A Skin in the Game

This morning, while in the shower and looking around I spied the label on one of the hair products the wife uses. Usually, showers are a scenic rest stop but this morning the label caught my eye. It said "Vegan" on it. Color me confused.

I thought "vegan" was a label for people who don't EAT any animal based product or for food products following this same set of strictures. I'm not saying that I relish washing my hair with filet mignon but I really thought this was about eating. So I'm going to raise some questions and all you vegans out there (we know who you are) can explain stuff to me.

First, is veganism(ology?) limited to eating? Do you wear leather shoes, belts of kippot? Is any aversion to leather simply because an animal had to die? Or would you be against a company that produced leather from the carcasses of cows that, it can be verified, died of natural causes?

What about other animal products that aren't food? Does a vegan wear wool? I have heard that sheep NEED to be shorn for health reasons (read this article and see). Though I must admit - were I to live in a world filled with over-sized balls of fluff wandering around, that would be neat-o! What about snake skin that has been molted or antlers that have been shed? Can these be used by vegans if the animals CHOSE to get rid of them? Squid ink pasta where the squid ink is harvested ethically? Tzitzit using a blue dye from some sort of snail? Coral earrings? (Coral is alive) Beauty ingredients derived from urine which the animal "donates" willingly? (and you can do your own googling about this -- it is a thing. A gross, gross thing)

A step further -- and no, I'm not going to ask about yogurt, though I once tried to explain to a vegan that her plant-based yogurt might still have active cultures in it and those little guys are "alive" in some sense. If animal products and ingestion are the problem then what about mushrooms and strawberries? Each, in its lifecycle, benefits from the application of cow poop. Or to be less scatalogical, plants grown using mulch which requires little guys to live and work to break down stuff. And if the food products being composted are animal based?

Feather/down pillows, comforters or jackets? Petroleum products which develop from the all sorts of micro-organisms? 

Looking forward to some clarification. And I should probably take fewer showers.