Yet Another Worthy Use of Your Tax Dollars

The paradox of veganism is that no one can be a pure vegan. There’s always something in your home, at work, when you travel, and when you attempt to eat at a regular restaurant, that will be suspect. And then there are your tax dollars, which fund experiments by the U.S. military on hundreds of thousands of animals per year.

Unfortunately, unless you are going to become a tax resistor (and I know this first hand, as I lived with one for several years), you have no choice but to pay, for instance, for the Environmental Protection Agency’s tests of pesticides on dogs. The dogs are put into chambers where they must inhale poison, and from which they try desperately to escape.

The newest victims of the U.S. military are honeybees, who’ve got enough problems these days. The Army is using them to quickly detect poisonous gas because apparently the buzzing of the bees changes as they encounter–and are affected by–the different variations of toxins. Shocklingly, bees "can actually tell what chemical is hitting them;" they can differentiate among the poisons. Of course, the reason for this experiment is an attempt to help commercial beekeepers resurrect their recently dwindling business.

There you are, a vegan. You don’t use honey or beeswax, and you’re damn proud of it. But your tax dollars go to poisoning bees. It’s frustrating, it’s humbling, and it’s unfair. Welcome to America.