Vegans and eggs

[kriz]

I find that many of the people who go for grassfed organic 'slaughter products' etc. do it for themelves so that THEY are getting the right nutritients through healthy meat - not because of animal welfare.:(

[dreama]

I agree, murder is murder regardless of how you label it. With that being said however, if someone were going to murder me, I would rather them just do it and not torture me first. And since most people aren't ready to stop eating meat, I would say that the best thing to do would be to get rid of the factory farms first and foremost. However, with the way money rules, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

How very well put. That's exactly how I feel too.

[Sheila]

That's a really touchy subject in our house. My husbands family: aunts/uncles/cousins raise their own 'food', cows and pigs. Organic and very free range. I find it so bizarre that you can care for an animal and take care of it for so long and then just off it so you can have sausage or something.

I think that's part of the reason they think I'm nuts. I happened up on it one time when we were going to visit and I cried for the whole day. They only live an hour from us and my husband thought he had it timed so they would be done. I still have nightmares about what I saw.

So I guess no matter how well they live they still die in the most horrible way. But if people are not going to quit eating meat I guess humane living conditions are better then the factory farms.

Sheila

[veggiesosage]

I do think there are degrees of cruelty though. There are 2 aspects of the animal industry, how the animal is raised and how/whether it is killed. If you persuade people that the former should be improved but fail to persuade them over the latter then that is still a 'gain' relatively speaking.

Its the age old radical versus pragmatist argument. While I believe in the radical solution I would still support pragmatic 'gains' like the above. However I would never give the impression that I agreed that was enough and the arguments would continue.

[laurin]

I don't eat eggs, although the egg doesn't have an "actual" baby chick inside (because it was never fertilized by the male); I won't eat them because of what happens to baby chicks, and how chickens are handled in the factories.

[Korn]

What would be a good reason not to throw these eggs away? Or to give the hens and/or eggs away to someone who would eat eggs anyway, if you think this is a better solution?

Like with many (all?) other topics we discuss, the 'I'll eat eggs from my own pet hens otherwise they'll just rot' discussion is similar to non-vegan topics discussed elsewhere...

Example: If a person has a car which is far too big for you, has too much horsepower and pollutes too much, and he doesn't actually need it, he may say 'Why not use it - otherwise it would just stand there and get old and worthless?'.

If that person actually needs a car/will use one, it's still better to hand that car over to someone who otherwise would have bought ie. a SUV. Otherwise, both he and that other person will drive around in very environment-unfriendly cars. One over-polluting person instead of two is a better solution. The same goes for the chicken/egg discussion: to eat eggs from own eggs just because otherwise they'll just rot isn't really a valid argument pro eating eggs, because it would be better to hand the eggs/chicken over to someone who would have bought some anyway...


Oh wow, this is a really old thread.

Oops! The thread might be old, but the topic is timeless.... :)

[Eli]

hello,
this may sound strange and you may wonder why i'm on this site - but i am not a vegan (just a vegatarian) as i see nothing wrong with drinking ORGANIC milk, honey, eggs, cheese, butter etc. just so long as it is totally organic and fair trade.

now, i know that many vegans are vegans for the reasons that they dislike eating something that was once alive (and i also do), but what else will happen to eggs and bees-wax if we didnt take them (i know that honey is used for baby bees to eat but bees always make more as soon as we take it).

I would be interested to hear any followups!

:)

[hyperactiv]

"you are what you eat", so when friends ask me about meat in their diet I tell them to be very selective in their meat sources, and be selective in what meats they choose to eat (picking less acid forming meats, considering cholestorol, etc).

[eve]

It's obvious you are not a vegan, as you say you are a vegetarian. By the way, what on earth is organic milk?

The reason vegans avoid the items you mention, is because they are animal products, and the commercial milk that you buy, whether or not it is labeled organic, means that there is a living being who is maintained in a state where she is lactating but someone is stealing her milk that rightfully belongs to the calf. The calf, meanwhile, is being restricted physically and his food is also restricted so that his flesh becomes whiter due to lack of iron and other vitamins. Then he is slaughtered at a few months old. So drinking milk is an integral part of meat-eating (not only the calf becoming veal, but the cows life is severely shortened due to her dreadful lifestyle, then she is for the chop too, after serving all the vegetarians so well with milk, cheese, butter, cream, yoghurt). As for eggs, hens are locked up in cages where the eggs they produce are stolen, and the poor chook doesn't even have the room or the facility to even make a nest. As for the honey, it is true that every time it is stolen from them, they will make more, but quite often too much is taken, and so instead of the bees regurgitating from the flower pollen, they are given a solution of water and white sugar. Honey is simply bee vomit. Moreover, the bees are living in boxes, nothing like a natural life is it?

I daresay others may respond differently but these are just my thoughts.

