Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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PsYcHo
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Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

Post by PsYcHo »

I'm not Vegan, but I do try to consider basic morality in regards to my consumption of food. Peanut butter is my go-to food when I want a non-meal meal. ( Hungry, gotta eat. Would prefer to eat something that didn't require something else to die)

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a favorite of mine, but in past years I try to stick to "Jam", which is mostly fruit. It also doesn't require gelatin, which is derived from animal parts.

In my musings, I wondered how gelatin is viewed by full Vegans.

On one hand, I can see how it being derived from an animal could cause persons to avoid it, but on the other hand, It seems like it would be wasteful not to eat it. Animals died to make it, yes, but those animals weren't killed for their precious gelatin, they were killed for meat. Gelatin is a byproduct of this murder, so why the guilt for eating it? Would it be better to allow a suitable source of sustenance to go to waste?
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Lay Vegan
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

Post by Lay Vegan »

There’s a difference between buying a product which may happen to contain gelatin, and a product that uses gelatin as primary ingredient, as a thickener, for example. Vegans avoid gelatin because it (often) requires the unnecessary suffering and death of an animal.

It’s basic economics. How do you think food/pharmaceutical companies receive gelatin? It’s purchased from slaughter houses, not given for free. This also saves factory farms millions of dollars in food disposal. Dismembered parts of animals (hides, tendons, crushed bones and all) are sent directly from factory farms to food processing plants (which profits slaughter houses).

I’m a consequentialist. I don’t care that gelatin is derived from animals. I care about that fact that by purchasing products which require gelatin, I am increasing demand of this product and producing more harm. I would be benefitting an industry that legalizes and normalizes the abuse of animals.

I would be all in favor of eating animal products to avoid waste. I’m in support of freegan/zero-waste advocates. If “the damage has been done” and more harm can be avoided by consuming animal products, then the rational thing to do would be to eat the animal products.

Activist Journeys recently changed my mind on this topic after I made a response to a popular freegan YouTuber. More vegans should be on board with freeganism.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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Lay Vegan wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 1:56 am I don’t care that gelatin is derived from animals. I care about that fact thatby purchasing products which require gelatin, I am increasing demand of this product and producing more harm . I would be benefitting an industry that legalizes and normalizes the abuse of animals.
I see your point, but isn't the gelatin derived from parts that would otherwise be discarded if they didn't have value in the marketplace? Non-Vegans would still eat the meat from the animals, and lacking a use for the bones/hooves, slaughter houses would just throw them out.

I don't think that gelatin exist strictly because of demand. No quasi-Vegetarian/Pescatarian-ish person would advocate killing an animal purely for its gelatinous bone soup.

The carnists kill the animal for meat. Seeing as how the animal was already sacrificed, I don't see a moral consequence for using the "trash" parts of the animal for sustenance.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

Post by Canastenard »

It's true that animals are slaughtered mainly for their meat, and stopping eating meat is the most effective way to slow down the animal agriculture industry. However, gelatin is an additional source of income for slaughterhouses, which try to sell the most parts possible of animal carcasses in order to cust down costs and be profitable. It's true that slaughterhouses would financially collapse if we stopped eating meat, even if the demand for gelatin still existed, but we aren't there yet.

Because gelatin is an additional source of income for slaughterhouses, it means they can lower the price for meat without reducing profitability. Thus, avoiding gelatin can make meat more expensive, and disrupt the animal agriculture economy, while increasing the market share of products and companies that use alternatives to gelatin.

And once Geltor's vegan gelatin hits the market, keeping boycotting non-vegan gelatin will give a commercial niche to the vegan one, and because it's functionally the same product it will be able to replace it without compromises for industrial applications, making easier for companies to choose an ethical option.

It's also important to note that slaughterhouses make profit from selling animal skin, because the leather industry helps them being profitable, and without it meat would be more expensive. Not only that but some animals are raised mainly for their skin rather than their meat. So leather is not a harmless byproduct either, and is probably more significantly harmful than gelatin. That's also why vegan collagen biotech companies are important, as their market share will grow they will make animal agriculture less profitable which in turn will help increasing the market share of animal-friendly food, and make veganism snowball until animal agriculture falls down to the field of economic irrelevancy.
PsYcHo wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:13 am The carnists kill the animal for meat. Seeing as how the animal was already sacrificed, I don't see a moral consequence for using the "trash" parts of the animal for sustenance.
To be fair it's true that we might as well find a use somehow to unusable animal parts rather than completely wasting it while animals are being slaughtered for meat, but that doesn't make buying gelatin products vegan. I'd fully agree with it only if given for free and that slaughterhouses don't make a profit from it, because it helps making meat (the main product) cheaper, and helps non-vegan food having a higher market share which is precisely what we don't want.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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Canastenard wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:49 am Because gelatin is an additional source of income for slaughterhouses, it means they can lower the price for meat without reducing profitability. Thus, avoiding gelatin can make meat more expensive, and disrupt the animal agriculture economy, while increasing the market share of products and companies that use alternatives to gelatin.
I hadn't considered that.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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Canastenard wrote: Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:49 am Because gelatin is an additional source of income for slaughterhouses, it means they can lower the price for meat without reducing profitability. Thus, avoiding gelatin can make meat more expensive, and disrupt the animal agriculture economy, while increasing the market share of products and companies that use alternatives to gelatin.
The selling of all byproducts amounts to around 10% of the value of an animal and "byproducts" includes organ meats, etc....basically everything but the primary products. So consuming gelatin in the amounts found in common foods has a very marginal contribution.

Furthermore if the idea here is that you shouldn't do anything that financially benefits the animal agriculture industry that is going to mean boycotting most food businesses including many businesses producing vegan products because they primarily sale non-vegan products.

