Idk to me it seemed like @jerkface@lemmy.ca was just trying to explain the difference between vegan and plant-based - hence “I don’t expect a dairy farmer to know better, but of course he means “plant-based”, not “vegan”. “Plant-based” is a functional description, while “vegan” is a set of moral values and their ethical consequences.”

The farmer was communicating in a single sentence that labor shortages would cause us to adopt a vegan diet. The farmer wasn’t writing a treatise on supply chains, different economic modalities, or the realities of modern agribusinesses with regard to impacts on nature. He as summarizing the state of the food supply, as consumers are aware, in terms that consumers have an understanding of, and he was successful.

Here’s why I don’t buy your viewing of jerkface’s post. Jerkface wasn’t trying to be helpful. He was, first, insulting the farmer’s intelligence. Second, jerkface was using this insult to inject his own moral philosophy into a conversation where it wasn’t relevant and which didn’t invite it. So now jerkface is establishing that not only is the farmer an uneducated idiot, but that jerkface is the one bringing the knowledge to the masses from on high correcting the mistakes of the innocent simply minded farmer. Jerkface was manufacturing a game of pedantry to create an opportunity to stand on his soapbox about veganism. If jerkface is a vegan himself, he certainly lived up to the stereotype of a vegan.

If that wasn’t enough, by your definition @zeezee , jerkface was wrong with his correction to use “plant-based” instead of “vegan”. You yourself said that “plant-based” could mean vegetarianism. By most definitions of vegetarianism I’m aware of, that includes ovo-lacto. Since we’re talking about a dairy farm here, the “plant-based” definition is too broad because it would include dairy, which is exactly what the farmer is saying will be unavailable with the labor shortage. So jerkface’s game of pedantry is wrong because of pedantry, by your own supplied definition.

So by your logic if he was a pig farmer instead and said “In the future everybody would be Muslim because we wouldn’t be able to grow pigs” - you’d say that’s splitting hairs since the outcome is functionally the same?

Veganism, as far as I’m aware, is concerned exclusively with what we put in our mouths for food and drink, the sources of those, and the welfare/impact of which they were obtained. The vegan term itself is, by its definition, inexorably linked with eating. You could say the phrase “make the choices in what to eat resulting in the equivalent of a vegan diet”, but there’s fundamental redundancy in there because the audience already knows that veganism is a way of eating. So the shorthand of “go vegan” communicates the same idea to the audience in shorthand summary. This is what the farmer did and did so successfully.

Islam is far more than diet choices. The diet choices is not even the top of the list of a Muslim attributes for me. My “top of the list” things would things like: devotion, ritual, prayer multiple times per day, Ramadan/Eid, minarets, Quron, call to worship, Arabic, pilgrimage, Mecca, Abrahamic. Sure, eventually the pork dietary choice is in there, but it would be a confusing summary statement from the pig farmer. I’d get there eventually.

Even if the pig farmer had framed it first as his Islam was just about the aspect of the faith surrounding eating if he said “In the future everybody would be Muslim because we wouldn’t be able to grow pigs”, I’d also be confused for a moment why the lack of pigs would mean all of us would have to start ritually fasting, because that is another component of eating that surrounds Islam.

In short, veganism is all about eating, while Islam is many other things that has a few items surrounding eating choices/restrictions. So I would be a bit confused initially by the pig farmer’s statements where no one was confused what the dairy farmer meant when he made his vegan comment.