[Pob]

Most vegans are vegan because they do not want to exploit and cause suffering and death to animals.

Dairy cows are slaughtered and made into meat products as soon as they are spent - which is quite a young age as they are so overworked. They are pregnant and producing unnatural amounts of milk for a lot of the time.

Laying chickens are slaughtered as soon as they are spent - which is at quite a young age as they are overworked producing an unnatural number of eggs. Half the fertilised eggs for the next generation of laying chickens will be male, and killed just after they hatch.

Bees are not allowed to live natural lives. They often die when honey and beeswax is stolen. The queen is artificially inseminated - the sperm is collected by pulling the head off a male bee. Collecting bee pollen often rips the legs off bees. Bees are not the best pollinators for most plants - and beekeeping is responsible for endangering other pollinating insects.

If you have rescued spent laying chickens that are entirely free range and you collect any eggs they lay, and you look after them until they die of old age, and don't try and make them lay more eggs, or get rid of them when they stop laying entirely, then you could have a cruelty-free egg.

Other than that, the only way to avoid killing is being vegan!

Do not forget that laying chickens and dairy cows have been manipulated by man to produce far more eggs and milk than is natural. This puts immense strain on their bodies. Their wouldn't be all these unfertilised eggs, if man just left well alone!

How many other birds lay two hundred unfertilised eggs per year? It doesn't happen - it's against the best interests of the bird and the species.

[DianeVegan]

Hi Eli,

If you search this forum you will certainly find the reasons that vegans don't believe in consuming dairy, eggs or honey. However, since you are specifically asking about organic and fair trade I'll try to give an answer along those lines.

Organic dairy only means that the cows were fed organic food. It doesn't change the fact that cow's milk is made for calves, or that male calves are killed before adulthood (they don't grow big enough to be used for meat) and their intestinal lining is used for cheesemaking (rennet). Or that the female calves (lucky girls) will be allowed to live in order that people may impregnate them for their milk. These dairy cows are still killed once they stop producing milk after a few years, instead of the 16 years they would normally live.

Honey - if you took all my food from me, then I would certainly try to make more. How is this fair to the bees? Also, they don't make enough honey to survive the winter. That's why many beekeepers need to supplement with other inadequate food sources. And the collection of honey can result in the death of bees just as robbing people's home sometimes results in violence and death. Their is nothing fair trade about humans taking honey, as far as the bees are concerned.

Eggs - It's the same problem as with diary. The males are killed early because they cause behavioural problems (too many roosters are a problem) and their meat is not good for eating. So regardless of what you feed the chickens, eating eggs still contributes to an industry that kills young males. And if the females stop laying eggs? If they are not producing what humans want then they too will be killed.

When we use/enslave animals for our own (unnecessary) consumption of their secretions it's the same as using humans for their secretions. And we did this to people whom we saw as less than us (or animal-like) throughout civilization. Slaves were used to produce more slaves, used as wet nurses, and used in all types of non fair-trade work. The is nothing fair-trade about taking milk from a calf, honey from a bee or eggs from a chicken.

I hope that helped to clarify why vegans don't see organic or fair-trade as reasons to take milk/honey/eggs from animals.

Also, you probably have much more stamina than you believe (from your profile). Every vegan has made the choice to not consume animal products and we've all thrived. If you've been able to eliminate meat from your diet, which most people "could never do," then you could certainly eliminate dairy/eggs/honey. The animals will certainly appreciate it. And their is a lot of support on this forum if you decide to make the change.:)

[abrennan]

You should do some research. i think it is always best to find information yourself intead of hearing opinions. I suggest you buy a copy of The China Study and you will see why it is better not to eat animal products such as milk and eggs.

You wouldn't put aviation fuel in the petrol tank of a car. It's fue but it is not fuel for a car. Not only will the car not run properly, if at all, it may be damaged. The same can be found with humans and food. Put the wrong food in and you will have problems. It won't matter that the people who produced the food got the right price (fairtrade) it won't matter that the people who producded the food did it with great sensitivity to the environment (organic) you will still suffer the adverse affects caused by inappropriate fuel.

If you look into the commercial prodution of honey you will find that bees aren't treated very well at all.

If we don't cruelly and forcibly steal honey and eggs thew same thing will happen to them that happened for millenia before we began to steal it.

You might work everyday, if I come and take your earnings I don't think you would be happy even if I remind you that you can always earn more. For bees it's worse than it is for you, you are stealing what they create to maintain there lives and the lives of the hive. So it is more like me coming and taking almost all the food in your kitchen and replacing it with, well, sugar and water. It's exploitation basically. Something that humans are adept at, but is this exploitation that is not only the basis of our torture of almost anything that we come across but is the same force that is destroying the planet that bears the human organism through time.

The large majority of chickens and cows live lives of torture. So we can fulfill our food addixtions millions of lives must be lived in pain and horror. You should investigate this.

