Can vegans eat figs?
Vegans eat other foods that use fertilizer. Fertilizers could contain meat or meat byproducts… So…

Fertilizers could contain meat

Can you provide an example? Sounds strange. Too expensive.

cow is made of meat.

cow eats grass.

cow has a shit.

said shit is collected to form manure.

this manure is an animal byproduct which the animal did not consent to you taking.

Same as bees and honey.

Im not vegan but thats what a vegan explained to me

Ok, evil humans extort shit from the cows without their consent. I never thought that vegans are that crazy.

Hi vegan here, stop talking shit about something you know nothing about. Veganism is not living in air and water.

If there is a cow shitting there is no problem taking that shit and putting it on a field. The problem is when a industry - that is based on exploiting animals - profits of shit flooding our groundwater with nitrate. We want to reduce that huge industry in different ways:

Basic for every vegan: food based on plants not on animals.

how and why people choose to be vegan is as diverse as “being a meateater” is. Some people eat a cheeseburger a day some eat one piece of deer a year.

What I was doing most of my life is environmental veganism: Never bought anything animal related. If e.g. meat was actually thrown away otherwise I’d eat it as well.

Then there are health reasons. (Never digged to deep into that - I am damn healthy and happy with my diet)

And what you are talking about is ethical veganism: Ethical Vegans say there is no reason why humans are allowed to treat animals in that way and think animals are somewhat equal to humans. They would strongly oppose the use of shit of animals on fields if it is possible with less support of the harm the industry does.

Depending on the reason why people do it they often live it in a different way (and sometimes hate each other for their approach)

stop talking shit about something you know nothing about.

Isn’t this kind of how society works and why we are where we are?

also: bone and blood meal
Consent is needed to pick up animal shit now??
Most certainly, that’s expensive shit!

The fact that some vegans think honey is exploitative really says a lot about their lack of knowledge.

They DO know that if bees don’t like a place, they’ll just … leave, right?

You could say the same about humans working exploitative jobs. You can be unhappy and still stay because the cost of quitting is too high. It’s only when it gets really bad that it becomes worthwhile.

You could, but bees overproduce honey. There’s literally no drawbacks to taking the surplus besides maybe preventing the colony from sending off new queens quite as often, and mildly disturbing the hive when it’s done. (A lot of honey bees are pretty chill about it, even without a smoker.)

I don’t jive with the wing clipping though.

Do we have any theories as to what the cows were going to do with it?
Fertilizer - Wikipedia

However, starting in the 19th century…

Hasn’t XIX century started in your region yet? :)

Vegans in your country don’t like organic food? Blood/bone meal is still a very popular fertlilizer.
You want me to provide examples of fertilizer? Sorry I’m not into shitposting.
Get off the internet and get back to work, Dad.

I think I heard recently that one of the mushrooms that is popular as a vegan meat substitute lives off of some sort of living creature like insects or something.

But realistically, it’s all the circle of life. Animal life is part of the circle. Probably all plants have consumed nutrients that came from an animal in some way.

ffs they won’t eat honey, and that’s only because you’re stealing the fruits of the bees’ labor. I would assume the International Vegan Council outright bans figs with extreme prejudice.

they won’t eat honey, and that’s only because you’re stealing the fruits of the bees’ labor

Not the only reason. For example, an infamous and common practice in the honey industry is to cut off the queen’s wings, ensuring the hive has no choice but to stay there and produce honey.

I’ve never met a vegan who won’t eat figs; figs’ relationship with fig wasps is symbiotic, and yes, excluding fruit on the basis that “eating the fruit of a pollinated plant is exploiting the pollinator” probably far oversteps the “practicable” part of veganism:

Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

Definition of veganism

What is a vegan and vegan food? What does veganism mean?

The Vegan Society
Would you eat honey from a natural hive without these practices?

Good question. I wouldn’t (we’re assuming casual foraging for fun and not a survival situation); it’s still not vegan, but it’d be arguably less unethical on a spectrum.

A con compared to the apiary is that these wild bees aren’t being artificially supplemented by e.g. sugar water; it’s live-or-die for them, and that’s their food. It’s not in me to take that away from them when I don’t have to.

If someone took like a teaspoon of honey (still the lifetime output of about a dozen bees) while giving the bees something greater in return, then I don’t think most vegans would think it’s inherently wrong*, but like any ethical framework, whenever you try to find contrived boundaries, it’s kind of like “okay, but why?” It’s sometimes engaging on the armchair but rarely in practice.

A huge pro compared to the apiary is avoiding, in addition to the physical mistreatment of the bees themselves, the perpetuation of the exploitation. If you one-and-done plunder a hive, that’s not vegan, but you’re not giving money to someone as a way of telling them “thanks, and keep doing this”.

* I’m making a hand-wavey assumption here that you can just do that without pissing off and killing a bunch of bees or smoking them out just so we can have perfectly ideal ethical conditions.

