I now have two European friends (from France and Italy) who consider themselves vegetarian but eat seafood. I also loosely know an acquaintance who is German who also is “vegetarian” like this. I don’t have any problems with this diet, but I’m so perplexed by their reasoning. Without me asking, they’ve all at one time of another talked about how important animal welfare is to them and how they could never go back to eating animals. One friend went on a whole tirade once about eating animals is like eating corpses and it’s disgusting. And yet, he loves fish. I don’t want to pry because it seems rude, but is it a European thing to not consider sea animals to be animals at all? If you identify as vegetarian or know people who do, does that simply not include sea animals? I know that historically, meat and seafood were considered different things, but it’s very strange to still be hearing this in 2023.
In case it’s relevant, I am vegetarian (including sea animals), and these friends have also acted a bit confused by my choice to not eat fish.