By Daria Zeoli, Guest Contributor
There’s a popular vegan question sandwiched in between all of the protein inquiries and “fish aren’t animals” misstatements you hear regularly: “Do vegans kill bugs?”
I overheard someone recently listing the bugs she won’t kill. Lady bugs and praying mantises made the cut. Then the ones she will kill. Ants. Beetles. Spiders. It made me sad. Sad because bugs are considered expendable by damned near everyone. Sad because I myself used to think that way. Sad because, if presented with a situation like Piper Hoffman related for Our Hen House last year in, A Vegan Angel… of Death [think infestation of mass proportions], I would react the same way. Who wouldn’t?
I have trapped and released several multi-legged creatures from my home. As the weather gets warmer, I’m sure more will make their way inside. What makes it normal to squish a centipede but to save a spider? Do the most compassionate of us reach for the can of Raid when faced with an infestation? Is it logical to think a tiny being’s life is meant to end under the foot of a human being?
How do you navigate your human feelings about insects?
You clearly haven’t lived within a cocktoach infestation. I am vegan for the animals. I try very hard not to unnecessarily kill anything – whether I’m walking on the sidewalk and carefully step over an earthworm or delicately catch a spider and move it outdoors. I live in an apartment building in NYC and roaches can’t really be helped as they move from unit to unit. When I started seeing them I avoided killing them and decided to keep my apartment extremely clean. Didn’t help anything. Their numbers grew. I seriously draw the line at accepting roach feces all over my counters and seeing roaches scurry across my food containers, furniture and clothing They can make you seriously sick and cause respiratory problems. I have gel baits all over now and when I see them I smash them in a paper towel. Does it make me feel sad and guilty? 100%. But I’m protecting my health and smashing them is honestly more humane than letting them eat poison.
As a a former vegan farmer, I can tell you, beyond all reasonable doubt, billions of insects were killed in the farming of any plant, whether pesto ides were used, organic or synthetic, or protected by predator bugs. All result in the deaths of billions of insects every day.
As a vegan I do my best to reduce suffering in the world in my life. There will always be gray areas where pragmatism will override the most mindful, compassionate choice. If a human or other animal or plant or microbe threatens my life, others I care for, my community, the environment etc, I will take the most humane appropriate action.
This is why ethical behavior tends to be fluid, so we can capture criminals, or defend ourselves from them. It also means if a wasp or mouse is in my living space, I do what I can to catch and release first and foremost. It means I use medicine to kill bacteria, parasites when called for. And yes it means thinking very very hard before opting to use research animals to develop future medicines and treatments that can benefit humans and the animal pets we care for.
The challenge is always to be mindful and compassionate as a vegan, not to be perfect. available to wildlife globally.
I will write about this scenario in more depth on my blog. If you’re interested in ethical contemplation and activism feel free to check it out at GoodnessFirst.com
The most it takes 10 kilo of plant to produce one kilo of animal to eat, farming rice, wheat etc kills 25 times more animals to produce 1 kilo of protein for human consumption. The death is in the field, if you want to be a vegetarian or vegan to save all lives stop eating there homes.
I don’t know where you got your numbers but this is a flawed argument nonetheless. We grow plants to feed the animals that humans (and their pets) eat as well. It takes many more calories to grow the meat than is returned because every conversion has a loss (that is, we get far fewer calories and proteins than we put in). This isn’t to mention all of the water used to grow the animal feed plants and hydrate the animals or the huge amount of pollution created. Livestock is the single biggest user of land, accounting for a whopping 40% of arable land and it is the leading cause of biodiversity loss.
Please do some research. Here’s a good place to start, but don’t stop:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production
Says the guy that has Wikipedia as a reference, ignorance is daring.
Imagine thinking wikipedia is unreliable in 2019. Pathetic.
Oh yeah, sure… Wikipedia is a totally objective and unowned source of honest information with no human bias or error.
From Wikipedia: “Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This means that any information it contains at any particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong. Biographies of living persons, subjects that happen to be in the news, and politically or culturally contentious topics are especially vulnerable to these issues. Edits on Wikipedia that are in error may eventually be fixed. However, because Wikipedia is a volunteer-run project, it cannot monitor every contribution all the time. There are many errors that remain unnoticed for days, weeks, months, or even years. Therefore, Wikipedia should not be considered a definitive source in and of itself.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source
(Yes, quoting wiki about how unreliable wiki is was intended to be post-ironic)
Wait what?! Your logic is flawed beyond anything I’ve read today. Being anti-wiki does not make you right
I appreciate the vegan lifestyle and have some very passionate Vegan friends. They are a good influence.