Lastly if this was really idea here, shouldn't vegans also boycott organic agriculture which makes heavy use of animal byproducts as fertilizers (bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, etc)? And shouldn't there be a general effort to buy agricultural products that don't utilize animal byproducts?

There really doesn't seem to be no rhyme or reason behind the various restrictions in vegan diets. The standard was created 70+ years ago by the Vegan Society by who knows what logic and people have been following it since.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pm
Lastly if this was really idea here, shouldn't vegans also boycott organic agriculture which makes heavy use of animal byproducts as fertilizers (bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, etc)?
Out of curiosity, could you link your source for this claim? (I neither agree nor disagree. I'm ignorant here, and I'd truly like to see the information.)
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

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PsYcHo wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:11 pm Out of curiosity, could you link your source for this claim? (I neither agree nor disagree. I'm ignorant here, and I'd truly like to see the information.)
I don't have a good link for you off-hand but I look if I have some more time, but the issue is that organic farmers cannot use chemical fertilizers because they are produced synthetically. Here is a link that goes over the various organic fertilizers (which are mostly animal derived):

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/node/955

Next time you're at a farming or garden supply store (even home depot) look at the ingredients of an "organic" fertilizer.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

Post by Canastenard »

carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pm The selling of all byproducts amounts to around 10% of the value of an animal and "byproducts" includes organ meats, etc....basically everything but the primary products. So consuming gelatin in the amounts found in common foods has a very marginal contribution.
The idea behind veganism is not to completely avoid any interaction with anything remotely related to industries that use animals because that's frankly impossible, but to reduce it enough to not be a major contributor to it. And you're right that there are diminishing returns with that: meat is probably the most important thing to avoid, then leather, wool, dairy and eggs. Avoid these and you've done most of what a vegan does and removed a major part of your contribution to animal farming. Honestly I wouldn't look down someone who's otherwise vegan but doesn't pay too much attention to gelatin in products.
carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pmFurthermore if the idea here is that you shouldn't do anything that financially benefits the animal agriculture industry that is going to mean boycotting most food businesses including many businesses producing vegan products because they primarily sale non-vegan products.
I also don't agree with saying that gelatin and vegan products from a non-vegan company are equivalent. Slaughterhouses have animal carcass byproducts whenever they want it or not, and selling it as gelatin for example allows them to make money on something that's otherwise just a burden on them, whereas food companies have to specifically do investments to sell vegan products.
carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pm Lastly if this was really idea here, shouldn't vegans also boycott organic agriculture which makes heavy use of animal byproducts as fertilizers (bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, etc)? And shouldn't there be a general effort to buy agricultural products that don't utilize animal byproducts?
You're right about organic, because it uses more animal-derived fertilizers than other kinds of food it's better to avoid it. But non-organic plant agriculture isn't necessarily vegan either, there's notably animal fat-derived surfactants in some glyphosate formulations.

When you buy a product on a supermarket or elsewhere there's no way to know how the product was grown, like with which fertilizers it was grown, how much tillage is done, which pesticides are used, etc. And most people don't know a vegan farmer who avoids all animal-derived inputs in their farms, so the next best thing is to buy plant-based food without worrying about inputs from industries that use animals while avoiding organic... which I admit I don't completely do because there are some plant-based foods I enjoy but I can only find organic like tempeh or buckwheat or hemp seeds. Yeah I say I'm vegan yet I'm still making carnist excuses :oops: (I used to be a big organic buyer at some point because I thought it was more ethical, but I stopped buying organic outside of products I can't find non-organic when I realized it was more about marketing than ethics.)

Veganism is a way to help society transit to a new economy with much less harm to animals, and is better understood (and more effective) as an heuristic than a level of purity to attain.
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Re: Jellies and jams/ Gelatin

Post by Lay Vegan »

carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pm Lastly if this was really idea here, shouldn't vegans also boycott organic agriculture which makes heavy use of animal byproducts as fertilizers (bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, etc)? And shouldn't there be a general effort to buy agricultural products that don't utilize animal byproducts?
Good point. I'm not a fan of the organic food industry, and for other reasons too. Most of their claims are either greatly exaggerated or entirely unsubstantiated. A few studies show that organic fruits and veggies have slightly higher phosphorous levels, and that organic milk and chicken have higher omega 3 fatty acid content, but that's about it. :( The evidence does not suggest, on the whole, that organic foods are healthier than conventional foods.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutritious-than-conventionally-grown-food-201209055264
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2010.00108.x/full
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu6qcNZvrUE

And the claim that organic produce is pesticide-free is mostly bullshit. Some organic farmers are forced to use "natural" toxic pesticides on their crops, and often in greater doses because of their reduced effectiveness (neem oil immediately comes to mind). Some of these "natural" pesticides are even WORSE for human health the synthetic ones.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3841499/

As you mentioned, organic farmers do tend to use fertilizers that contain bone and blood meal. This definitely profits the animal agriculture industry, makes meat cheaper, and saves factory farms money in waste disposal. However, this is very similar to the gelatin argument. Animals are not slaughtered for their bones and blood. They're slaughtered for their meat. I agree with Canastenard, I wouldn't stress too much about organic foods or gelatin products, because they do not directly increase demand in animal slaughter.

I did make a comment further up in the thread about gelatin increasing demand, but I retract that comment.
carnap wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:05 pm And shouldn't there be a general effort to buy agricultural products that don't utilize animal byproducts?
There is some effort to push vegan organic farming into the mainstream. But veganic farming often falls under the same level of scrutiny as organic farming, due to the lack of regulation by the USDA and ambiguity of the label. If anyone has any substantial info on this, be sure to link me.
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