Vegans and eggs

[celtic rose]

We kept hens (rescued from a farm) when I was child.

There's no need to clip their wings, besides being cruel the only flying they did was from the ground to their perches. They had the run of the back garden and loved making dust baths in the flower beds.

Being rescues, they didn't lay for long, only 6-12 months and then lived out the rest of their days scratching around the garden in the sunshine and chasing the cats. When they died of old age they were buried at the bottom of the garden.

If I had hens again there is no way I could eat their eggs now.

[Tigerlily]

Just because you might "own" the hens and treat them nice and fair, that still doesn't give you the right to take their products.

[Shisha Fiend]

[URL=http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1370&highlight=eggs]

Seriously, read that thread and add comments to it because all of this stuff has been said already. :)

xxx

[Astrocat]

Would it also be OK to eat the hen when she had died?

This is a good point, and one which i tried to make earlier with little effect - if people are going to accept that Rescue Eggs "can be vegan" then surely the flesh from the dead body of that hen (assuming that she had died of natural causes) would similarly be considered "maybe vegan" to their mind, and similarly with roadkill - since no direct exploitation takes place for either type of flesh to be consumed - other than viewing dead bodies of others as food and using them for one's own benefit.

Whatever anyone here might think personally, this would seem to be the case to me.

You hear of Freegans who claim to be vegan sometimes, because they don't directly pay for the flesh or fluids which they scavenge and otherwise it would be "wasted" by being thrown out, but for obvious reasons they aren;t really vegan at all if they continue to make excuses for why it is okay to treat others' bodies and bodily fluids as food, and continue to devour them accordingly.

I feel that it is a similar situation for "vegan" eggs.

Also worth noting, is that usually when hens are Rescued the owners will simply buy more to exploit in their place.... it makes the whole thing less profitable for the owners which in a way does decrease the exploitation they can cause (by stifling their business like grass choking out a sickly weed) however it is a thing worth considering, that this is what will usually happen.

[webster]

continue to make excuses for why it is okay to treat others' bodies and bodily fluids as food

Thank you for this point - it brought me back to the basics again, which is just where I needed to be. I have been struggling with a few questions/dilemmas lately, and this put it right back in to black and white for me and has helped me immensely. Thank you.

[kokopelli]

This is a good point, and one which i tried to make earlier with little effect - if people are going to accept that Rescue Eggs "can be vegan" then surely the flesh from the dead body of that hen (assuming that she had died of natural causes) would similarly be considered "maybe vegan" to their mind, and similarly with roadkill - since no direct exploitation takes place for either type of flesh to be consumed - other than viewing dead bodies of others as food and using them for one's own benefit.

Whatever anyone here might think personally, this would seem to be the case to me.

You hear of Freegans who claim to be vegan sometimes, because they don't directly pay for the flesh or fluids which they scavenge and otherwise it would be "wasted" by being thrown out, but for obvious reasons they aren;t really vegan at all if they continue to make excuses for why it is okay to treat others' bodies and bodily fluids as food, and continue to devour them accordingly.

I feel that it is a similar situation for "vegan" eggs.

Also worth noting, is that usually when hens are Rescued the owners will simply buy more to exploit in their place.... it makes the whole thing less profitable for the owners which in a way does decrease the exploitation they can cause (by stifling their business like grass choking out a sickly weed) however it is a thing worth considering, that this is what will usually happen.

Astrocat, I did repeat what you said earlier, sorry :o I don't always read all posts as carefully as I should...

Apart from the disgusting nature of 'Freegans' food choices, a big drawback to their lifestyle as far as I'm concerned, is that they're relying on the culture they ostensibly reject. I believe veganism should be about creating a new culture, free from exploitation. Scavenging through bins for corpses doesn't really help in this respect :)

[Astrocat]

:) hey there guys, Webster - I'm glad that what i said has been so helpful to you !
Kokopelli, aw it's okay - you don;t need to apologise, I was just saying how it seemed to be, to me - it wasn't a comment on how i felt that others should have been approaching what i said.
I thought i maybe hadn;t aired out what i was saying enough, and it had slipped by in the flurry of other posts at the time.

And yes, i quite agree.
Although Freeganism isn;t a sub-sector of veganism, they do have their own culture - it just isn;t a vegan one.

"Freeganism is the practice of minimising one's impact on the environment by means of consuming food that has been or is about to be thrown away by someone else (e.g., supermarkets). A freegan may obtain the food by asking a retailer for what is to be discarded or by taking it from waste bins, a practice known colloquially as "dumpster diving" (Wikipedia)

I had thought this was a Freegan was, and this is what the Wikipedia reckons - I'm no expert of Freegans or anything, but if this is indeed the case then their culture may be completely incompatible with veganism, and approached from a totally different angle.

I agree with you, that if people are foraging bins for thrown-away corpses or bodily fluids, this would seem to be counteractive to the fundamental aims of veganism - or at any rate ;) it isn;t helping.

