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
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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?
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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.
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Wow that’s a very different angle on it. Hard to wrap my head around.
So you would not put animals to work for you at all, anywhere?
You would basically have no interaction with other kinds of animals, anywhere in society?
But pets and zoo animals are excepted because they don’t work for you?
I think most people think of veganism as being like a variant of vegetarianism like pescetariansim and the others - a dietary restriction. This concept you describe above has very little to do with diet. Are you sure that most vegans would agree with you, or is this more your own personal take?
BTW I have no problem putting children to work for me. