Please explain eggs

[Queen of Strawberries]

I get sick every time I eat eggs and I also think it's discussing to be eating (what is basically) a chicken period but what is ETHICALLY wrong with eggs?
My parents seem (although they refuse to go vegan) to understand why I don't want to eat meat but they are balking at me giving up dairy and eggs.
How can I explain it to them in a logical way?
Thank you

 

[Lou]

Well, many vegetarians don't eat meat but will eat eggs and dairy. So your parents are not alone in that way of thinking.

There are a number of strategies that could help you with your parents. You could just google "why do vegans not eat eggs?" and take some notes. PETA and some other vegan organizations have already done this for you. So you could just copy them. They have titles like Top Ten Reasons Not To Eat Eggs. Most of them combine ethical and health reasons. and I think that is something worth doing too.

YouTube has countless numbers of videos on the subject. This one on eggs is sort of long (20 minutes) so it might be hard to get your parents to sit down and watch the whole thing. But there are others. BTW, after watching a coupld of videos and reading a couple of articles you could probably argue the case before your parents without notes. But I think the pictures help alot. How are you at PowerPoint?

This other video on dairy is probably a better choice because its shorter. But like I said there are countless articles and videos on the subject.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Eating factory farmed eggs causes large amounts of suffering and death, and most eggs are factory farmed.

 

[Forest Nymph]

Dairy isn't ethical if the calf isn't allowed to nurse naturally, and generally this only happens if someone has a personal family farm or shares a communal farm with other ethical vegetarians. Eggs usually aren't ethical because even "cage free" hens are barely allowed outside and they are exhausted to death and die young. Unless your eggs come from a neighbor who lets their chickens legitimately roam around freely, mate naturally, and gives them back the shells or other supplemental nutrients to replace what they lost, then your eggs aren't ethical.

Then people say "well what are we supposed to do?" like there aren't a million other things in the grocery store to eat. Often these people live in a high rise and spend most of their time outdoors on a sidewalk, but try to sideblind you with pointless arguments "but it's natural...there's nothing else." Anyone who gets their daily bread from WalMart or whatever has no argument that has any point whatsoever, but they like to pretend often they live off the land in an isolated rural community in Iowa. In the event they actually do live off the land in an isolated rural community in Iowa, ask them why they don't have their own chickens then to raise if they want to be an ethical vegetarian.

Vegans usually seem angry or upset because they get tired of having these discussions with people who spend 300 dollars a week on Pepsi, pizza and Cheetos.

 

[rogerjolly]

Hi Stawberry,

Perhaps your strongest argument against eggs is one that few non-vegans have ever considered.

Chicks are sexed when one day old by people considered to be highly skilled at their jobs.

Half of hatched chicks are male. They go off on a conveyor belt to be ground up alive or gassed. Maceration is said to be more “humane” because it takes only a second. Gassing by carbon dioxide might take two minutes.

I suspect that this information might well stun your parents.

Roger.

 

[Emma JC]

Lou has given you some great video ideas and here is another link to Dr Greger's website with a number of eggs videos:

https://nutritionfacts.org/?s=eggs

Emma JC

 

[new vegan]

Hi Stawberry,

Perhaps your strongest argument against eggs is one that few non-vegans have ever considered.

Chicks are sexed when one day old by people considered to be highly skilled at their jobs.

Half of hatched chicks are male. They go off on a conveyor belt to be ground up alive or gassed. Maceration is said to be more “humane” because it takes only a second. Gassing by carbon dioxide might take two minutes.

I suspect that this information might well stun your parents.

Roger.

Now THAT I didn't know.. If it doesn't stun her parents, it certainly stunned ME!!

Thank you for sharing this.. and i'm glad i gave up eggs and dairy about 3 months ago.

(As an ex-pro bodybuilder/sports model, eggs, dairy and chicken were our "protein staples"..)

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Hi Stawberry,

Perhaps your strongest argument against eggs is one that few non-vegans have ever considered.

Chicks are sexed when one day old by people considered to be highly skilled at their jobs.

Half of hatched chicks are male. They go off on a conveyor belt to be ground up alive or gassed. Maceration is said to be more “humane” because it takes only a second. Gassing by carbon dioxide might take two minutes.

I suspect that this information might well stun your parents.

Roger.

This fact alone ought to be enough to make people give up eggs.

 

[Lou]

More stuff about baby chicks.
this place just throws them out with the trash.

https://www.thedodo.com/baby-chicks-garbage-1251317368.html

 

[Sax]

Yes, killing male chicks is one of the most important ethical argument against eggs. You can't get eggs without killing animals. Even if you have your own backyard hens, those hens all had brothers who were killed.

It's one of the aspects of the industry that makes me feel the saddest. This little creature enters the world, seeing it surroundings and standing on its legs for the first time. It wants its mother. Perhaps it finds some pleasure or excitement in all the other baby chicks around it. But quickly it's tossed into a bin or garbage bag, to be ground alive or gassed or just stuffed in a garbage can to suffocate. It never sees its mother, it never feels sunshine, it never enjoys its first meal. The entire life of tens of billions of animals each year consists of nothing more than this. A couple hours of confusion and disorientation, then death. And they're the lucky ones!

Supposedly the egg industry is working to stop this. Not because it's wrong, but because they could make more profits if half the eggs they incubated weren't living garbage.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...-may-rescue-male-baby-chicks-from-the-grinder

 

[Deleted member 3018]

Chickens need to have their own space to stretch their wings, they, like us, enjoy being outside under the sun. They are intelligent, they can even learn tricks like dogs, cats and pigs and can learn to anticipate future events, like feeding time for example. They communicate through signals such as calls, displays and whistles to convey information. They may use these sounds as an alarm when there is danger. Chickens are all personalities, they also watch and learn from each other, like humans and also chimpanzees.

But crammed in a cage, they have no hope ever to express themselves, only thing they can do is suffer. We humans treat them as they'd be just egglaying machines, denying them of their rights for freedom they should be having as sentient beings.
Each time someone decides to go vegan, we are little bit closer to having rights for non-human animals, who can't speak for themselves.
In conclusion, since chickens have the ability to enjoy life, it's cruel to disallow them. It's ethically wrong to eat eggs, because when we buy eggs, supply and demand enables the cruelty to continue, whereas when less people buy eggs, less chickens will be ultimately harmed.

 

[veganDreama]

I agree with all the posts so far. I didn't know about the male chicks being killed. I just didn't want to eat eggs because most factory farmed hens are in really tiny cages and even 'free range' hens are crammed together in barns with lots of other 'free range' hands.

 

[Deleted member 3018]

In this video you can see how badly the hens were treated, since their feathers are completely worn or pecked out, and their muscles and legs were weakened from lack of moving space. You can also see that captivity hasn't eliminated their basic instincts for social behavior, nest building and dust bathing.
There is also an incredibly cute purring hen.
You can imagine how repressed they must have felt, when they couldn't have the possibility to do anything that was natural to them. Not to mention how painful the captivity must have been like physically.
In the video you can also see how well they rehabilitated in a short period of time.