Vegans and eggs

[Kelzie]

Actually, I thought rabbit foetuses could be reabsorbed by the mother before they were born, if the environmental conditions weren't OK for raising babies. I didn't think they actually ate their own babies?!?

Where did you read that?

My sister and I had two rabbits when we were much younger. The pet shop guy told us two females. Yeah not so much. :D After we caught one humping the other, we seperated them, but it was too late. So my sister rabbit had five babies, and they were gone the next day. So I didn't read it, more of personal experience.

[Peas'nHominy]

It was just a way of dealing with them...I could have composted them, I suppose, but rotten eggs are very smelly!
Well, then, I'd say it's good for environment and hen to take the eggs and bury them--- ha, ha ha!!! :D
But seriously, maybe it would be good for the human to bury the rotten eggs, afterall, it seems like maybe we owe it to them to help them out after what we've done to them, ie breeding them this way. (...still thinking out loud, here ... :) )


Anyway I was very glad to have had the chance to look after my friend's chickens, because it made me realise how much happier I was without them around. That was before I became vegan, and it was the last time I ate eggs.
:D Oooh, I love how you post - you make me laugh! :)


It feels SO MUCH BETTER not to have to depend on animals at all. :)
I agree! :)

[John]

OK, I'll sum it up.

A hen has to devote a great deal of metabolism and nutrients from her body to create an egg. Eggs are rather large in comparison to a hens total weight. Egg-laying takes a toll on a chicken's health.

A hen wants to have a nest full of eggs, so she lays eggs until her nest is full. By taking them away one at a time, you trick her into laying them indefinitely.

Chickens have been cruelly bred to lay eggs at an unnaturally fast rate. By stealing their eggs, you are profiting from this selfish breeding.

I'm sure that the hen is not happy to see her eggs stolen.

The eggs are not waste. The are full of nutrients from the chicken's body.

Some people here want to believe it when people who are in the egg business say that a hen egg eating her own unfertile eggs is something unnatural. Why don't you just belive everything that the flesh industry says now? Most mammal mothers eat the placenta even when they are eating a healthy diet. Chickens can and do eat their own eggs.

The eggs are not ours. They belong to the hens.

Keeping chickens for their eggs is not doing charity, or keeping pets, or whatever lie one chooses to believe, it is exploitation.

Since some people who are not vegans yet would rather create doubt than believe the truth, why don't you think about it for a moment. If there is doubt in your mind, why not choose the path where you know for sure that no one is being exploited. If you think that it is impossible or improbable that chickens are being expoited, then you are lying to yourself.

Forget your pride; forget about satisfying your taste for flesh; think about other sentient beings.

[John]

Stop trying to win an argument and start thinking about the other feeling beings with whom you share the earth. Do eggs taste so good to you? Open your heart. Listen.

[snivelingchild]

I really don't think eating the eggs would be unhealthy. Of course, someone who knows about chicken health would be best to anwser this, but the nutrients in the eggs are the exact ones they lack from laying them. In the other instances you mentioned, they would be unhealthy because only one vitamin would be taken, creating an imbalance. I also believe the vets at all the Farm Sanctuaries would say they should not feed the eggs to the hens if it were unhealthy.

You mentioned that composting and feeding to the chickens would be satisfying your own means. Well, I think that composting helps the earth and the soil, not the person who does it, unless there is some other effect I don't know about. And if I were to feed the eggs to the chickens, it would be for their health. I just mentioned that it would save on feed as an extra benefit because someone mentioned how selling the eggs helps pay for the hen feed.

I do not think that eating the eggs themselves and letting the hens eat them are the same. Yes, in both instances you are deciding for the birds, just as you decide for any creature you take care of, like what feed they eat, etc. In one instance, though, you are deciding for them that you should have their eggs instead of them, and in the other you are providing a wonderful way for them to easily use their own eggs.

I really don't see how one can argue that eating the eggs is better than giving them to the hens unless the eggs are unhealthy for them, which I find hard to believe based on the fact that they would be consuming the same exact nutrients as they lost in laying. Of course, a someone with a greater knowledge of hen health would be better suited to answer this, but I don't see any evidence that points to that. Even if it were unhealthy, I still see letting the earth benefit (whether you leave them there, bury them, or compost them) as being better than eating them.

