I am not vegan, but simply trying to understand how honey is bad, but as you say “unavoidable collateral damage of agriculture” or not.
There are many ways agriculture could be less harm, less pesticides, less monotone growing practices, more spread out growing. We do not have to accept these practices to not starve.
I don’t think honey collecting is worse than agriculture (even of direct plants for human consumption), so I don’t think vegans should discount honey.
Do you avoid all sugar products, or just honey?
Sugar growing also kills animals. You cannot avoid all harm, so why discount honey for the harm you know, but not discounting harm from growing sugar?
Reducing harm, sure, but it seems selective to discount honey for small amount of harm, when other things you (assumed) eat do equal (potentially unknown to you) harm.
Do you need to know every process of growing/transporting something to eat it? Or does you list of edible products shrink as you learn every new form of harm?
(Strawman)
Killing a few bees when collecting honey
Vs
Killing a lot of insects and rodents when plowing/tilling land to grow sugarcane/corn(sirup).
Why discount one but not the other if they are equal?
Oh yeah. I thought you meant how they are used culturally. Because we have many nok-berries with berry in their name.
Damn autocorrect striking again.
I agree with your arguments. We’re on the same side of all of this.
I disagree on having to remove one if both are bad. It would be like the trolley problem. 10 people suffer repeatedly indefinitely vs infinitely many suffering eventually. Moving all use to sugar cane will be worse for the environment than spreading some honey and some sugar cane. See my previous monocultulturalism point.
Personally I think honey vs sugar cane is equal, so for me the choice is bad either way. I don’t know which is worse, I try to use less, but what I use I feel is ambivalent, so I use both.