Part of the problem is that X-veganism runs into people who go: "oh they make an exception"->"they're not really vegan"->"I don't have to tell them I sauteed the onions in butter and used beef broth in the soup"

So while I know plenty of vegans with their own particular exceptions they don't talk about them outloud much.

Pretty straightforward for me, there's no evidence that they don't feel pain and it's a pretty hotly debated topic. There likely won't be a way to tell if they do feel pain or if it's just stimuli response.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130208-seaf...

A secondary reason is that it's really easy to confuse people who do choose to eat meat about specific dietary concerns, especially when traveling globally. The Japanese for instance put fish into nearly everything and genuinely have a hard time understanding the difference between a vegetarian/vegan/etc there's also been some confusion between daishi and fish. Add to that the number of people who claim to be vegan/vegetarian but don't adhere to it at all and it can make a lot of people see it as a fad diet versus a diet adhered to rather strictly in other people. Another issue is religions that say fish is not meat. This isn't even getting into products people don't realize comes from meat. By just saying I don't eat anything that can feel pain it makes it significantly less likely someone will accidentally feed me meat. My wife on the other hand eats fish/shellfish. Our daughter chooses her own diet and has so far chosen to be vegetarian after deciding she no longer wanted to eat fish. To each their own, everyone has to be comfortable with their own choices.

Indeed, Peter Singer went back and forth but finally decided bivalves (mussels, oysters and clams) are "ethical" as well as being nutritious, and beneficial to the ecosystem even when farmed.

> I've always wondered why "shellfish vegan" isn't a thing

Likely because of the issue you've pointed out regarding identity. The issue is diet-as-identity. Perhaps it would make sense to have a 95% vegan or vegetarian diet supplemented by the occasional animal product, but you can't claim an identity out of that. Veganism is viewed as some arbitrarily binary lifestyle where either you are or you aren't and there's no middle ground.

Diana Fleischman makes a very compelling case for what she calls "bivalveganism" (veganism plus mussels and clams): https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eati...

While I think that article does have a thought-provoking point, especially when it comes to certain classes of labels we can give ourselves, it's also true that a sense of identity is a basic human need and the identities we passively adopt over our lifetimes from both the society we live in and our own psychology often aren't a real choice given to us at all.

Maybe that goes without saying, but that last paragraph seems potentially reductive without qualifying it in that important way:

>But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

Most of us are going to inevitably be a healthy number of X's (the alternative is not really desirable, as many people along the borderline spectrum can attest to) so thinking of yourself as an X who is tolerant, accepting, and supportive of Y's is still always going to be inevitable and extremely necessary.

> They don't have brains or central nervous systems,

I would very highly recommend reading David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster.

You can either buy the book of the same name which includes other essays or here's a PDF of the original article: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf and here's a video of DFW reading it out: https://youtu.be/_fZOl7C_vDI

It's an interesting question. I ended up somewhere near "salmon-or-smelts-a-week mostly-vegan" from a health perspective (good source of omega 3's, low mercury, and available from extremely sustainable sources). But a lot of shellfish has pretty similar advantages, and I do sub in mussels or shrimp as our weekly fish now and then. None has quite the omega 3 load, but there are other sources of that.

I can only speak for myself but I don't eat shellfish for the same reasons I don't eat other meat - I think the idea of eating it is really gross.

If that's your criteria then unfertilized eggs would be fine too. Veganism draws the line much higher.

unfertilized eggs require raising and keeping animals that lay the eggs.

Unfertilised eggs come from chickens. Vegans I've spoken to tend to object to farming.

In reference to animal byproducts like milk and eggs, my vegan friends say "it's not where it comes from, but how it's obtained."

I eat vegan food, but I also recognise that there's a distinction between someone keeping rescued chickens in a back garden, and keeping them in tiny cages or on the floor giant barns with no light in such crammed conditions that they start cannibalising each other (which are the conditions of about 90% of egg laying hens in the UK).

Even though I wouldn't eat their eggs, I can't really see the problem with having chicken around if they don't suffer. For people who eat vegan for ethical reasons, my impression is that suffering is the main concern.

It is, usually.

My point was that I find it surprising people with this position who "break" for medical or energy reasons don't generally arrive at the shellfish conclusion. They eat eggs, dairy, meat or fish.

Usually they consider stealing the eggs from the chickens to be incompatible with veganism as well, even if the chickens are free range.

Why? If they’re not fertilized eggs then the other option is letting them rot (or watch as mama chicken eats them, because contrary to our weird fantasies about the nature of nature, it is rough out there). Besides, it’s not theft, it’s a trade for food, security, and lodging.

> Besides, it’s not theft, it’s a trade for food, security, and lodging.

That sort of logic gets you back to farming animals for meat though. We're giving them a relatively cushy life compared to wild animals (at least in some cases), but cutting it short. It's easier to maintain the moral high ground if you simply cut out all animal products period.

So... eggs and honey are slippery slopes. Really. And vegans wonder why the public at large won’t engage with them?

May as well cut out all those vegetables & grains that are fertilized with animal byproducts as well.

It's not rational at that point anymore, it's almost religious.

What if the chickens give you the eggs?

Trouble is that there is no chicken alive capable of expressing with out a single trace of ambiguity such an intention.

I think they object to commercial fishing too so not sure how that helps. Or are shellfish farmable without damaging the area?

They are! In fact shellfish being filter feeders are often used to clean aquatic ecosystems and then maintain them. If done responsibly it’s a massive boon, and doin git responsibly is feasible and done at present. Farming shellfish is one of the few fish farm models that truly is better than the wild alternatives in terms of overall environmental impact.

Fantastic read. Thanks for sharing that! :0)