However, I do not mention to them that the apartment in the 100-year-old building that I rent had a horrible roach infestation when I moved in.
There is no way in the world that I can believe for a second that any one of these lovely Vegans I know would put up with it. It was bad. And yes, I poisoned them and finally they are gone.
But, no, I don’t mention it to those guys. They’re already mad that I’m not eating vegan 100 percent of the time.
I save bugs when I can, I got rid of the mice humanely, but there’s a limit. I’m just not going to live in a place that crawls. And I seriously doubt any of the folks that I’m thinking of would, either.
Arent vegans “intentionally killing bugs” everytime they swallow a probiotic?
I don’t try to kill bugs. I try to capture and release them when I find them in my house. Sometimes though, I do kill a bug on accident. Sometimes I just don’t see one when I go to step.
how do vegans handle roadkill when they are driving.
With pragmatism. Roadkill is undeniably sad and it’s unpleasant think about the animal possibly suffering in pain before it died. But being vegan is about treading as lightly as possible on this earth and we understand that some accidental deaths will always occur. Is this more sad than the billions of animals deliberately killed by humans each year sometimes in horrific circumstances, no it’s not.
What about dangerous/posonous insects that can kill humans? I’m pretty sure people would rather have them killed than being killed themselves
to be honest, I dont know any vegetarians that kill bugs.
i disagree with the whole of this article.
I would even suggest that this article was “Fabricated” just to make a story for people to read.
the only vegetarians that will kill bugs would be the ones who are avoiding meat for their health reasons and have zero concern for animals.
for me.. and many other “real” vegetarians, they would never harm an ant, cockroach, mosquito or anything.. and they will go OUT OF THEIR WAY and spend minutes or hours on end to prevent deaths to insects.
Do you live in a house made of wood? Because, if so, you have just destroyed the homes of squirrels, birds, many insects and a lot of other animals. And this very possibly contributed to many deaths. I guarantee you that thousands of vegans live in wooden houses. The fact is that there is no line. Each and every vegan has to preserve the rights and the lives of animals to the best of their ability as far as it is “POSSIBLE OR PRACTICAL”. That is the end of story. I’m a vegan and, oops, I just stepped on a bug. Excuse me while I turn myself in to the police.
Love this! Exactly! I’m not saying we should intentionally kill bugs, but in not saying it’s necessarily wrong either. Are they truly sentient and able to form love like animals/humans? I mean, are not plants even living and respond to stimuli?! Is algae not living? Yet our drinks have “living organisms.” Size never mattered…in this case. lol it’s about being practical and not insane, while still preserving as much life as you can and being as human as you can. We constantly accidentally consume bugs, drive through them/over them, squish them. Will you never walk through grass again? Will you you never eat a fig bar? ( Fig newtons taste like there’s ants in them..lol.) And will you let them tell you you’re not vegan because you kill bugs (which every human being, vegan alike, does every time they step outside) yet save billions of animals in a lifetime by not eating or killing THEM?
Farming rice, wheat and other grains to feed humans kills a lot more animals than farming an animal to eat
And half the food we grow goes to livestock
How would they get rid of head lice or is it if they lay on my head it’s there home? What if they had bedbugs? Would they share there bed and blood or spend each and every night sitting up trying to capture them humanely. There is no end to this, every person on this planet has purposely and will purposely kill something that is living. You can pick and chose what life matters but until you chose to never harm one at all, I don’t see how you can say you chose someone can chose a diet to save a life. Vegetarianism kills more lives than a meat eaters diet.
I will kill things humanely? And by that I mean:
1) It has little idea of what’s coming (no fear)
2) Death is instantaneous (no suffering)
I do believe this is animal rights correct? Not veganism. There’s lots of vegans who aren’t animal rights activists. I just think the animal rights community should be using what they are so vegans don’t get stereotyped into this believing this. And while I’m posting this; lice, tapeworms, parasites in general. Also ask your so closely related chickens & apes what they think about bugs. I do not agree with animal rights, yes, but am a firm animal welfare supporter. I believe animals that would gorge me in the wild if I went hiking are okay to eat of killed in less then half second while they are passes out.
