It is in theory possible to obtain animal products without violating their rights. Like someone else mentioned, picking up a feather from the ground is totally vegan for example.

Wool however is a bit more complicated. The reason sheep produce massive amounts of wool in the first place is because we selectively bred them to do so. Shearing a sheep can be beneficial for the sheep, but it is a problem we should not have created (or continue to create) in the first place.

I think we should stop breeding animals that have all sorts of genetic problems we created. That includes sheep that don’t shed and need shearing to not overheat in the summer, it includes chickens that lay so many eggs their bones break due to calcium deficiency, etc.

Yes. Unless it’s necessary for survival.

As for your whool example. While it is possible to shear a sheep without harming them. The sheep that require being sheared should not exist. “Wild” sheep shed and don’t require shearing to survive. We shouldn’t even be breeding them.

It also commodifies them. Which leads to factory farming and harmful practices. The vast majority of all whool is definitely not collected in an animal friendly manner.

“Exploitation” merely means to use for your benefit. If you are using an animal product, you are exploiting the animal it came from. There is no such thing as using an animal product without exploitation, by definition.

Even when cruelty and violence is not directly involved, because perhaps you simply found some bones or something, it’s still exploitation. There are lots of reasons to avoid exploitation that don’t require direct cruelty or violence, such as avoiding dependence and the biasing psychological effect that getting a benefit from an animal product has on our reasoning abilities as stupid apes.

My two cents: “being” vegan is overrated and subtly shifts the goalposts from reflecting and acting upon serious ethical questions to policing each others’ adherence to an imaginary pure ideal. I say this as a vegan btw.

So for example, I reject the idea of veganism as “avoiding animal-derived products as far as practicable” (paraphrasing the exact definition). I.e. if I’m stuck on an island with zero plant foraging skills, and I then catch some fish out of our necessity, I’m not vegan. It’s just that simple.

But I’m not going to feel bad about that fact and guilt-trip myself into inertia. Maybe the fish help me survive long enough to learn to identify edible plants, learn to climb trees to get coconuts etc. Over time, I’m able to completely eliminate my fish intake and rely on plants. So the initial fish helped keep me alive long enough…to protect scores of their fellow fish!

If I’d obsessed over being vegan everywhere and at all times, I’d ignore the ethical possibilities right before my own eyes, and possibly even conclude that the most ethical thing was to starve to death – all in the name of being recognized as “vegan”.

If you solely focus on individual acts of killing, you tend to forget that death is a part of life. It’s impossible not to kill, to be honest – just as it’s impossible not to be killed. We often forget that latter part. It goes both ways.

One notorious example I’ve encountered is when people go vegan for the “wrong reasons”. Say someone learns about the extremely morbid effects of meat & dairy, and then chooses to go vegan. I’ve heard people say that these people have no right to be “vegan” and should call themselves “plant-based”. In either case, the ethical effects on animals are basically the same, except that maybe the “plant-based” folk have a couple of animal-based non-food products around the house.

I’ll skip a few steps here to share my own broader position, which is that it’s consequently possible to have relations with animals that are reciprocal and not merely exploitative. People have practiced such relations all around the world for millennia.

All animal products are not vegan with the caveat that you live in a modern society. The fact that we do have the ability to go to a supermarket and choose what food we want to eat, what clothes we wear, etc means that turning those animals and their products like wool into commodities for our own use is inherently not vegan. The definition of veganism includes this caveat by way of the phrase “as far as is possible and practicable” (https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism).

So if you are an Eskimo and you literally have no way to survive other than killing an animal or using it’s fat for warmth, etc that could be considered vegan. Or at the very least, I don’t think that anyone including vegans would argue that that person has a moral obligation to simply let themselves die. However, the vast majority of people that ask questions like this are not in a situation like that. We really don’t have to wear wool or eat meat or drink milk. So by doing it when it isn’t necessary you are inherently causing unnecessary suffering which isn’t vegan.

And to be clear, animals like sheep produce wool for a reason. When we take it from them and view them/their wool as a commodity we are already crossing a line. It would be easy to see how keeping human females locked up, breeding them to produce more and more hair, and taking their hair to sell to make wigs would be unethical right? You are taking away their autonomy even under the best conditions. If that individual was able to consent and they signed a contract that gave them food, shelter, water, and whatever else the needed in exchange for their hair that would be another thing, but sheep can’t consent. Capitalism will always lead to farmers treating animals as commodities and not as living beings.

Yes of course! Vegan means not using anything derived from an animal.

Yes, when you find a bird feather in the forest for example.

It depends on who you ask. The most committed vegans say yes, the less committed shrug their shoulders and don’t worry too much about it.

Can you guess which kind I am?

Well you’re wrong. I’m not vegan. I had to quit due to health reasons.

Anyway, it’s not like being vegan is a religion; avoid animal products as much as you want. Every little bit helps, but I wouldn’t beat yourself up over the small stuff.

Personally, I walked around in leather boots the whole time I was eating vegan, because leather is an extremely durable material with no suitable non-animal replacement. I still have those boots. I would have gone through multiple pairs of shoes were it not for those boots. I am very thankful to the cow or bull that had to give up its life so I could have those boots.

Judging by the rest of the comments, yeah, not gonna be a popular answer.