Oh, and about the animals eating their own young, no animal eats it's own young after they are born unless they are sick or diseased and would not survive anyway. This is true for rabbits and hamsters as well as others. Almost all animals have a way of preventing a birth if the environment would not support it by reabsorbing fetuses and/or greatly reducing their fertility. I might be wrong; feel free to correct me if I am, but I am pretty sure that is it.

[Kelzie]

Well if the chicken likes eating their eggs, that's good enough for me. Seems it's just as natural for them as it is for us, and it is theirs in the first place. :)

Hey on a different note, how do vegans feel about guide dogs? Probably against it huh? Animal exploitation and all...

[gertvegan]

Hey on a different note, how do vegans feel about guide dogs? Probably against it huh? Animal exploitation and all...Theres any existing guide dog thread, just HERE. (http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=493&highlight=guide+dogs) ;)

[John]

There's also a manure (http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=437) thread.

[kokopelli]

I understand other people would disagree- so please noone put us back to the starting point by quoting that and saying 'no it's always unvegan to eat eggs':D- at the moment what I'm asking for is the production of some kind of ethical reason against the eating if these eggs. Until this is found my view will be that outlined above- it's a matter for the individual vegan to decide.


Shisha Fiend, I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall, because you have AGREED that the male chicks issue, which applies to ALL hens, is a good ethical reason to avoid eating any eggs, and you have AGREED that rescue hen 'vegan' eggs bolster the chicken industry. If someone GAVE you an intensively produced egg, that would not be financially benefitting the chicken farmer, but presumably you wouldn't want to eat it. But when the hen is no longer profitable, and is given to a 'rescue' place, then suddenly eating her eggs becomes OK, as long as they're given away for free??? Would it also be OK to eat the hen when she had died?

:(

[Shisha Fiend]

Shisha Fiend, I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall

Me too. Haven't you read my last few posts?

[kokopelli]

Me too. Haven't you read my last few posts? :D

xxx

Sorry! I got kind of glazed over with all the hens-eating-their-own-eggs stuff.

And I totally agree with all your 'hippy' musings :)

Where would the 'vegan eggs' idea lead to next?
'Vegan steaks' from cows 'rescued' from the knackerman and left to die 'naturally' in a 'caring' environment after they'd been completely worn out through lifelong exploitation?

[kokopelli]

Shisha Fiend, I'm glad you replied. I wanted to recommend a few books to you, because of what you said about having a 'physicalist' view of the universe, and you were therefore hesitant to express your 'Gaia'-like opinions, as though they were in some way unscientific.

I know what you feel like, because I've felt that way myself. But reading books by Fritjof Capra (a theoretical physicist) in particular, his book 'The Tao of Physics', made me realise the connection between apparently 'religious' or 'spiritual' ideas, and modern physics, which has moved way beyond the mechanistic constraints of Newton and Descartes, the founders of 'classical' physics. It's as though the ancient Eastern spiritual traditions intuitively presaged the discoveries of Einstein, Heisenberg etc. But the insights gained by modern physicists are not really covered in the school curriculum, except at higher levels, which most people don't take up, so the mechanistic worldview prevails, socially and politically.

Another excellent and more recent book by Fritjof Capra is 'The Web of Life', which explains twentieth-century developments such as 'systems theory', 'chaos theory', 'self-organising systems', 'complexity theory' etc., all of which 'provide an extraordinary new foundation for ecological policies that will allow us to build and sustain communities without diminishing opportunities for future generations', to quote the sleevenotes.

I think you'd find his writing very interesting and enlightening and you'd feel less of a freak for having the opinions you do! :)

And of course 'Gaia' is actually written by the independent scientist, James Lovelock, who based his theory on computer models of a hypothetical world he called 'daisyworld', which showed the self-stabilising properties of systems. However, Lovelock himself has caused a furore in green politics recently by suggesting the only way to avoid devastating global warming at this point, is to switch to nuclear power. :eek:

Another excellent and challenging book is 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', by physicist David Bohm. The ideas about interconnectedness and how language shapes our thinking and reinforces our limited worldview, are fascinating reading, but it does have tracts of impossible-to-follow formulae (for a layperson like me!). It's worth persevering with, though, you can skip those bits and still pick up on his ideas.