Hi Jacob, I’m a little confused by the wording of your comment. Killing animals is a vegan issue and bugs are animals so yes, this is a vegan issue. Whether someone decides to become an activist is besides the point, as is saying that free-living animal would eat you in nature. Our industrialized food system has nothing to do with free-living animals as most of those animals wouldn’t even exist without humans breeding them into existence. Animal welfare only deals with the treatment of animals and not the abolition of their use. Veganism addresses use.
This is exactly the kind of discussion that gets in the way of vegan progress because it so absurd and borders on the illogical. Veganism is about animal rights, based on the principle that animals share so many emotions with humans, especially mammals and to a large extent birds – this is also a reason why many vegeterians think fish are ok to eat, I dont support pescetarians but just stating facts – plus mammals share common physical characteristics such as 4 limbs, internal organs etc. what i dont get is how can an insect be treated on par with an animal, I am sure if you saw a wild bear coming at you, you wouldnt heaitate for a second to shoot and kill it same goes for insects, they are creepy crawly and they are out to get you. Insects are not animals and animal rights dont apply to them, so wear all the silk you can people because no animals were ever hurt in making SILK
I don’t share your opinion that insects are not animals. They are arthropods, and therefore part of a phylum under the animal kingdom. Animal rights is not about who shares emotions with humans and how many limbs or internal organs they have. It’s also not about whether one would kill a wild bear if to not do so would mean they would die. I don’t have to kill a spider hanging out in the corner of my room any more than I have to have a chicken killed for my dinner tonight. Animals – including insects who make up about 90% if the animal kingdom – have their own interests at heart, however long or short their lifespan might be. Making ethical veganism about who is most like humans is a dangerous path to tread, because it suggests that a being’s worth isn’t linked to his “dogness” or “troutness” or whatever species he may be. It suggests that the only way you have value in this world is to be like us.
while I understand that insects do conform to the textbook definition of animals, thats just the study of zoology and classification. The reality is insects do no feel pain as they lack nociceptors or nerves which specifically track injury causing stimuli. In fact, insects dont possess a central nervous system with an evolved brain supervising the different nerve responses. As far as you challenging me on ethics, please be aware that ethics itself from the condition of being human and being able to decide what is right or wrong, so I would say the only value in this world is from being human and thus more evolved than other species. Do you think a bear or a dog thinks about higher values and ethics when its hungry, it will as readily attack a human baby for food as it would an animal or does a mosquito ever think that it shouldnt harm a human ? does a black widow spider abstain from biting because it feels sorry ?
So lets be very clear ethics derives from being human and not otherwise – your attempts to create an abstractive definition of humanity and say ‘dogness’ or ‘troutness’ is the same are completely devoid of logic.
Prashant, bears or any other animal does not attack or kill humans or other animals as we humans do just for the taste of it and if animals attack its because they are either frightened or to feed themselves to survive. We humans on the other hand kill just because we like the taste of it. We humans eat plants not because they dont feel pain its for to survive thats nature and humans are not meant to carnivores by any part or our body.
Are intestinal worms animals?
If you sincerely promote that idea as valid and you believe that whoever disagrees with you makes veganism absurd, you should be locked into a mental hospital. You’re dangerous to the society. You just stated that bugs are not animals.
Also, the Earth is flat.
I guess you could say that vegan hypocrisy officially became vegan stupidity.
so i love spiders. though i am fascinated by widows, i tend to relocate them. i have a little black house spider on my bathroom window sill (neat little web across the bottom sill), that i have become so fond of. this summer we have had a huge outbreak of pantry moths. in the kitchen.. and unfortunately more so in my bedroom! though i have fed a number of them to the spider but began to feel horrible. today alone i have caught and released at least 30 of them outside!!! but the worms crawling on my ceiling, i have been feeding to my little spider companion. anyhow, i am too poor to let these little moths destroy what little food i have.
What if you became a vegan for environmental reasons and would only use pesticide that is natural like tea tree oil? I think you’re still a vegan. Eliminating suffering is DEFINITELY about eliminating human suffering, but also human selfishness. That does not entail wallowing in a bug pit to prove your point of ending suffering.