Even though the action of so called advance societies has polluted our planet to the brink, we won't stop, as it will affect our economies. Well we are about to find out that without a viable climate economies will collapse.

Even though the action, of apparently otherwise intelligent people, is to poison their bodies to the brink, they won't stop, they like the taste, etc, etc. They will find out that without a viable level of health, they human system will collapse.

Have you not heard that the standard American diet has resulted in massive obesity and that Americans are now living shorter, more unhealthy lives as a result. Our countries spend billions on hospital and health care for people who's diet is reducing the quality of their lives.

Anyway it's great that you are asking these questions and I hope some of our other friends here supply that facts that you need to know I suggest you don't rely on others, myself included, look through the topics on this website, read books and magazines, educate yourself.

I agree with Diane, you can be vegan, you have what it takes, that's why you are hear asking about it.

Good luck to you

antony

[Jane M]

There is a video called Truth or Dairy

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5650765229026807882&q=vegan

he does go into the whys of not eating eggs and dairy

[Cherry]

Hi Eli

Being a vegan really isn't as difficult as it sounds :)

I hope you hang around, read things and find out more about it.

[Tigerlily]

That's video's great, Jane. :)

[Jane M]

Your welcome, Tigerlilly!

[Mammal]

a) Milk - Would it be fair if a cow drank breast milk from a human? So is it fair that i drink a cow's milk which is meant for its baby?
b) Honey - I DO NOT NEED IT! It is theirs - they can keep it! If they ever develop vocal chords a tell me i am welcome to take it, i might. But as of yet i have no proof that they made it for the taking!
c) Eggs - Why would you want to eat eggs?

[magpie]

I don't eat eggs, although the egg doesn't have an "actual" baby chick inside (because it was never fertilized by the male); I won't eat them because of what happens to baby chicks, and how chickens are handled in the factories.


I can't help but think that all eggs, unfertilized or not, still contain the means to produce a chick, albeit half a means in the case of an unfertilzed egg. The magic that makes a chicken is still there, the eater still consumes it. Its still little wings and little legs, little eyes and little feet locked up in a shell, or the potential for them.

As a vegi I was sent by my first job to a hatcheries, needless to say I didn't do any work for them, but I did get to see first hand the macerator they throw live male chicks into. I can't actually describe how I felt hearing the high pitched whine of the blades chopping up a chick, hearing it over and over again. Nor can I describe the look of utter terror and disassociated distress that was in the eyes of the female chicks as they went off in crates to the battery houses. At the time I'd never heard about the killing of male chicks, I think I thought eggs were sexed, but seeing that place made me realize just how much vile cruelty goes into egg production, even of free range eggs. I'd cared for rescued chickens as a kid, eaten their eggs, but I couldn't eat rescued eggs after that.
The whole system of mass egg production is tainted with an unspeakable cruelty. If chickens were kept in happy surroundings where they could live out their natural lives, if hens were allowed to sit and hatch their eggs, if all the males could live their full lives in a natual environment, if chicks grew up with their mothers, maybe, just maybe, we could justify eating the occasional egg.
As for eating the eggs of a rescued hen, personally I don't think that its vegan as such but its thousands of times better than eating any other kind of egg. Not eating eggs because of how chicks are murdered and because of how chickens are handled in the factories really is the point, its the cruelty and suffering that matters, a cruelty that taints the whole system and every eggs it makes.

[herbwormwood]

vegans not eating eggs is not about not eating baby chicks, chick feotuses or whatever! its about vegans not eating animal products. Vegans don't eat animal products. End of story. People who call themselves vegans but eat eggs are ovo vegetarians. Not vegans.

[Shadowsoul]

No, I don't eat eggs, because it's still an animal by-product, and the fate laying hens suffer in farms are terrible, If I were to abstain from meat only (which makes me probably a vegetarian and not vegan, semantically), and eat dairy products, it still doesn't stop animal cruelty, which is one of the major causes why I am vegan now, so there :)

[sandra]

What you have said magpie has reduced me to tears, how can humans treat animals like that and not feel regret or shame? I couldn't eat an egg because it is the beginning of life, we all started off as an egg after all.

[IndigoSea]

It's not wrong, but it's not vegan.

[Korn]

What do you mean by that...

[DancingWillow]

magpie, my heart sank as I read your post, even though I knew that this is what happens :( Like sandra, I wonder how people can bring themselves to inflict such pain and torture on these poor innocent creatures and kill them. It breaks my heart :( I don't know how those people live with themselves.

And what a painful experience it must have been for you to watch such cruelty :( AR videos are upsetting enough for me, and I'd never be able to handle seeing it live.

[rianaelf]

arnt eggs simply and bluntly put, er, periods????????
and who wants to eat one of those :eek: