No brain, no pain? Unpacking the murky ethics of whether or not vegans should eat oysters

In one of her consummate works, "Consider the Oyster," published in 1941, food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes extensively about the bivalve, the joy of consuming it and the actual life of the oyster itself: "Its chilly, delicate gray body slips into a stewpan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done. Its life has been thoughtless, but no less full of danger, and now that it is over we are perhaps the better for it."

A few years back, though, I was mindlessly chatting with someone who was a very passionate vegan. At that time, I still ate everything (sans pineapple, rabbit and soft-shell crabs), so I was just generally making small talk about plant-based eating.

At one point, though, the person I was speaking with nonchalantly mentioned eating oysters. My eyebrow raised and I cocked my head slightly, questioning "...oysters?" I was then subject to an entire discussion about how vegans can and do eat oysters. The main rationalization being that they have hardly any brain function so it's not like "actually eating an animal."

Does eating oysters truly disqualify someone from being a vegan? Would a "full-fledged" vegan who still eats oysters actually be considered more of a pescatarian? All of these questions spun around in my head — and years later, still do. 

The Vegan Society offers a pretty expansive definition:

Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

The Vegan Society also writes that "one thing all vegans have in common is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey," which would seem to disqualify oysters. 

However, based on the physical and biological structure of oysters, some vegans offer an alternative viewpoint. While mollusks have cerebral ganglia (essentially "masses of nerve cell bodies," per Brittanica), as well as digestive, circulatory, reproductive and endocrine — they do not have a brain. According to Michael Ofei at The Minimalist Vegan, oysters "don't feel pain since they have a very simple nervous system and no brain." 

Polly Foreman at Plant Based News writes that Peter Singer, the author of a 1975 book called "Animal Liberation", is quoted as believing that "it's unlikely that oysters feel pain," while also noting that there's no way to be entirely sure. 

However, as Lola Mendez at The Vegetarian Times notes, Singer markedly changed his tune in later years, eventually disavowing "bivalveganism" because we may not know enough about how oysters feel pain.

This is where the ethical argument surrounding eating oysters as a vegan becomes cloudier. Do they feel pain? Maybe. Are oysters alive? Definitely, but as laid out by Melissa Kravitz at Vice, plants are also alive until "removed from its stem or roots." Technically, everything (everything non-processed, that is) is or was once ostensibly "alive" prior to being eaten, in some way or another. 

I'm generally a a stickler for words and intentionality, so this all makes this inherently slippery slope even "slippier" when all of these arguments are posited. If you are calling yourself a vegan and won't consume honey or wear leather, but you'll eat oysters — well, to borrow from "Real Housewife" Phaedra Parks, "something in the buttermilk isn't clean." 

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

Many oyster-eating-vegans often hone in on the term "sentience." Since oysters don't have brains and are incapable of moving on their own, it could be argued they aren't sentient. But if, for many, a core tenet of veganism is compassion and empathy to any and all living beings, then oyster most certainly fall into that, do they not? 

Food writer and author Alicia Kennedy has written about how she was once a vegan, but then started eating oysters. Kennedy is presenting a binary: She was vegan, ate oysters and then was, therefore, no longer vegan. This tracks to me and is logically sound; in this conversation with Oyster Oyster chef-founder Rob Rubba, Kennedy and Rubba even speak about how even some vegetarians won't consume oysters.

But perhaps the issue isn't with language, but with labels. 

However, Kennedy also advocates for leaning into the gray areas surrounding our diets because, as she told Green Queen writer Sonalie Figueiras that she worries that being "too binary about diet preferences and obsessing about labels is what keeps people from feeling like they can make small, good changes in their lives, because it seems like it's going to require an identity shift." 

"The reason people get defensive when the question of not eating meat comes up is because you have to make a massive change to your life, you have to change your identity, you have to become this thing," Kennedy said. "You have to have a marker on the way you eat, and be either a vegetarian, a vegan, plant-based, a flexitarian. People are very hesitant to put identity markers on themselves in that way."

Currently, I guess I exist in something of a gustatory gray area, too. Over the past few years, I've removed beef, pork, lamb, veal and other "red meats" from my diet and now only eat poultry and fish (plus inane amounts of cheese, of course). There's no tidy label to encapsulate how I eat . . . and maybe it's better that way for everyone.

So if you've done as M.F.K. Fisher suggested and truly considered the oyster — it's up to you as to whether it belongs on your plate or not.