A while back I made a video showing off my pretty silkmoths. (silkworm and silkmoth are used interchangeably)
Of course, the question is asked - that is always asked whenever we talk about raising silkworms. A very important question and one I've done a lot of soul searching about. I've read a lot. I've asked a lot of questions from people on all sides of the discussion. I've asked questions of people who at first glance have nothing to do with silk and sericulture (growing silk) but turn out to be extremely relevant to the conversation.
Warning! This is going to be one of those difficult conversations. THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER here. Each person is going to need to make their own choices and if somehow this blog entry gets more than four readers, I'm going to remind you that I moderate the comment box. Comments on all sides of the discussion are encouraged. Comments that accuse, boss, tell others how they should live their life, or are phrased in a not nice way (all subjectively judged by me), will likely vanish without further warning.
And to make certain you really want to read this, I'm putting a "read more" button beneath this pretty picture.
The question (paraphrased): I feel bad about killing silkworms while they are in the cocoon. Can I still have silk and not have to feel bad about their death?
My reply:
It depends on the individual raising the silk. You can totally let them hatch and use the cocoons for making yarn. Silk Hankies are made this way and fun to spin on a wheel or spindle. You just can't reel the silk if the moth hatches.
Something I've been looking at is the lifecycle of the moth. When they come out of the cocoon they have no functioning mouth or digestive system. After a week or two they die of starvation or dehydration. Having experienced both these conditions and being brought back from the brink in the ER, I know how painful they are for a human. I anthropomorphise my memory of pain onto the moths.
When they are in the cocoon they are dormant and seems to be a lot like human sleeping. Stifling (the euphemism for killing) at this stage is very close to death while sleeping.
But it's really hard because what humans feel is different from what bugs feel. I still have a lot to learn about these guys and my opinions may change as I learn.
Another thing I'm trying to research (but it's hard because there aren't many numbers published) is the amount of life lost for many industrial textiles like cotton and rayon. I suspect that growing fibre at home reduces the impact of buying clothes. Again, still doing the research here, but it is something I consider when raising livestock. Can I give the animal a happy, healthy life better than in an industrial setting?
It's going to be up to the individual human what choices we make.
When it comes to caring for animals, be it livestock or our pets, these choices are often not easy.
I want to stress that I'm still learning. My thoughts may change as more information enters my life.
One of the best sources of information about this topic is from wormspit, a person with incredible knowledge and practical experience with the 'tiny masters'. Here is what he has to say about Ahimsa or Peace Silk.
The more I learn about this, the more I feel that the ending of the bugs is a distraction. It's an excuse to feel outraged so one doesn't have to look at the deeper effects of their own actions.
In philosophy class, we had a prof that loved delivering 'impossible' choices in the guise of thought experiments. You have a choice. You kill one person of your choice or the hostage-takers kill all 10. (killing the bad guys wasn't an option) What do you do? The idea is that the value of a life is quantifiable. One life is worth less than 9. (as a side note, I failed this test for not working within the boundaries of the thought experiment - although I feel I did. I saved all 10 hostages by killing the 11th.)
The real issue isn't so much to do with bugs, but to do with the raising. And the alternatives.
Sericulture includes moriculture which is the raising of mulberry trees to feed to the worms. As insects, these bugs die from pesticides - so using pesticides on the mulberry trees is... well, the stupidest idea ever.
The more I learn about moriculture, the more I love it! It's often paired with fish raising and providing shade and shelter for the fish. Or together with annual crops. The rows of trees are used as hedgerows, or more often, planted in the field every so many meter, and the annual crops like grain are grown between the trees. This reduces adverse effects from weather and prevents erosion. The leaves left at the end of the year fall and are tilled into the soil as fertilizer.
Agriculture crops that these days use high pesticides and chemicals, don't use them when we add silk to the equation. The book The Carbon Farming Solution gives us lots of numbers and examples of how well this works - to not only add a secondary (and tertiary) income stream to the farm but that it often increases yields of each crop, compared to growing them in an industrial monoculture.
Like raising sheep, raising silkworms (and the trees that feed them) not only reduce environmental impacts but help grow soil and revitalize damaged land.
Clothing.
That same book, The Carbon Farming Solution, gives us numbers of the different types of crops (the plant side of agriculture) and how much carbon and other pollutants each emits into the atmosphere each year. What surprised me most in that book is that Clothing Crops produced more than half the unwanted gasses into the atmosphere in the USA each year. More than all the food and all the biofuels.
And that's just growing the clothing plants (cotton, hemp...) and doesn't include the damage from transporting the fibre to the mill to be cleaned, transporting it to the mill to be prepared and spun, transporting it to where it will be dyed, transporting it to where it will be woven or knit, transporting that cloth to where it will be sewn, transporting that to where it will be stored, transporting it to the distributor, transporting to the shops, transporting it back again if it doesn't sell.... and so on and so on.
Many of those locations are in different countries, not just different cities.
Those numbers do not include the damage done by the different processes like generating electricity to run the machines, chemicals from cleaning going back into the water and killing fish and other wildlife, ... and so on.
It also doesn't include non-plant clothing like the new rayons (soy silk, bamboo, ...) which can be made with low chemicals but are more often made with lots of energy, chemicals, or both.
And labour issues - does anyone else remembers the horrors of that sweatshop that collapsed and killed those people? Or the one with the fire... or the dozens of other tragedies that shine a brief light on the social issues of where our clothing comes from?
And so on and so forth.
IT IS COMPLICATED!
The problem is finding the numbers to quantify the amount of life lost for an industrial hemp shirt vs a homegrown one. Is it really the 1 vs. 10 choice my university prof led me to believe? Can the value of life be quantified? Are 100 dead silkmoths worth 1000 dead wild bugs? What about if the number was 1:10,000,000,000? Would that make a difference if that one bug is one we see and know and feed by hand for a month? Does proximity matter more than quantity?
These are questions I ask myself.
These are questions worth asking if we raise silkmoths or any livestock.
These are difficult questions.
The only conclusion I've found is that it is a lot more complicated than any thought experiment. Whatever choice people make with this, it does not good to accuse them of making the wrong one.
Accusing transforms conversation into cross-monologuing faster than talking politics at Christmas Dinner.
2 comments:
Very interesting post and very well written. It is a difficult subject, as are many conversations, these days, regarding animals.
I understand that people are increasingly frustrated with the industrialized / commercialized system and that "activism" seems like a way to do something about it. Unfortunately, too many activists are emotionally attached to their opinions and seem to love to argue. I find it hard to respect folks like that.
Wormspit said it well, "The thing that many people don't do, is look carefully at how the whole system works." I appreciate that you took the time to look into and understand the sericulture system.
Like you say, it's complicated, in many ways. But I have found that looking at such questions from the environnemental perspective, and considering all the systems involved in their globality, have made it simpler for me to make those complicated choices. That's how I ended up choosing to eat a plant-based diet and to keep using animal fibres. I agree with you: natural fibres grown and processed as close to home as possible seem vastly preferable. Part of it for me is also using just enough to meet my needs, and no more. Anyway, there's more I could say, with more of the nuances, but I'm dealing with lots of brain fog so I'll keep it at that. Thank you for sharing the current state of your research and reflections on the subject!
Oh, and thanks for the information of the beneficial impacts that cultivating mulberry trees has; that's really interesting! I'll have to find out more about that.
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