Vegetarianism and Carnivorous Plants

[hmmm_tea]

Something I was musing over the other day

[Poll #1308065]

EDIT: To clarify, I was thinking whether it would be suitable for vegetarians to eat carnivorous plants rather than keep them.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If said vegetarian would have a cat or dog, a carnivorous plant is no worse.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking in terms of consuming the plant, which presumably most vegetarians wouldn't do to a cat or dog, but it seems a fair point either way.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

well my thinking went something like,

vegetarians don't eat vegetarian animals

so it's not whether or not the thing they are consuming is carnivorous that concerns them.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

My thinking tends to be along the lines of to what extent vegetarian caused the animal in question to be killed.

If I just randomly ate a carnivorous plant, I would say I hadn't played any role in the causation of the animals it killed.

However, if there was a major demand for consuming carnivorous plants then people might start farming them, so there would be some causation there.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's roughly what I thought. Assuming vegetarian for ethical reasons of some sort, if you found a carnivorous plant growing in the jungle, I don't think there'd be any more problem eating it than any other plant. (Though I'd understand if you didn't want to.)

If it was grown by you or commercially farmed (and fed), I would say it was marginally non-vegetarian. Although (a) I wouldn't care much, I don't see it being a big problem (b) if it eats flies, most people don't care about flies much (c) if you care solely about literally eating meat, it's obviously ok whatever it may have eaten (d) if you care about causes, it probably would cause much less animal-death than other things that are farmed.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

yeah - I mean, don't they bug-spray/insecticide fruit'n'veg? is that better than carnivorous plants?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think it's a similar case to honey, where some animals die to produce it. (But then it depends on the beekeeper, some kill all their workers at the end of the producing season, some feed them a big tub of sugar to last the winter.)

[thethirdvoice.livejournal.com]

In the same way as wine fined with isenglas/gelatine isn't - it's not in there, but it's used in the processing.

Not that all vegetarians would care, just that I don't think you could mark it vegetarian if you were selling it.

[westerling.livejournal.com]

But would it taste good?

Anyhow, hi! I had run across your journal a bit ago (molly dancing in your interest list, I think), and meant to friend you, but never quite did. Nice to meet you. :)