:) and that is what i reckon

[Billy]

Totally agree with Arti and PFC and Gertvegan (Kiera sayz 'hi!' btw ;)). Using the quality of an animal's life as a justification for their death, as in "it's alright to eat that animal coz it's had a good life" to me is sick! I don't think I've ever heard a murder inquiry go like: "oh well, the victim was humanely killed thru a shot in the head and she was living it up beforehand. Hell, she was even on a night out when it happened, enjoying herself! So let's leave it and look at some bugger who was less fortunate when they died."
I don't cut any meat eaters, who say they eat only "organic" or "free range" meat any slack. If they are this far aware of the living conditions of animals and still feel it's justified that they eat them, they're even worse than the complete ignorants who eat "meat fortified with antibiotics and growth hormones".
Using marginally better living conditions as an excuse to keep eating animals is totally lame. And as has been said, there are no real regulations for it anyway. That's how an RSPCA "Freedom Foods affiliated chicken farm turned out as being a battery farm without wire between the chickens! As far as I'm concerned, unless the animal involved is a cute, cuddly "pet", that cannot be gained from financially, who is on death's door because of abuse, they do not have to count on the RSPCA for any sympathy, let alone action. And Compassion in World Farming to me is a contradiction in terms.

[PeachyPunk]

I have recently turned vegan, after being a veggie since the age of 8 I was horrified to only recently find out what I was contributing to by consuming dairy products!! :( I felt so guilty

I live very close to allot of farms that sell fresh eggs though, I can see for myself that the animals are well cared for and live a happy little life on the farm and I have no problem with buying eggs from there.

How many vegans would do the same if they knew the welfare was fine and if not why? Im just interested.

Im not one of these people that wants to be a vagan and stick to it so that im a true vegan I just dont want to consume things that contribute to animal suffering.

[Astrocat]

:) I'm glad that you asked

Re" "
I live very close to allot of farms that sell fresh eggs though, I can see for myself that the animals are well cared for and live a happy little life on the farm and I have no problem with buying eggs from there."

When i started making my own buying choices i was still vegetarian, and would only buy local eggs from ducks or hens who i could see walking about in peoples' backyards and swimming in the loch and stuff.

I , too, live in a farming community - and I also lived next door to a guy who kept free range hens (who actually were free-range, unlike the pseudo-free-range hens raised in the egg industry) for a long time , so i know that plenty of atrocities are commited upon those chicks and hens and can back that up with direct experience.

- the boys who are born are usually still crushed and of course when the girls' "productivity" slows down their necks are snapped by their captor, or they are hit over the head roughly - then their bodies are sold as "meat". The farmers still breed them to be a fairly defenceless domesticated species, and still do various tricks to force them to lay extra eggs than they would be able to naturally. They are still exploiting animals for human benefit by keeping them in captivity and stealing their waste products to use as food then killing them and selling their flesh, and their customers are still paying them to do that, and making this a profitable way of life for the farmers.

It is not uncommon for farmers who keep hens to kick their hens roughly when they get in their way, rather than simply stepping over them - if they think that nobody is looking.


How many vegans would do the same if they knew the welfare was fine and if not why? Im just interested.

But the welfare of these hens isn;t usually fine at all - that's the issue, so your question is based on a moot point.

More relevant is the discussion of whether hens from "Rescued Hens" kept by vegans would be considered acceptable, there is a rather lengthy topic about that already on the topic of why vegans would not consume these, which you can read here -
http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1370


Im not one of these people that wants to be a vegan and stick to it so that im a true vegan I just dont want to consume things that contribute to animal suffering.

If you wish to be an ethical vegetarian rather than a vegan then so be it, that is your decision to make.
However, ethical vegetarianism is by definition inconsistent.

[PeachyPunk]

I didnt realise half of what you just told me :eek:
Forgive me cause ive only just found out how animals are treated in the mass dairy trade. I think im quite innocent to it all as I just didnt think people could be that crawl but you live and learn.
I must say I wouldnt have a problem keeping my own chickens though, as I would know that they are 100% well cared for and I wouldnt go killing them if they wouldnt lay but seens I dont have the room for that I might have to have a rethink about egg consumption :(

[Astrocat]

Oh it's okay - you aren't guilty of anything other than asking about the truth, from what i can see, so there's nothing to forgive you for at all. ;)

Really - I'm glad that you asked.
:)
But yeah :( people really suck sometimes.

I wouldn;t feel comfortable keeping a domesticated breed of a wild animal in captivity and breeding creatures to continue to be domesticated in order to use ie hen's eggs for my own benefit, because this in itself is a form of exploitation.

In a similar way, during the days of widespread human slavery many white men kept dark-skinned slaves for their own benefit... some of the captors treated the slaves humanely, not beating them, letting them get enough rest, feeding them nice food and so forth - but even when their living conditions were reasonable, when asked what the slaves wanted the most usually every one of them would say "I want to be free" ...

I don;t think that anybody, hen or human, would wish to be kept in captivity rather than being free if given a fair choice.
It is true that domestication has forced most hens to be unable to survive in the wild, but i feel that perpetuating this enforced domesticisation is a form of exploitation.

:) that's just how i feel.
I'm not criticising you, just saying why i disagree with what you had said and trying to explain my way of thinking.