Sorry for going right off topic here, but all topics are ultimately interconnected ;)

[Glen]

Just wondering, if a vegan keeps chickens in a safe, natural environment, and uses their eggs, is it considered ethical? We are moving into a new house and were wondering about keeping two chickens in the (huge) garden. Have been looking at this site (http://www.omlet.co.uk). I can't see why it wouldn't be acceptable, and most things seem to be down to the individual.

I am vegan because of the way animals are treated so if I had chickens that wouldn't be a problem. However, you do have to clip their wings - for me this is the part I wouldn't find ethical as it is preventing natural functions. Opinions?

[John]

I'm not even going to reply to this one.

[Glen]

:-( Thats a little harsh. I know vegan means animal free lifestyle, but isnt the reason for the lifestyle the cruelty to animals in many cases? Also, I did acknowledge that people have differing opinions on the matter, theres no need to be so dispondant when I was merely trying to get opinions

[boomer]

I'll eat a vegan egg, as long as its made of chocolate and hasn't been squeezed out of a chickens bum then stolen from her.

[Geoff]

Don't forget that for each of the chickens you obtain, a male chick has gone, ALIVE, down a chute into a macerator. :(

[clawsy]

If i had hens that i had rescued from a battery farm then I would eat their eggs..if i could stomach it, or more likely i would give them to the dog to eat. If you just chucked them out, that would be a waste imo.

But buying the hens is paying those breeding places. Why dont you get hold of a group that knows people who do rescues and tell them you got a space for a couple of hens, they might be really happy to find another spot for some.

[ChartT]

One question to be answered is: do you believe that animals (including birds) are here to benefit us?

If they are here for us, go ahead and enjoy the eggs (although I do not see that as being vegan).

If animals are not here to supply us humans, then why would you want to incorporate eggs into your diet?

There are generally multiple choices to questions like this. I suppose there are conditions under which one might believe that animals are not here for us, but might use eggs provided the bird wasn't damaged or inconvenienced. That could be an ethical choice. But I don't see eating eggs as an action that a vegan would take.

[Glen]

No, I don't belive animals are here for us to use, that is why I am on this forum. However I was asking what the view was on this was, maybe if the hens were rescue hens? I'm sorry, I seem to have offended many people by even asking.

[eve]

:-( Thats a little harsh. I know vegan means animal free lifestyle, but isnt the reason for the lifestyle the cruelty to animals in many cases? Also, I did acknowledge that people have differing opinions on the matter, theres no need to be so dispondant when I was merely trying to get opinions
I like boomer's response :) Glen, people may have differing opinions on the matter, but vegans share the same view, that is, chickens eggs are for chickens, not for us.

[Stu]

but isnt the reason for the lifestyle the cruelty to animals in many cases?
Well don't you consider wing-clipping to be cruel?

[Kim[ba]]

Don't forget that for each of the chickens you obtain, a male chick has gone, ALIVE, down a chute into a macerator. :(

And that would be his fault how???

[Kim[ba]]

No, I don't belive animals are here for us to use, that is why I am on this forum. However I was asking what the view was on this was, maybe if the hens were rescue hens? I'm sorry, I seem to have offended many people by even asking.

Well, Glen I think what your discussing fits into cruelty-free, but not really 'vegan', because an egg is still an animal bi-product. If you, personally, are ok with cruelty-free living (and I don't see anything wrong with it) then go for it, and fuck everyone else on veganforum.com if they don't like it/think it's gross. As long as you are happy, and you personally don't judge yourself for it, then what is the problem?

[Geoff]

']And that would be his fault how???

I was simply asking that the results of actions be taken into account.
If someone buys a hen, that creates a demand for another one to be bred to take its place, the consequence of which is that a male chick gets killed (in a horrible way)
Rescued hens are a different matter altogether. I've had them myself.