urgent vegan food question
are muffins that contain butter, but that are already in its house, have already been purchased by its housemate, and were purchased because they were on the super discount "this is already out of date and if nobody buys this we are just going to bin it" shelf at the supermarket, fair game?
long ethical reasoning, re: urgent vegan food question
@soweliniko (With the caveat that I try to eat more and more vegan but it's not entirely viable for me yet...)
I would apply 'dumpsterdiving logic' to this; if you *know* that something will go to waste if not eaten, eg. because you pulled it from a dumpster, then I would consider the ethically 'right' thing to be to eat it, because then you at least get some nutrition from it, given that 'not producing it' is not an option anymore anyway and it won't affect production rate indirectly either (eg. because it is now not available for someone else).
Then situations like this can be judged by how close they are to that one; would someone else have bought it (and therefore not a fresh one) if housemate didn't get it, or is it something they regularly really *do* end up binning? If the latter, I would consider it justifiable.
In this case, it's already in the house, so then the question becomes: will housemate eat it? If yes, then consuming it might cause them to buy *new* ones at the store, so there's indirect new demand; but if not, then the alternative is that it'll definitely be discarded and therefore it's justifiable.
summarized version, re: long ethical reasoning, re: urgent vegan food question
@soweliniko Summarized:
Would consuming it cause someone else, somewhere, to buy new ones? Then it's *not* ethically justifiable, as you're just shifting demand.
But would it definitely be discarded if you didn't consume it? Then it *would* be ethically justifiable, because the alternative is that an animal suffered for nothing, not even anyone getting nutrition from it.
