Hi, ive been vegan for a bit over 10 years. I don't think animal parts are for us to use at all. I'm not really sure why you'd harvest animals at all, I don't think normalizing the commodification of others' bodies is a good thing to be doing. If you really can't live without animal parts, that's probably the least harmful way of acquiring them. I wouldn't recommend eating anyone you find lying on the ground though, that sounds like a good way to contract horrible diseases.

Veganism is about doing the most that is possible and practicable. We probably kill insects just by walking, but it's not reasonable to never move again to avoid that. Similarly, driving a car for many people is a necessity to be able to access goods and services, and its not at all practicable to avoid driving for them.

Ultimately, veganism is a moral stance about reducing harm to others as much as you can. It's not a competition, so don't feel like you have to be perfect at it to do good.

Veganism isn't a hivemind. We're all individuals that came to similar conclusions. And we will have different opinions on the details.

Some folks will say consuming those that died naturally is a-ok. Others will argue that it incentivizes creating conditions under which animals die "naturally" to harvest them.
Personally, I'm part of the group that is probably the largest by a long shot, whose opinion is: Why are we even thinking about that?

The vast majority of vegans find corpses gross, much like anything you might derive from corpses.
It also seriously does not happen often, that animals drop dead in front of you. And there's nothing on an animal's body that you can't find a different alternative for. So, it really just is not a relevant question in our lives...

To me it’s not a matter of ethics but a matter of health. Unless you saw the animal die from something that clearly isn’t disease I wouldn’t trust meat I just found laying around.

Found RFK, Jr's Lemmy account

If you don't like broccoli, why don't you eat it when it's half rotten?

I'm not vegan myself but I had asked a similar enough question to a vegan friend a while ago and liked his answer:

He said for him it's 2 parts, 1 is that while the animal that died may not have been harmed by humans, the ecosystem that relies on scavenging carcasses will be hurt if humans effectively start removing their entire food source (same way we have driven species to extinction by hunting).

The 2nd part is that with humans everything with even the tiniest loop hole will get abused.. Imagine that we say this is okay. Today it may be the odd naturally deceased animal, in a month it'll start including animals "killed accidentally", in a year it'll be someone farming animals with some weird way of culling them so they can claim it's still natural causes by some twisted logic.. at the end of it we'd just not be able to trust any of it anyway so it's easier to not even entertain the thought - the energy to figure it all out would be better spent on improving alternatives.

I think it would depend who you ask. I consider myself vegan and would have no major issue with someone using roadkill for parts. I mean, I would find it disgusting and could never myself, but if they want to and still call themselves vegan, I see no problem with it as the harm has already been done to the animal. Seems the same as harvesting bones from the forest - what's dead is dead.

You can do pretty much whatever you want man...

Like "vegan" isn't even a century old yet, it was made up in the 1940s by some guy who thought vegetarians weren't good enough, and he set whatever rules he wanted to.

You can just keep using his word, but not care about his rules.

Or you can make up your own name and rules.

People searching for labels they like and then conforming to every fucking aspect of that label and nothing else, doesn't work out well.

So please, if you want to eat roadkill just do it.

I would think driving a car is not vegan because it’s fueled by dead dinosaurs.

Really depends on which lens of veganism you view it through. I usually judge things by the economic lens, where veganism is the response to capitalism incentivising the exploitation of animals. It's probably one of the easiest ways to think about it, but essentially it goes like "As long as you don't pay money for exploitation, you're fine"
So roadkill would be fine. Saving food that would be thrown out is fine. Shoplifting is fine. Served the wrong thing at the restaurant- Complain and get your money back. Second hand down jacket from a relative who would have thrown it away otherwise - gross but fine. Stealing chickens from a factory farm and eating some of their eggs- fine. Et cetera.

I don't think that sort of logical line can be applied to anything but individuals though. I still wouldn't be buying leather from a company that claims to only use roadkill, as my money would still be a financial incentive to expand the operation.

From my end, I'm a registered organ donor because I feel that I won't need this body once I'm done with it, and if anything is useful off it for someone else, then hell, let them have my liver.

However, an animal can't consent to that and yeah, an argument could be made that who gives a fuck, it's a pig/chicken/cow, it's not gonna give a shit, but death is unfortunate for anything and I'd feel more at ease that the carcus is either left for nature to do what it does than me harvesting it for food.

Because animals that died naturally are animals

Vegan just means causing as little animal suffering as possible. Us existing in a capitalist society causes suffering for animals. But where it is possible to avoid it, it should be avoided is what vegans want. Like if a vegan drives a car and a squirrel runs in front of the car the person does not suddenly stop being vegan

Idk much about vegan philosophy and it is a philosophy not a diet to be clear. However, personally I see it as stealing from the vultures. The vegan solution is of course, to limit roadkill to negligable levels by making cars a redundant and antiquated form of transportation.

Also I wouldn't trust roadkill to be safe for consumption

I've wondered about this myself since like age 7, when our otherwise perfectly healthy horse Sissy got struck by lightning while standing under a pine tree out in the field in a storm. 😢

Living out in deer hunting country, they could have given the neighbors a shout and basically be like hey the meat's fresh, y'all come help cut it up and stock like 10-20 freezers for free..

🤷

They call themselves freegans