If I use this to fertilize my veggies, are they still vegan?
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Two factors to consider id say. Blood isn't the only organic source of nitrogen so it's not as if its necessary, thus I'd wager many vegans would consider it unnecessary animal suffering, at least in theory. However the caveat, and second factor, would be blood is byproduct, no ones killing the animals in order to obtain blood meal so many people including vegans may think it more ethical to not let it go to waste since weather or not there's a demand for blood meal, there will still be animal blood that needs to be disposed of.
Strictly dietarialy, yes they would still be vegan. All soil is full of countless formless decomposed animals and plants, it's an inescapable reality of how the soil came to be. It can only get more ethically involved when you choose to add it yourself imo.
That second point would require intimate knowledge about which animal parts would be disposed of if they didn't find a buyer.
In reality, everything is used. If there wasn't a market for part of an animal, a use was found and a market created (which is part of the reason why industrially produced white sugar, beer, wine, apple juice, potato chips and bread usually aren't vegan).
Anyway, vegans usually don't care about whether an animal product could be leftover. Their philosophy boils down to "Just fucking leave animals in peace."
Their philosophy boils down to “Just fucking leave animals in peace.”
It's more complicated than that unless you don't understand how many animals die when you clear farmland. Every crop you eat came at a cost to animals, if there's no amount you deem acceptable or unavoidable your only option is to exclusively eat food you grew yourself, and that still alters the environment to be less favorable to animals, you just don't directly kill them like large scale farms do.
There's also the pesky detail that if minerals in the soil are taken up into plants, and plants are then eaten by animals, then animals need to go back into the soil we grow our crops in or the the soils get depleted of minerals. That's why most salt is iodized, because we've leached all the iodine out of our croplands and never put it back. There is only so much fossil fertilizer in the world. Eventually we are going to have to accept that we are part of nature instead of separate beings above it and doing things to it. Factory farming sucks and needs to end, but we can't "Just fucking leave animals in peace." we are not separate from them. They are us and we are them.
Im no expert but I hear nutrient levels in soils is trending in the wrong direction in general. Composting efforts need to become serious and as ubiquitous as recycling. Props to California for their efforts on that front.
The acceptable amount = refrain from hurting animals "as much as possible and practicable". That takes care of all the gotchas and the well actuallys.
Even honey isn't okay with some (I have no idea the %, could be most or just a small number) of vegans. So regardless of how the blood was obtained, there is at least some who would not consider it vegan.
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There are vegan blood meal alternatives out there to resolve this exact conundrum.
But the reality is, unless your plants are being grown hydroponically in a sealed warehouse or similar, chances are real good that they are feeding on decaying animals (either directly or indirectly) whether you like it or not. They're mostly insects and annelids and such, but still animals.
I think the issue for vegans is more about whether animal slaughter was involved in making their fertilizer. Dead pillbugs in the soil is just nature doing its cycle of life thing.
The issue for vegans is whether animal slaughter was involved and whether they supported it with their purchase.
Its easiest to treat paying for something the same as doing it firsthand.
It gets really strange to find the line that separates how far away from an immoral act you need to be to be considered moral still. In the same room? In the same building? What if you don't explicitly ask someone to do the immoral thing, and only ask for the remains of it?
Humans are just as much part of nature as everything else
a common definition of nature is the stuff that is untouched by humans.
as wiktionary puts it:
flora and fauna as distinct from human conventions, art, and technology
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Life feeds on life feeds on life, plants don't care how you died just how your nutrients are able to be absorbed.
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Instant coffee for Vampires
As a vampire I finally found a use for my expresso machine
I love the idea of a vampire having kitchen appliances for which they have no use just like regular people.
"Just because I am over 3000 years old, and a creature of the night abandoned by all that once brought comfort, doesn't mean I don't entertain."
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It makes sense to clarify. There are many dishes made with blood, black pudding and blood sausage comes to mind.
Also it's good to let people know because dogs absolutely love that shit and you have to be careful to keep it out of areas dogs can get at it.
I worked in a green house and one customer's dog dug up an entire tree she planted to get at the blood meal she put in the bottom of the hole. Dog was okay, but needed to stay at the vets a few days to monitor the vomiting and their iron levels.
what fucked up tumblr subculture has my shitpost reached
I've never been on tumblr and just assumed the whole site was like that.
I mean, it says it's a meal right on the front. /s
Stuff is expensive. It's the best thing I've found for keeping deer from eating my plants, but then I got a dog that just went nuts for the stuff and would just eat it like mad when he went outside. So now the dear just eat my plants again.
Our dachshund picks up and eats all kind of shit. She's a destroyer of SHOES and CPAP masks, of course, but she also eats rocks, plastic, or whatever else she finds.
The other day I walk in, and she has 2 milkbones (we don't buy them and I have no idea where they came from). She just moved them around for a few days and never ate them. But a stick is fine dining.
Dogs are weird.
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This is what I came here to say. The clarification on the post is not about humans eating plant food, it's about idiot fucking pets eating plant food. They eat grass, why wouldn't they chow down on something that smells like blood.
Can I use the iron in this to forge a sword??
Ahh, that says you might need ~2.3 kg of iron sand after removing the non-iron from the material. Blood meal appears to be .2% iron by weight. Very napkin quality math says you'd need ~1150 bags to get enough iron
My first thought was if it could be rehydrated and used as a more easily acquired prop blood, as opposed to pig's blood.
I feel like the tumblr user asking why it's necessary to tell people not to eat blood meal must have forgotten they're on tumblr. The whole site is just smut curated by the generation that turned eating tide pods into a meme.
Uhm, hello, it says blood MEAL, so of course it's made to be eaten.
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In many cultures blood, sometimes dried is used in cooking.
For example blood sausage and blood pancakes are eaten in finland
Sweden, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy also use them for sausage-like products (these I know of, I'm sure there's more)
Let me introduce you to blood sausages...
Ya, I assumed this was like instant mash for blood pudding. Probably would have second guessed it if I saw it in the gardening aisle, though.
Is this an US thing? I'm fairly certain I've never seen that in Germany
No, you can find this in garden shops in Europe.
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