Vegans and eggs

[Kelzie]

Are you suggesting that most of the world and the entire population of the industrialized countries needs pyschological help? Cause I agree, though maybe it's not because they eat eggs ;). And chicken eggs (well almost all of them anyway) will not turn into a chicken, they're like unfertilized human eggs.

[Artichoke47]

If someone is eating truly cruelty-free, cage-free eggs, free (as in no dollar amount) eggs that do not exploit the animals, I have no complaints, but they certainly are not vegan. Vegans do NOT eat animal products.

[Kelzie]

I don't think I or Sisha is debating that the definition of veganism doesn't include eating eggs. We were just wondering if there was an ethical reason that eggs shouldn't be eaten if they are indeed "truly cruelty-free, cage-free eggs, free (as in no dollar amount) eggs that do not exploit the animals"?

[snivelingchild]

The only animals that eat their own feces are those that produce two types of feces, some that is not completely digested and they eat to recieve more nutrition, and mostly nutrient-free feces, like we have. Hamsters do this for example, but cows do not.

If a laying hen is rescued from a farm, then I would like to think they would be put in the most natural environment possible, to help them recover and feel comfortable. It just seems like leaving them their eggs and letting nature take care of that helps a hen to establish her living space. I may be thinking of another animal, but I'm pretty sure hens are very picky about keeping things in order. It just seems like taking thier eggs disrupt that.

[snivelingchild]

I've been trying to learn more about hens, and it seems that when a hens eggs, fertilized or unfertilized, are taken away, this stimulates her to lay more and more eggs. Laying more eggs can cause a bird to lose more calcium and other nutrients than they normally would, and an increased laying rate apparantly shortens a birds life span. I'm going to see what else I can find out.

[snivelingchild]

Hmm...also, if a hen increases her laying, due to eggs being taken away, they require greater sustenence, thus raising the price of keeping the hens, which would be especially bad if the people keeping them are stuggling financially.

[kokopelli]

Re mice:

I really wish they'd learn to use one place as their toilet, then I'd have no problems with them living in the house at all. I like watching their antics, too. They ARE very cute. :)

Re rescue chicken eggs:

Does rescuing chickens help end chicken slavery?
It does for the individual chickens, but not for chickens as a whole.

Chickens, like cows, have been bred to be much more 'productive' than their wild ancestors, and their behaviour patterns are 'unnatural'. Obviously, in the wild there would be many more males, and the hens' eggs would be fertilised, so they would sit on a clutch to hatch them out. They wouldn't lay a new egg every day. That is a perversion of natural behaviour brought about by their human domination, through selective breeding, or 'eugenics' as it's otherwise known.

Personally, I'd like to see all human domination of other animal species become a thing of the past, like slavery. I think that it would really be better if the human-manipulated farm animals eventually became extinct, so wild animals could flourish again.

I don't want to depend on them in any way, or partake of their 'produce'. I want to see a free world.

Why eat eggs if you don't have to?

[Artichoke47]

I don't think I or Sisha is debating that the definition of veganism doesn't include eating eggs. We were just wondering if there was an ethical reason that eggs shouldn't be eaten if they are indeed "truly cruelty-free, cage-free eggs, free (as in no dollar amount) eggs that do not exploit the animals"?

Well, as I recall, the wording was asking if vegans should eat eggs. I think more accurately, it could be restated to ask should vegetarians eat eggs. I don't think vegans (true ones, I mean) consider eating eggs, really. They don't want animal products, in general, unless they're throwing their veganism out the window.

[Astrocat]

Re: is a mosquito a parasite ?
Well... yes, i would imagine they were very much parasitical.
In a similar way to mosquitoes those who feed on animals or their bodily fluids, but who do not actually live on them, could be construed as being parasitical.


It's frustrating for me as I can see there are many committed vegans, who I respect, who are against eating eggs from rescue hens- but I can't see why. I really want to understand before I make the decision myself to stop eating the eggs. As you said in a different thread, Kelzie- it would be wrong to stop eating the eggs, simply to conform to a definition of what a vegan is.


Not long ago, Sisha Fiend said :

As I don't know of anyone with rescue hens, eating the eggs is a purely hypothetical argument.