This is more in the “dead worms in the compost make their way into the vegetables we eat” wheelhouse than in the “lets steal these animals labor for their young, risking death and injury to the workers while doing so” wheelhouse
I had a friend that didn’t eat figs for this reason.
Yeah I have a coworker who avoids certain varieties (many varieties don’t include wasps in the normal lifecycle)
Ethical vegans want to avoid suffering. If figs cause suffering is a philosophical question.
Most vegans do. The general idea is to avoid exploiting animals, but the wasps are living out their natural life cycle.
not if they have trypophobia
Yeah sure I’ll eat figs. You don’t eat the fig wasps as they have been eaten by the fig already. If I knew there was a fig wasp still inside, I wouldn’t eat it though.

FYI they are very fucking small nowhere near as big as in this image. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_wasp

Forcing her way through the ostiole, the mated mature female often loses her wings and most of her antennae. To facilitate her passage through the ostiole, the underside of the female’s head is covered with short spines that provide purchase on the walls of the ostiole.

In depositing her eggs, the female also deposits pollen she picked up from her original host fig. This pollinates some of the female flowers on the inside surface of the fig and allows them to mature. After the female wasp lays her eggs and follows through with pollination, she dies.[15]

After pollination, there are several species of non-pollinating wasps that deposit their eggs before the figs harden. These wasps act as parasites to either the fig or possibly the pollinating wasps.

As the fig develops, the wasp eggs hatch and develop into larvae. After going through the pupal stage, the mature male’s first act is to mate with a female - before the female hatches. Consequently, the female will emerge pregnant. The males of many species lack wings and cannot survive outside the fig for a sustained period of time. After mating, a male wasp begins to dig out of the fig, creating a tunnel through which the females escape.[16]

Once out of the fig, the male wasps quickly die. The females find their way out, picking up pollen as they do. They then fly to another tree of the same species, where they deposit their eggs and allow the cycle to begin again.

Fig wasp - Wikipedia

Nature is so fucking WEEEEIRD
Actually it’s not. This is 100% human fault. Fig trees and fig wasps from the same (natural) area do not have this problem. When (I believe California?) imported a ton of trees and wasps to cultivate giant fig farms, they just didn’t care that the wasps they got would die during pollination. It was a known issue, that just got ignored. Completely preventable.
Nature is not weird? What that person described is not weird? It’s weird. You cannot convince me nature is not weird. Because nature is so fucking WEEEEEEIRDDDD

What problem do you mean?

The blastophaga psenes wasps in Turkey die during pollination just like the blastophaga psenes wasps in California do.

Here is more information about how figs (and fig wasps) came to be cultivated in the US.

The Fig Mystery: Nurseryman's Secret

Come along on a fascinating journey through California's fig cultivation history—a tale filled with mystery and intrigue! Discover more now.

You’re just plain wrong. Figs and fig wasps have been coevolving for millions of years, and this is just how these species of fig and wasp evolved. Lots of animals have evolved to die after they reproduce. This is nature and has nothing to do with commercial fig growers
Is this a joke???
I went and looked that up on my own and I could’ve just clicked into the comments?!
When i came to the post there were no comments to quell my worries so i had to check and share what i found :D
10/10 would read again!

nowhere as big as in this image

Yeah when they’re alive, but everyone knows you grow larger when you become a ghost

If you look at the detail in the ghosty wasp, it’s clear that it’s just an edited image of a wasp pasted onto a fig

This is interesting. Regarding a sentence:

Allow them to mature

Does it mean the figs cannot mature without the wasp ? Does it mean that each ripe fig has been visited by a wasp ?

I mean, fruit with seeds is formed from a flower after pollination. It’s just that on the figs, the flower is apparently inside the unripe fruit.

Yes exactly. They are both dependent on each other in that way.

And to add on to that, figs are super important food trees in the tropics, because they are the only trees that produce fruits all year around. (Because they have to, otherwise the fig wasp population couldn’t sustain itself.) So many animal species are also dependent on the steady food source of fig trees (btw most look very different from the common fig tree, Ficus carica).

Yes however it’s a ghost wasp. It can take whatever phantom size it damn well pleases
Not much of a life. Larvae can already be argued to be the main stage of life in many insects, as they get to chill around and munch on plants for ages, while adults have to fly somewhere, shag, lay eggs and croak. With these wasps, the adult male has it even more straightforward, and the female seems to not even get to enjoy the larval stage.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard told me they were big though

kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/track/big-fig-wasp

Big Fig Wasp, by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

from the album Nonagon Infinity

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
What a cool band, I was the orchestra manager on their first stop of their Phantom Island Tour. Their drummer is a force of nature
Hell yeah, it’s a goal of mine to catch a show
This is why fig newtons taste like delicious hate
I use them when I need to channel the ghosts of 1000 angry wasps.
hey I think you might be allergic to fig newtons
No, that’s just the sugar. Someone decided figs weren’t sweet enough and that they should add sugar to them.