Hello, I would like to say a bit about myself first. I am a fairly new vegan. I started in January 2011 and before that I was a vegetarian for a little over a year. My main reasons for being vegan are environmental and also because I think it is wrong to kill and make animals suffer when you simply don't need to. Also, I'm very much motivated by the health part of being vegan.
That being said, I've always questionned myself about whether it is okay to kill/eat insects. Upon thinking about it, I've come up with a few arguments in favour of killing/eating insects. Before stating them, I want to clarify that I am 100% vegan at the moment, I do not eat insects. Also, my goal here is not to convince anyone to eat insects but rather to know about other people's view on the matter.
So, here are 2 arguments that I can think of at the moment that I would like to put forward, there may be more than 2. Firstly, like some of you I assume, I have read the book called Skinny Bitch. Not that this book is like the bible for vegans(or maybe it is, what do I know), but I've heard of a few vegans who became vegan after reading that book. One of the arguments for being vegan used by the author stuck to me because of its inconsistency. It goes something like "humans are not genetically equipped to hunt down and devour animals". Our teeth are not fit to tear through skin and flesh. Also, we don't have the running speed to hunt down an animal and our nails are not a suitable to kill our preys like claws would be for example. When you give it some thought, this is true for almost all the mammals, fish, bird on the planet I can think of(exceptions I can think of at the moment would be the snail and very small fish, I'm sure there are a few more), but this is not true for a lot of insects and for that matter, arachnids. Humans are well equipped to catch and eat insects. You can catch a fly or a mosquito with your hand, or just pick a non flying insect like and ant or a termite from the ground. And our teeth are just fine to eat insects.
Now for the second argument. There is the killing part of eating an insect, which would, without a doubt, make eating insect a non vegan thing. However, if you think about it, among all the animals on the planet, insects are pretty much the only ones that you regularly kill accidentally, in a natural fashion(excluding any use of human made tools, technology or machine). Yes, we vegans are killing insects in our everyday lives. For example, you can step on one by mistake and kill it while you're going for a walk. Also, if you're jogging outside and it's a little windy(or not at all) an insect could run directly into your eyes nose or mouth and eventually die from that. You would have killed it. Would you say you do the same to mammals birds and fish ? I don't think so.
Also, have you ever though about pest? What if you have a cockroach or termite problem in your house, how are you going to take care of that ?
Would like to hear what you guys think on that!
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