Is there an argument that eggs should be considered a ‘vegan food’?

rights in proportion to intelligence

The rationales

I’m not vegan. I’ve heard many (sometimes conflicting) rationales for veganism. One of them is “eat nothing which harms a farm animal during its production”. Eggs are therefore permitted becuase they are a waste product which the hen discards. Taking the eggs is incidental - the hen does not notice whether you do it or not. Food fertilised using manure is permitted. But honey is forbidden, though you can argue whether its production harms bees or not. Fruit is permitted (because it does not impact the pollenating insect) even if it was pollinated using farmed insects. Palm oil is permitted because the necessary deforistation only affects wild animals (orangutans etc) not farm animals. Wheat is permitted because the pesticides only kill wildlife.

There’s another I’ve heard of where the important thing is whether any animals were harmed. So eggs, all fruit, manure-fertilised foods are permitted; but wheat, honey and palm oil are forbidden.

The one where “big or intelligent animals must not be harmed” would permit honey, all fruit, manure fertilised food, and eggs. But forbid wheat, palm oil.

After suggesting this argument to someone, he told me of another type of veganism where food which came from inside an animal is forbidden. So honey, palm oil, wheat, all fruit, manure-fertilised food and wheat are permitted. But eggs are not.

There are others, like the desire to use less farmland globally, or reduce global warming, have a healthier diet, etc. But IMO this is not veganism at all but just common sense and ethics. These goals are not consistent with veganism.

So on the balance, I don’t see a strong consensus for prohibiting eggs.

The other side of the coin

Eggs are a super-food - maybe the only one. They contain all the nutrients needed in the human diet. An egg-eating vegan no longer needs to battle dietary deficiencies, or take suppliments (which are normally not vegan).

So I have two questions

  1. It seems to me that eggs may be permitted. And doing so gets over a major hurdle for vegans. So in fact it must be permitted for veganism to be viable. What do you think?

  2. Where can I find a list of the different sub-types of veganism?

So of course the eggs must be ethically produced. This is interesting too but it doesn’t answer the questions.

  • @roastpotatothiefOP
    1•2 years ago

    I cannot believe you asked

    This must be the most interesting point then! I’ll focus on that one.

    But seriously I think I get the idea. You have two axioms:

    1. Animals should not be trained to do something by people. Like pulling a plough or being milked into a machine. Rottweilers for example need training to refrain from biting people, so you would just not keep them near people. Every job now done by an animal must be done by people instead.

    But keeping cats around a farm would be permitted because they are basically free.

    1. You say this:

    if they were your … children … taking responsibility over them

    So animals which can’t live independently should be kept, therefore some area woud be provided for rottweilers to live in.

    A difficult special case would be street dogs, where by the logic above they should be taken off the streets and cared for, but not neutered, and not killed. And ideas how to make that work?

    For you it’s basically a form of anarchism, applied to animal rights. I can’t believe many people hold these views. Different vegans i’ve talked to have given totally different arguments for veganism, and in fact the same vegan might give different explanations on different days.

    You can look at it as a practice or an ideology, neither is wrong, but the practices are at least the same for all vegans, and all vegans have different ideologies (in my experience).

    There’s nothing wrong with that! It may be a new and evolving philosophy, which will solidify in the coming decades.

    Nothing above seems to prohibit eating eggs though ;-)

    Really! If the chickens are allowed to roam without fences, they get proper veterinary treatment and food and shelter. They could not survive in the wild without human care. The egg collection is not cruel or invasive.

    The only remaining argument against eggs would be a dietary one, if you use a rule like “anything thing that started inside of or as part of an animal is prohibited”.