Vegan

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.

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.