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.

  • riccardoM
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    2 years ago

    Hello there

    Chiming in with the mod hat to make a clarification about this community, since the sidebar doesn’t contain any rule or posting guidelines (yet).

    We would like to keep this community free from posts trying to debate or poking holes into veganism, especially if the post is about something that has been widely discussed over time, like eggs consumption. The community is still small, and this is the first post of this kind - but I and the other active mod are probably not going to invest energy in moderating or answering to this kind of discussions. We will update the sidebar to reflect what I’ve just explained and maybe redirect this kind of posts to a more suitable community. Feel free to message me on Matrix if you need any clarification