[kokopelli]

I didnt realise half of what you just told me :eek:
Forgive me cause ive only just found out how animals are treated in the mass dairy trade. I think im quite innocent to it all as I just didnt think people could be that crawl but you live and learn.
I must say I wouldnt have a problem keeping my own chickens though, as I would know that they are 100% well cared for and I wouldnt go killing them if they wouldnt lay but seens I dont have the room for that I might have to have a rethink about egg consumption :(

Hi PeachyPunk

like Astrocat said, there's a thread about eggs already...

but I just wanted to say, you might think twice about wanting to keep hens for eggs yourself, because you'd have to think what to do with the male chicks if you didn't kill them, like the commercial egg producers. I have a friend who keeps hens 'humanely' and she ended up with lots of cockerels, which is a pain when they keep crowing, and you have to keep feeding them.

Eggs really aren't all that hard to do without, and then you don't have to worry about all the welfare issues at all! :)

[dreama]

Sigh...

Well I have a lot of respect for RSPCA and CFWF anyway. They are much better then organizations like PETA that run 'meat is murder' campains which offend more people then they convert. Plus it's not ethnical to keep a cat vegan and indoors which is what PETA recomend.

I've lived with meat eaters (infact I'm still living with meat eatering critters but I make sure they only ever eat free range/organic meat). People like my dad will never go vegan even if he does know the conditions animals are kept in because he thinks people NEED meat. The best I could ever hope really is that he will switch to free range/organic more.

Being vegan is great. The more vegans the better. Unfortunately though we will never convince everybody to be vegan. The best we can hope for really is for a majority of vegans but a few genuinely organic/free range farms for the few people left that THINK they NEED meat to survive plus our carvivorous pets of course. If it was ever illigal to eat meat, people who think they NEED meat would just go black market and its easier to hide a factory farm then a free range farm. I believe in being realistic.

[Billy]

I believe in not being defeatist. While there might be a chance that I won't see the entire planet go vegan within my life time, that doesn't mean I have to condone anyone who thinks they somehow have the right to kill non-humans for their own sake.
It was a PETA campaign that made me go vegan and interested in animal rights. However, I do not agree with their tactics and some of their campaigns any more. But that's a different topic alltogether, which has already been discussed in another thread. Same for the "is it ethical for a cat to be kept indoors and on a vegan diet" argument. All I want to say about that is that - in my experience - it depends on the cat whether or not they'd be happy to live a life indoors and he meat that most cats get is as far removed from their once natural diet as a vegan diet would be. All animals, whether human or non human, need nutrients, and it really doesn't matter in what shape or form it comes, as long as the body can access and process it.

[Korn]

Hi, I split the thread and created a new one based on some of the last posts... here. (http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3523)

[dreama]

I don't think you are doing anything wrong but you shouldn't clip their wings. Not something I would do though. I've given eggs up ages ago. If you like the egg taste I suggest finely sliced tufo tastes really similar. Particularly in a sandwhich with vegan rashers, fried onion and tomato relish.

[Mozbee]

Vegans don't ever eat Animal Products. If Nuclear War Happened and all that was left to eat was tinned Tuna and I ate it I would not be a Vegan in practice. It really *is* black and white. Vegans don't ever, under any circumstances, eat animal products. If people who call themselves "Vegan" eat animal products, they are not "Vegan", they are "people who are lying to themselves"....

Spot on ConsciousCuisine afterall I see eggs as 'fluid flesh'. :( Left to their own devices hens happily eat unfertized eggs.
Nomatter how 'ideal' :rolleyes: the animals enviroment may appear, there is no getting away from the effects of humans non-vegan diets :mad: on innocent sentient lives - they are robbed, abused and murdered. :eek:

[Nivvie]

I have an aunt that has ducks and chickens (yes, way too many males, at least she lives in the middle of nowhere with all that noise), and while I see them as happy chickens who have a hell of a lot of room and, as far as a captive chicken can have, a happy life, I feel weird about them. They are sweet and friendly, and one of the ducks reglulary goes in the house and sleeps in the dog basket with the dog, but technically, the chickens are an abomination.

They might not have been very swift at flying, but they should be able to fly, and they originate in Asia, so should we have them here at all?
When you see this thing that can just walk and peck, with virtually no chance of evading a cunning predator, it's a million miles away from it's ancestor, the Red Jungle Fowl.
And I don't even want to compare it to chickens that don't even get to walk and peck, and those that live for a brief 38 days.

[Mozbee]

Oh for a time machine, "what era would you like?", I'll opt for the era when woman were seen as goddesses for their life giving powers and humans foraged for food mainly!:)

[Mozbee]

Let's just be glad we don't live on the chickens side off the cage in one of those grey miserable, sickening factory farms run by humans who fill me with :mad:

[Realfood Mary]

I answered why I don't eat eggs on the following thread.
http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=426&page=4

[Mozbee]

And very well answered too :)

[medus]

But why hen lays an egg if she knows it is not fertilized. Do other wild birds behave the same?

[Realfood Mary]

Humans behave the same. I am having my period right now. An unfertilised egg is a chickens period.