So to begin with this was hypothetical but now you are speaking as if you are presently eating Rescue eggs and want to hear some reason to stop before you will.

It seems to me as if you are trying to use the ethics of rescue hen eggs to justify or rationalise eating less ethically produced eggs, but this may just be the way you are coming across. Certainly, what you have said is now contradictory.

In the same way that vegetarians don;t eat meat as long as it's roadkill, vegans don;t eat eggs.


Re:
Just because something is bizarre, strange, or even disgusting, doesn't make it morally wrong, does it?

Nope.

[John]

I've been trying to learn more about hens, and it seems that when a hens eggs, fertilized or unfertilized, are taken away, this stimulates her to lay more and more eggs. Laying more eggs can cause a bird to lose more calcium and other nutrients than they normally would, and an increased laying rate apparantly shortens a birds life span. I'm going to see what else I can find out.

Thank you. The eggs belong to the chickens. If you take the eggs, you are not doing charity. You are exploiting chickens. If you are concerned about the wellfare of chickens, let the chickens eat their own eggs.

[Artichoke47]

Maybe their feelings will be hurt if you don't steal their eggs.



hahahahahaha

[snivelingchild]

I was thinking about this last night; it seems as though hens do not know if their eggs are fertilized or not, since they seem to try and hatch them regardless (from what I have read). Couldn't that mean that maybe when she discovers her unfertilized eggs missing, she feels like her children are being stolen?

[gertvegan]

By accepting that eating "free range" eggs is OK, you have to accept that drinking "free-range milk" is OK, too. Then you of course have, "free range" wool and, finally, "free range" meat. Accepting "free-range"/"more humane" you are setting a precedent for further animal use and whenever there is animal use, there is animal abuse. So in order to prevent any kind of abuse, you have to abjure the use.

[gertvegan]

Vegan Society:
'A vegan is someone seeking a lifestyle free from animal products for the benefit of people, animals and the environment.
A vegan therefore eats a plant-based diet free from all animal products, including milk, eggs and honey. Most vegans do not wear leather, wool or silk.'The website also says "vegan lifestyles - that is, ways of living that seek to exclude, as far as is possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of animals for food, clothing or any other purpose".

[gertvegan]

Just because the chicken produces eggs and have been used to do so for quite some time, someone could become conditioned to seeing them as food, when they're not, they're the waste of another animal's body.

Even if someone willingly gave up a waste part of their body that wouldn't mean you should eat it (take note Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). The point is that seeing any part of any animal as food is leading to exploitation. If someone believes that animals aren't here to produce food for us, then no part of their body is ours to eat, whether they need it or not.

Do the eggs need to be eaten just because they are there ?

[Kelzie]

I don't believe that ethical eggs leads down a slippery slope. Free range milk doesn't apply, the process by which a cow is made to produce milk is a huge burden on the cow, so it wouldn't matter if it was free-range or not (I would outline the way a cow is made to produce milk, but I know you know ;)). Sheep do not lose their wool naturally, so again, it would involve placing a burden on the animal by catching, and shearing it. As far as free-range meat goes, well killing an animal, whether it's free range or not, is a far cry from picking up an egg that it naturally produces, and is discarded from the body.

So what about animal manure? It is surely a "waste part of their body", but (I'm not sure here) it seems like most vegans support using manure in gardens, because it is more natural than other fertilizers.

Snivelingchild, if you could find that, that would be great...it sounds really interesting.

Again, just in case anyone has not read the rest of the thread, I am NOT arguing for the change of the vegan definition. I know what vegans are, and I support the definition. And I don't eat eggs, but it is only to err on the side of caution. What I am looking for is an ethical reason not to eat eggs (to ease my moral conscience that's saying "but why are you doing this?"):)

[snivelingchild]

Snivelingchild, if you could find that, that would be great...it sounds really interesting.

I am confused, which thing are you talking about?

And about manure, I'm not really sure, but personally, I'd prefer other methods of farming like using no fertilizer since it's not really necessary or organic vegan farming. I don't know how one would even go about collecting manure if cows were not being farmed. Right now, the meat industry makes money off of manure, but if no one owned a cow, it seems like it wouldn't be worth it, financially, to go about collecting the stuff.