Depends on how you define veganism. This is why the term “plant-based” has come about. Many define veganism as “a 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.” So, environmental vegan is something else. It really just depends on what your lifestyle is. So, with people using the word differently (and not to say any is more right or wrong since human language evolves and can even change from the meaning that the one who coined the term, such as here). As long as your actions are internally consistent with your specific set of beliefs, I guess you have nothing to worry about. However, some vegans are vegans simply because they believe all animal life shouldn’t be harmed unnecessarily and this is where issues like those mentioned above come from.
It’s funny because I was watching the Monsters Inside of Me television show on Animal Planet as I was reading this. One woman had a round worm inside of her eye! It was disgusting! She got it from a mosquitoe bite. Sometimes your only choice is to either kill or be killed, or live in agony and pain. Well I guess you could pull out the worm and set it free to go find some other host to feed off of. As vegans I don’t think we can live without killing anything. There is a huge difference between torturing and killing animals like cows, chickens and pigs for food that we only eat for personal pleasure and killing bugs that threaten our health and happiness. There is a point where trying to do good and be compassionate becomes counterproductive. If our goals are to reduce suffering we need to take into consideration human suffering as well. When an animal dies it can’t feel pain or suffering anymore and we have to take that into consideration as well. Sometimes killing a living being IS the more humane option.
Careful with your logic here, “When an animal dies it can’t feel pain or suffering anymore and we have to take that into consideration as well. Sometimes killing a living being IS the more humane option.” That same reasoning would apply to humans as well.
Absolutely beautiful comment, Justin! 👏🏼 I couldn’t have put it better myself.
when its a kill or be killed, id try to live, if its being sick with a parasitic virus from a tick bite (which i now have lyme disease) i will dispose of the buggers promptly , i have sugar ants right now and i am using cinnamon and bay leaves to discourage their free range of my kitchen, not really working, but i will try some other way, i will not just go for the kill. i am vegan, i am with clean conscience doing my part to help make the world a kinder place. i have recently come to the conclusion that i /we need the help of everyone to stop animal cruelty, i do not feel keeping those that still eat a typical diet away from voting and petitioning for the welfare of animals out in the cold or held in moral contempt. We need everyones voice, we are fighting the principalities of greed and power. So please no matter what you do in your life , will you help stand against animal cruelty and help close factory farms for good , I know the re is more war to be wages but for the animals we need some victories and perhaps he who came to scoff will remain to pray
Where is the line? What about the ‘lives’ that infect? That cause disease? What about the ‘lives’ that destroy? Bugs? Bacteria? Viruses? What does a bug do that large, multi-cellular bacteria don’t do? In fact, your body is getting nutrition and ‘killing’ bacteria (that does not genetically belong to you) all the time! Your own sad body is betraying your ‘never take a life’ philosophy all the time.
Since when do humans have to abdicate from a process that the ENTIRE ANIMAL KINGDOM has benefitted from? Not a single animal, not one, not a single one, has ever thought about whether what it was eating was a ‘life.’ Never. Not one time.
I am sure this sounds like a typical meat-eater’s response to a vegan debate. But even then, I don’t have to defend myself. To an outsider it sounds absolutely ridiculous to draw a line in the sand to say THIS, this is life, but this, this other thing, it’s not life, we can eat it.
May I remind everyone reading this that all people, animals, bacteria, birds, cows, EVOLVED from plant-like bacteria. They are our ancient grandparents! And that delicious avocado? It’s your very distant cousin! That wooden home you’re reading this message in, it’s made of the dead carcasses of many of your distant relatives!
Every. single. thing. you have ever consumed for nutrition, EVERYTHING (except iron and some other basic elements), was alive! It had ‘goals’. It had a family. A lineage. Calling bugs a life to be preserved, extends the debate, in my opinion, to plants. Are you really willing to abstain from cutting into that juicy tomato on your countertop? You know, the one that my very, very ancient grandmother bore?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Eric. The entire animal kingdom does not bring millions of animals into the world each year to treat them horribly and then slaughter them; that’s just us humans. The entire animal kingdom does not cook flesh to make it palatable; also just us humans. And, since human beings are so fond of thinking themselves “evolved” in comparison to their fellow animals, it’s not a bad thing to stop and think about why it is that we’re doing things this way.
