COURTESY OF POPCORN AND USENET:
 
An iteresting article in the  May/June  and  July/Aug. 1988 issues of
"The Vegetarian"  (the magazine of the British  Vegetarian Society)
consisted of a list of several hundred "stumbling blocks".  They're also
listed in their "Vegetarian Handbook"  ISBN 0 900774 30 4   (2.99 pounds)
I'll list a few of them:

CHEWING GUM - some chewing gums contain glycerine.  Wrigleys gum contains a
vegetarian source of glycerine.

ENVELOPES  -  apparently most envelopes have a synthetic glue on them, not an
animal or fishe based glue.

MARGARINES  -  can contain fish and other marine oils.  Many margarines
contain whey.

MOHAIR  -  from goats.  they can be sheared or skinned.

NOUGAT  -  usually contains gelatine.

ORGANIC  -  Dried blood, bone/hoof meal and fish meal can all be used a
fertilisers etc.  Try finding out about Veganic Gardening as an alternative,
by using seaweed fertilisers which are widely available.

PASTA  -  may contain egg.  Some pasta in Italy contains squids's ink --
this can easily be recognised because the pasta is black.

PASTES  -  Glues.  May be animal or fish derived.

PASTRY  -  Animal fats used in most shop-baked pies etc.  Check ingredients.
White and wholemeal alike.

PHOSTATES  -  derived from glycerol and fatty acids.  May be from animal
bones too.

POSTAGE STAMPS  -  these do not contain an animal or fish glue.

PROGESTERONE  -  a hormone.  May have been taken from the urine of a
pregnant mare, and could be used in hormone creams etc.  see Oestrogen.

RENNET  -  an enzyme taken from the stomach of a newly killed calf.  Used in
the cheese making process.  Look for ... and the words "made without animal
rennet"

SHORTENING  -  can be made from animal fats.  Used in the food industry
especially pastries and biscuits.

SILK  -  From the silk worm.  Used in the production of cosmetics and
garments.   ...  where longer strands of the cocoon are needed in the
production of clothes, the silk worm is boiled or gassed to obtain the
thread.

SOAP  -  most soaps are not vegetarian because of the tallow (animal fats)
and because many will have been tested on amimals.

SUEDE  -  leather.

SWEETS  -  Watch out for gelatine, eg wine gums.  Nearly all mints eg Polo,
Trebor, Extra Strong etc contain gelatine.  See also Nougat.

VIOLIN  -  Traditionally violins are stuck together with an animal based
glue.  The bows are usually made from horse hair.

-------------
That's just a few of the entries; if you would like a complete list, send
1.15 pounds to  The Vegetarian Society.   Also you could join, and
receive their very good bimonthly magazine "The Vegetarian".  I'll note the
address, but suggest you phone them up with a credit card  (I know they take
Mastercard), since the currency conversion is done automatically by the
credit card company.

The Vegetarian Society (U.K.) Ltd.
Parkdale, Dunham Road
Altrincham, Cheshire  WA14  4QG
England
   phone:     061-928-0793
        011-44-61-928-0793     ( dialed from the U.S.A. )

30 responses total.

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Depends on where you get your honey.  We used to raise honey on a small
scale (3 hives) and never did any of that stuff...I would imagine that most
small farmers don't, either.
  
White sugar is filtered through crushed burned beef bones in order to give
it that sparkly color.

        YUCK!

I personally feel that honey, like eggs, is a vegetarian food, but
not a vegan one... for exactly the same reasons...

You can get honey without torturing bees.

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   Yes, you can buy it from a beekeeper that you know
and trust.  My father kept bees for a while.  I never
saw any of the things described above while I watched
him.  I suspect that they are fairly rare practices.

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You can always ask him.

You can get milk from a cow, without torturing it, but that doesn't
make it a vegan food item.

It depends on your approach to veganism.  If you avoid animal products
because they involve torturing animals, you might choose to consume
milk or honey obtained in a humane manner.  If you avoid animal products
because they come from animals, then honey is iffy. 

Oh, I think I agree more with you... the standard definitions of
what is "right", are not always "right" for me... whether they
are too restrictive or not restrictive enough.

The standard definition of 'vegan' makes no differentiation between
torturing or not, just that the product is from an animal....
Of course, a bee isn't an animal is it?

ANYWAY......  whatever someone feels is the morally right thing
to do is groovy.

   Of course a bee is an animal.  It simply isn't a mammal
(which is probably the most common 'definition' of animal,
even if incorrect.)   Do vegans wear Birkenstocks (made from
leather)?  Or is it simply the eating of animal matter that
is not kosher?  And why draw the line at animals, anyway?

One reason for drawing the line there is that animals can experience
pain.

 I was taught that mammals give live birth, and produce milk.
I also understood that flies and bees were incects and spiders
were arachnids. 

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Inconsistent, perhaps, but still a vegan.

