As long as they don´t have leather, vegans are able to buy and use products like cars and consumer electronics, even if they have say a glue derived from animals.
Well... it depends on how you associate yourself with the term vegan. If you say you
"follow a vegan diet" then glue derived from whatever in your car is not an issue. Your
diet is still vegan. And I suppose you could still say you are a vegan in the dietary sense of the word.
If you want to call yourself
"a vegan" in the broader sense of the term meaning you oppose any human exploitation of animals... well then yes, I guess the glue in your car is a problem.
Lets check the definition of vegan:
"A person who does not eat any food derived from animals and who typically does not use other animal products."
Source:
VEGAN English Definition and Meaning | Lexico.com
Under the above definition, animal-derived glue in a person's car would not necessarily stop them from being considered a vegan as long as they
"typically" do not use animal products elsewhere in their life. However, eating foods that are obviously not vegan like dairy ice cream or cake made from eggs would mean you are not a vegan.
However, for reasons that don´t appear to me to be consistent, a much greater strictness is required for food than anything else. If a processed food is 0.01% animal product, it is not vegan and you can´t have it. I don´t agree with this.
Processed foods aren't healthy anyway and are often more expensive than unprocessed vegan foods. Just eat something else or get a vegan version.
What is this particular processed food you don't want to give up?
I am going to guess more emphasis is placed on food than anything else because animal-derived glue in cars for example (or animal-derived fats or glycerin in soaps) are probably only used because there are cheaply available animal by-products from slaughterhouses that can be used to produce these things. So I'm guessing these other products used in the economy like animal-derived soap or animal-derived glue would in most cases not be used anymore if everyone on Earth decided to adopt a vegan diet tomorrow, because the price of animal by-products used to produce those things would go up a lot if billions of animals were not being slaughtered to produce meat.
I think all vegans should be expected to do on products they buy regularly is glance through the ingredients and make sure that as far as they can guess there are no animal products. It shouldn´t be necessary to scan every packet you buy with an app, or google every product as some seem to expect.
I think the important thing here is what you do when you learn the item contains animal products. If you want to continue buying it even though it's not vegan and you
know it's not vegan... that's a very different thing than accidentally buying something you think is vegan because you read through the ingredients list, didn't see any obvious animal products, and just made a mistake.
I also think when you are in a restaurant with non-vegan friends, or on holiday in a foreign country, or at a friend´s house, vegans should be able to eat any bread, pasta, get any ice cream, and eat the birthday cake. This will make vegan seem more accessible, and lead to more people trying it.
If you want to generally avoid animal products but also eat dairy ice cream and birthday cake that was probably made with eggs... there is a word for that: "vegetarian." And if you want to generally avoid all animal products but occasionally eat them when you're at a friend's birthday party or something, there is also a term for that: "plant-based."
Do you still want to eat the birthday cake after you watch this?
Do you still want to eat "any" ice cream after you watch this?
Pasta usually seems to be vegan as long as there are no eggs in the noodles, and as long as there are no meats or cheeses in the sauce. (And there are lots of great tasting vegan marinara sauces..)
I worry that if eating non-vegan cookies and doughnuts means people have to call themselves vegetarian then once they have defined their identity that way they might start eating eggs for breakfast every day.
I don't see a big difference between eating cookies made with eggs and eating eggs for breakfast.
They both result in this happening:
Neither one is vegan.
That doesn´t mean we should encourage people to just rush to the store and buy milk chocolate ice cream. It should still be slightly discouraged, but not forbidden.
Nobody has made dairy ice cream "forbidden." It simply is not vegan, and people who knowingly and intentionally eat it are not vegans.
And especially not “that´s great, but you should call yourself plant-based instead of vegan” which is basically like saying “you can´t be in our club”. People want to belong to a group. If they don´t fit in with the vegans, they might end up somewhere else.
If you want to call yourself vegan because you think it will make you popular or something ("in the club")... good luck with that. Being a vegan has
never been a social advantage in my experience... it is more likely to make people dislike you (regardless of whether you "push it" on people).
We should want veganism to be accessible to everyone including the working class, or anyone with a difficult life for any reason, people in developing countries who are struggling, ethnic minorities and people that don´t speak English. I think all of this will help with that goal.
I am entirely in favor of making vegan foods more accessible for everyone, but not if that means acting like eating eggs and dairy is acceptable.
This would also make veganism cheaper. That counts for something in how many people will do it.
Vegan foods are cheaper (and often healthier) than birthday cake made from eggs and ice cream made from dairy.
And the more people do it, the less the animal suffering and death.
On the other hand, acting like eggs and dairy are acceptable in the vegan community may result in more of this:
A common reason for giving up is the social difficulty. A less strict definition would make people more likely to stick to it.
Few people would say that standing up for your principles in life is easy... and this is especially true for vegans.