Perhaps I will address your other arguments in a future post. And perhaps we already have in YDV’s five-year history. In any case, it’s nice to see that a short post on bugs as they relate to vegans has you thinking of so many other things.
Many plant species use the ingestion of animals as a way to spread their seeds and lineage. While plants are living, the biology of those lives are inherently different. The main goal of a single plant is to pass its genetic information onto the next generation. Now I have never met more seed savers than home grown vegans.
If you were actually well-read in your evolutionary science, you would know that our closest ancient relatives are actually archaebacteria. We grew out of simple bacteria. From the same roots, many other life forms came, but to say we evolved from plants is just a scientific fallacy. Rather than trying to push the debate in a direction that is obviously ridiculous to all people reading, maybe question why you need to extend your views. Regardless of how many bugs they kill, vegans will save (spare) countless lives every year. We take in the primary nutrition of (almost!) every life form on earth, and we are stronger for it. Our bodies are not sad, and neither are we, because even with all the natural bacteria neutralizations that are quite necessary included, we live the most compassionate life we know how. And that’s something you can’t really debate
Yes.
BUT…
insects are not bacteria (:
They are in the animal kingdom.
Sooo…
You cannot kill them and say you’re vegan because you’re against killing animals.
End of story (:
Taeniae for example are animals. And I wouldn’t take them off my bowels gently. I wouldn’t respect Guinea worms either should I find them in living human tissue.
Literally three years late here but I don’t think of it so much as eating a life but it’s gross to me that I’m eating a corpse
[…] Don’t forget to read more at: https://www.yourdailyvegan.com/2014/05/27/do-vegans-kill-bugs/ […]
Good question – I get really bad shivers about bugs (spiders in particular) and usually try a preventative method – don’t leave the balcony door open for x amount of time because surely a mosquito or moth is going to get inside, etc.
If I do find a spider in the house – I usually leave the room it’s in and wait for x amount of time, go back and most of the time it’s gone – as long as I don’t see them I’m okay lol
But as many people pointed out below, parasitic animals like lice,etc. there really isn’t any way around it but to kill them.
I’m like that too with spiders, if they are coming down the wall I just leave the room and by the time I come back in they are gone :)
This is a question that I wrestle with. I had a problem with fruit flies the first year I went vegan, and a vegan friend of mine told me to trap them with vinegar. Well, I told her that kills them, and I didn’t want to do that. I had fruit flies until January that year, and at some point, I gave up and opened my patio door, where the were sure to die from the cold. They were few in number, by that time, at least.
I’ve had a few infestations, including bird mites and a carpet beetle moth in a property I rent out. The tenant has a bug phobia, so I did use a pesticide, as well as diatomaceaous earth (a natural pesticide). When I have a mosquito flying near me or on my person or on a friend, I do kill it. This is for protection, at least that is my argument as they can transmit West Nile Virus (and not likely in my area, malaria).
Then, there are flies. I try to chase them out of the house and they usually cooperate. Keeping food waste down helps. But one day, there was a fly dying on my floor. He was a pain the day before, but now he was suffering and barely able to move from time to time. I picked him up, put him outside on a piece of kiwi from the compost bin. The fly put his proboscis into the kiwi flesh right away. He let me look at him close up. No doubt, he was too exhausted/dehydrated to fly anyways. I checked back 5 minutes later and he was gone, on to continue his life. I’ve also released a few centipedes, spiders and pillbugs from my house. I try to save them when I can.
Thank you for weighing in, Helen & Lorrie. There is no easy answer sometimes, but it’s helpful to hear the ones that are well thought out.
As an animal and human rights person (as I believe is the definition of being vegan), I treat any animal the way I treat any human, so with the animal bug, if one is attacking/harming me or my loved ones, I’ll attack back to harm and kill if necessary in self-defense.
I don’t kill bugs on purpose. The only ones I do are the kind that are parasitic: Bedbugs, ticks, fleas, lice – those bugs that won’t leave you alone because their food is you or your pets – once they come home with you, it’s either an infestation or extermination. However, mosquitoes are basically parasites, but I won’t kill them, because they usually don’t follow you home and then latch on to you. Whenever I could, I trap and release. I felt horrible pulling off a tick from my dog the other day – I would have pulled it off and then released it, but the little bugger will NOT let go of my dog, I ended up tearing it off him and I think I killed it, but if it had just let go, I would have released it once he is off my dog.