no pain, or at least no evidence exists that they feel any pain, so he has no qualms about consuming them. Under this definition of veganism, eating an animal that died of natural causes may seem less controversial. Yet some vegans would never accept this as "vegan." A parallel situation arguably appears in Jainism, where some adherents only consume plant products that have already fallen from trees or plants.

Such questions should inspire discussion and reflection, especially in a community. They should help one decide the boundaries around how people want to apply "veganism" to their own lives. But some people, groups, and movements face challenging questions with derision, mockery, and dismissal, because dogmas typically seem more comfortable dismissing challenges than facing them head on. That's what makes them dogmas. A community that stops accepting or considering challenging questions is very likely on its way to dissolution. It becomes more of a tyrannical cult than a community.

 

[secondmayfly]

Some of you might not be on my side, hopefully i atleast wouldnt get banned for my views.

So recently i got into a somewhat local vegan community, like 500 people or so.
And while having discussions about different things one of the people were describing how they were arguing with their non-vegan friend about something i thought had an easy answer, but evidently it seems that im wrong.
the subject was: Is it okay to eat an animal' that died of natural causes?

So for the most of my life and years of being vegan i thought that this is an acceptable question to say yes to, because i saw many discussions on reddit talking about it, so i never even thought that this is a debate, because usually most people agree that it is technically still vegan.

Needless to say i was made fun of and frankly clowned on for even suggesting that such thing can be acceptable, and not even for a second a single person in that group had a thought of changing their mind or even considering it, which is just crazy to me because im a person that will always listen to anybody and think about what they said no matter how hot their take is.
It just felt like i was talking to non-vegans about veganism, nobody even cared about what i said, its just like talking to a wall.

Is my stance wrong? am i in the wrong for thinking that a corpse should have less rights than an alive animal?

I think it really depends on how you define veganism. A lot of people take it to mean not viewing animals as a resource at all, in which case yes, eating the carcass would be unvegan.

However, I've noticed that there are other vegans(myself included) who are more concerned about animal suffering than bigger picture ideals.

I'm okay with eating the dead animal because(on paper) I'm not against the idea of using animals as a resource. My ethics revolve more around reducing animal suffering, but because treating animals as resources almost always causes them to suffer, I eat vegan foods and don't buy animal products. This does still mean that, in the edge case where an animal can provide a resource without suffering for it, I am happy to use it.

Maybe the vegans you were with fall into the former camp, while you fall more into the latter.