Mostly But Not Entirely About Food

[poliphilo]

The most delicious thing I've ever eaten was a dish of pate de foie gras- which is just about the least ethical food on the planet.

I'm not a foodie. Neither is Ailz. Once we've got this vegan thing sorted I expect to shut up about it.

I've yet to make my mind up about alcohol. Many beers and wines are non-vegan- and use products like isinglass in the fining process. "Bugger" is all I can say. Bugger.

Isinglass is a such a glorious word. "And so Sir Gawain came to a castle where he was received by fourteen beauteous maidens- the daughters of the king; and the name of that castle was Isinglass." Isinglass, the product, is made from fish bladders- so not glorious at all.

Last night I dreamed I went to heaven and met lots of old friends around a table. Among them was a girl I knew when I was 17 (not a girlfriend but she might have been if we'd known one another a little longer)- also my father and my great aunt Joan. It was a splendid, happy dream, if a little muddled- because Colchester gaol came into it somehow- but I knew- because of the quality of the feelings it evoked- that tenuously, cloudily, it stood for something real. (O, words how they let us down!)

Comments

[strange_complex]

I think there might be scope to make a pragmatic case regarding the alcohol. Fairly obviously, any fish bladders used by alcohol producers in the current world are going to be a by-product of producing fish meat for sale in shops. That is, no-one is going out catching fish specifically in order to provide bladders for the alcohol production industry. Rather, they're catching fish to sell for meat, and at the moment some of those fish's bladders are retained during the gutting process and passed on to the alcohol industry - and probably nothing like all the bladders, either.

On that basis, the use of the bladders to produce the alcohol is only a frugal way of getting extra value out of a by-product which already exists - so it isn't causing any extra carbon footprint or animal exploitation on its own. If all sale of fish meat for eating suddenly stopped, so that fish were being caught purely for the use of their bladders in the production of alcohol, that would present a different problem. But as things are right now, I don't think it's a driver of damage.

Do feel free to research this further and fact-check what I've said - I am only guessing about it, and may be wrong. But if you want an opening, I suspect this is where it will lie.

[poliphilo]

I like your line of reasoning.

I've more or less decided this is not something I'm going to be precious about. One can become over particular about dietary rules- and it's not a pretty sight.

[strange_complex]

Yes, I agree. I think an over-emphasis on rules can actually end up having a negative impact. It's better overall for a person to be 90% pragmatically vegan than to be so badly put off by a perceived need to check and double-check everything they eat against inflexible rules that they give up on the whole endeavour.