posted February 26, 2004 12:48 PM         

(The following is mainly quoted from the information from The Vegan Society, UK)

A bee will, on average, fly about 800km to provide half a teaspoon of honey. In winter, the stored honey is removed for human use and replaced with nutrient-deficient glucose or corn syrup. Synthetic psticides and antibiotics are also used.

Royal jelly is food on which bee larvae are fed which causes them to develop into queen bees. It is used as a food supplement. Under factory farming, the queen bees' wings are clipped, in order to prevent her from flying, while this is the natural way of mating. Queen bees are inseminated by serm from decapitated bees. A queen bee could live for several years. However, queen bees are killed regularly (usually after two years, when their egg-laying begin to decline), often within two years, some experts advise as frequently as every six months. New queens are mass produced by specialist breeders under controlled conditions- virgin queens are artificially inseminated with sperm from crushed males.

Propolis is bee glue, used by bees to stop up crevices and fix combs to the hive. It is used as toiletries, cosmetics and as well as a food supplement.

Bee pollen is also used as a food supplement, while it is, in fact, bee's food.

I am not going to explain all the bee products here, only the vital ones. The products aforementioned are either food for bees or the structure of their combs. Don't you think it's a kind of exploitation eating them?

posted February 26, 2004 12:53 PM         

PESTICIDES are used

The queen is routinely artificially inseminated by SPERM from decapitated bees (they would normally mate in flight)

posted February 26, 2004 04:57 PM         

Chickens will peck to death a weaker chicken.
Cows will push away the weaker twin in a double calving, and it will starve to death. Pigs will eat their own young if the litter is too big.

posted February 26, 2004 09:45 PM         

To Motherkonfessor: Even if what you said is true, should we keep (in this case, I'm referring to factory farming, just to point it out in order to be on the safer side) animals in sordid conditions, slaughter them and eat them SIMPLY because they attack each other? Are we better than them? Are we suppose to justify our action (flesh eating) merely because of the violence that exists?

You don't have to become a vegan today. But you can start thinking TODAY. Even going vegetarian is a significant, big step.

posted February 27, 2004 12:10 AM         

Guess what? I take offense at this.

I don't care for your assumption that I DONT think, and your assumption I am not vegetarian.

I don't appreciate the idea that strongly comes across in your posts that if you aren't veggie, then you are unevolved, or at best, hopelessly stupid.

Considering that all of your information is simply a cut and paste from another site, I will hazard to say that coming to the conclusion to oppose factory farming ON ONES OWN is just as enlightened as regurgitating pre-packaged propaganda.

Have you ever stopped to think that most people do NOT want these circumstances to exist, but are forced into their eating habits by poverty? Lack of options? And please don't copy more info about the financial ramifications of meat eating are. I KNOW what they are. But a package of ground beef for $1.59 that can be used to feed a family of four is much cheaper than a bag of oranges- and much more filling. Some people, esp people who live in poverty conditions, have neither the time nor energy to debate the existentialism of the food they eat. They are happy to HAVE food, and need the energy to work at physically draining, low end jobs.

How about giving a **** about people first before worrying about bees? How do you expect us to change the world without confronting the systems that CREATE these horrid conditions for cows, chickens, bees, manta rays, whatever?

Have you ever even BEEN on a farm, to see how the cycle of life and death REALLY happens, in Nature?

Start attacking corporate farming, not people and their food styles. All it will do is make them resentful of the message, and ****** off at being judged- like me.

And, I AM A VEGETARIAN.

posted February 27, 2004 05:10 AM         

I was NOT talking about natural farms. I was relating to INTENSIVE FACTORY FARMS. By the way, the meat in Britain is far more expensive than vegetables and fruit. One more thing, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, consuming mainly flesh rather than vegetables and fruit is very harmful to your body. If some poor people, like you said, can only afford beef rather than oranges, this is not what it's supposed to be. I AM NOT SAYING it's their bl**dy fault. I am saying they need us to make them see that they have a better choice.