   I suspect that some animals, and perhaps many of them,
do not experience pain as we understand the term.  Mammals,
yes, chordates, yes, but all animals, no.  And most animals
are not chordates.  Many of the more 'primitive' animals,
like insects and worms, probably do not experience 'pain'.
There isn't much neural matter, or in some cases even
a 'brain'.  How do we define (or experience) pain, anyway?

    I fail to see how milking a cow causes pain, and suspect
that pain is not the guiding principle.  It seems to me
that kinship (evolutionary nearness, or physical
resemblance) is.


   BTW, not all mammals give live birth (platypus and
echidna being the principal exceptions).  Egg-laying
was thought to be a sign of 'primitive' mammals, but
recent research shows that echidnas have very sophisticated
brains, and are probably more 'intelligent' than cats
or dogs.  All mammals *do* produce milk (at least, half of
them can).  

   Insects and arachnids are arthropods, not chordates,
fyi.

Nothing better to ruin something than over-defining it.

People should just do what they feel is right, when they have
all the information.

So, what do you do with a dead cow?
I've milked cows by hand and can tell you this: If she doesn't liike what
you're doing to her, she'll let you know right away.

Wow....I think this is one of the deadest items I've seen in a while.

Does anyone who might still be lurking around know what vegan violinists do
for bows (or if they just avoid the instrument, or what?) -- I hadn't even
thought about that one before.

Jim says he does not find it inhumane to cut hair.  He cuts his frequently
and does not feel inhumane or put-upon or even tortured.

Phosphates consist of phosphorus and oxygen and can be found in bone.
Fats consists of glycerin and fatty acids and can be found in animals.
There is no such thing as as a phostate.

Jim asks if it is inhumane to remove hair, what is shaving?
Jim eats vegan but wears whatever comes his way, as otherwise it would go to
the dump and be wasted.  (He eats on the same philosophy sometimes but cooks
vegan and organic, if he cannot grow it himself, and eats as much as he can
that drops off the trees around here or is grown and cannot be sold.)  One
reason for being vegan is to waste less soil, and eating animals is wasteful.

Bees do not make white sugar into honey.  They eat white sugar if their honey
is removed at the end of the season and replaced with sugar.  Most bee
colonies are allowed to die off at the end of the season, mainly because there
is an infestation of mites that take over the hive and it is easier to start
all over again with a sterilized hive and a few uninfected bees than to try
to cure all the bees in the old hive.  So no reason even to feed them sugar.

Wearing used leather is a lot better for the land than wearing new organic
cotton.  Used anything is better for the environment than new, with a few
exceptions in the case of things that use energy (uninsulated houses).

Someone in Ohio claims to have kept his beehives mite-free (and his American
chestnuts blight-free) but placing them at the convergence of lines of force
which he identifies by dowsing.  (Maybe there are underground streams that
feed the trees and that make it too damp for the mites?)  See the item on
dowsing in paranormal conference (formerly in agora).  Jim can dowse.

I think the idea is not that it's inhumate to cut the horses' hair, but that
it's inhumane to keep horses in the first place.

Would you rather be a kept horse or not exist?

Careful with that one.  That's the first
argument that comes to a meat-eater's mind 
when vegetarians fuss about killing the 
poor beef cattle.  Would you rather be a
kept steer who enjoys life for a couple
of years, or never exist at all?

keesan - I might be tempted to say yes, but a vegan by definition would
disagree.

The question (25) was not yes/no, I don't follow.  There are many reasons for
being vegetarian, not just concern about the feelings of other animals or
their lifespans.  For some people it is sort of a religion, for others a
matter of personal health, or of minimizing environmental damage.  Since
horses are not generally raised for their tail hairs (or killed for them) I
don't see how it hurts anyone to use them instead of throwing them away.
I did go to a lecture which claimed that the leather industry supports the
beef cattle industry, but I doubt that there were be fewer riding horses if
there were fewer violin bows.  

(I hate it when I come back to a conference I haven't seen in a while and get
ambushed by an old handle like that.....yeesh.)

I don't really understand the arguments for veganism very well.  The versions
I've heard don't make much sense to me, which is why I'm not a vegan, but that
might just be because I haven't heard them properly explained.  

I also don't understand the arguments for religion, which is why I am not
religious.  I think Jim is doing this sort of as a challenge, but since he
is not religious about it, he will eat doughnuts if hungry enough and there
is nothing else within arm's reach to eat.  One argument is that you can grow
a lot more corn and soybeans, than you can grow chickens fed corn and
soybeans, with the same amount of land, fertilizer, and fuel, and that there
are so many people that the soil etc. will be used up fast if people continue
to grow food to feed to animals and only get 10% of the original calories in
what they eat themselves.  Then there is the other extreme, that does not like
to think of animals suffering (but does not necessarily care about the land
or the human population angle).  And some people are just trying to avoid
cholesterol, fat, and/or pesticides, for their own health.  (But eat gobs of
sugar to compensate for depriving themselves, and tofu turkeys and other
imitation animals, and rice dream).  The middle group is the one that tends
to worry about what postage stamp glue is made of.

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