Couldn't find the right forum to post this question, so I thought I would put it here.

Maybe I am a little slow on the uptake, but I just regemmed all my pvp gear on my ud mage for haste, and then went herbing, and noticed that the "cast" time for herbing is shortened by spell haste. My alliance mage (which before today had all my haste gear) is not a gatherer, so I never noticed before. Is this a bug, or are things like herbing, mining, and skinning considered "spells?"

Spell haste do work on the various enchanting casts at least. I always use my PI when I'm about to shatter a stack of voids.

Would be good to get a definitive answer for all professions.

This discussion concluded that haste does not change the cast time for fishing. It was somewhat less conclusive about changing the average time to catch a fish. That would require quite a lengthy statistical test, given the randoms involved and the small theoretical difference.

I suspect that any advantage to professions was not intended. Rolling on some drop for "your cooking gear" isn't going to win you many friends, but becomes logical if it saves time.

Someone should try this with Icy Veins and Slice and Dice up to see if it affects gathering speed.
In any case, Wowhead tells us that the gathering progress is a physical cast (mining example: Mining - Spell - World of Warcraft ) like Slam so spell haste working on it does seem odd because it doesn't work on Slam (atleast as far as I know; Warriors don't exactly run around with spell haste :P).

Icy veins definitly increases herbing speed, as does the troll racial, Beserking

Spell haste does work with Herbalism and Mining. So does Berserking, tried it just now on my troll priest.