[feline01]

I don't believe that ethical eggs leads down a slippery slope. Free range milk doesn't apply, the process by which a cow is made to produce milk is a huge burden on the cow, so it wouldn't matter if it was free-range or not (I would outline the way a cow is made to produce milk, but I know you know ;)). Sheep do not lose their wool naturally, so again, it would involve placing a burden on the animal by catching, and shearing it. As far as free-range meat goes, well killing an animal, whether it's free range or not, is a far cry from picking up an egg that it naturally produces, and is discarded from the body.
How do you know that taking the eggs is not a burden on the chicken? Snivels pointed out that who knows what the chick thinks, you could be stealing their "children." Sounds extremely traumatic to me :( .

[snivelingchild]

Not to mention the negative health effects.

[Kelzie]

I was thinking about this last night; it seems as though hens do not know if their eggs are fertilized or not, since they seem to try and hatch them regardless (from what I have read). Couldn't that mean that maybe when she discovers her unfertilized eggs missing, she feels like her children are being stolen?

This is what I was talking about. Do you know where it's from?

[gertvegan]

These eggs are from chickens that are kept. They aren't free to go, are they ? Why do animals, and in this case chickens, need to be kept. Obviously they weren't always kept. The chickens in question don't know any better, ok rescue chickens will know worse, but not having known anything better does not excuse why these chickens need to be kept, and there eggs eaten just because they are there.

[snivelingchild]

This is what I was talking about. Do you know where it's from?

No, I can't, I just read in a few places about hen behavior that they will sit on (I can't think of the proper term) unfertilized eggs. Let me look now and see if I can't find something online about it. Next time I go to the library, maybe I can find something on chicken behavoir as well.

[Kelzie]

These eggs are from chickens that are kept. They aren't free to go, are they ? Why do animals, and in this case chickens, need to be kept. Obviously they weren't always kept. The chickens in question don't know any better, ok rescue chickens will know worse, but not having known anything better does not excuse why these chickens need to be kept, and there eggs eaten just because they are there.

I agree that the desirable outcome of the chicken breed that we have created would be to let them die off naturally. However, turning rescue hens out into the wild is a death sentence. They can't fly because of the breeding modifications, and most probably would have been debeaked. So in this, hypothetical case, the chickens have to be kept so they can survive.

[Kelzie]

So I found this:
"Q. "What does "broody" mean?"
A. Going "broody" just refers to the instinct a hen has to stop laying eggs every day and to start sitting on the ones she's already laid, so that in 21 days they will hatch into chicks (provided a rooster has been mating with the hen). Some chickens "go broody" all the time. They are often bantam breeds, such as Silkies, or mixed breeds. Most purebreds, like Rhode Island Reds, were themselves not hatched by a mother hen. They were hatched in an egg incubator in a hatchery somewhere. You see, if you want a chicken that lays a lot of eggs for eating, you don't want one that still has the instinct to stop laying eggs and sit on her eggs all the time. You want one that has had all the broody instincts bred out of her so she'll lay for you year-round. So farmers over the years have raised up what are known as utility breeds; chickens that don't go broody and that just lay all year 'round."

from: http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/thecitychicken/frequentlyasked.html

not sure about the how reliable this guy is, I'm sure he's not an expert in the field, but taking eggs from the unfortunate hen who hasn't had the instict "bred" out of them sounds pretty horrible. I'll keeping looking for more reliable info

[veganblue]

I have a future dream of a permaculture self-sufficiency property that I would love to create later in life and I was asked this morning about the eggs; if I have chicken on the property, what would I do with the eggs?

I honestly was stumped since I didn't have plans to have a rooster (chickens form normal social heirarchies without them and roosters can be continual brutes at times to his ladies), but they would lay copiously. Domestic breeds are bred to lay, but if you give a broody hen a nest full of unfertilised eggs, she will sit on them until nature takes it's course and they go off.

Chickens have large numbers of offspring to account for predation and other 'losses' along the way - it would be interesting to study wild populations of hens, but I am quite certain there would be a great loss to predators at many stages of their lives.

Maybe I will be content with the wild bird population; but chickens are so smart and have so much character when in a peaceful environment. The make great garden companions.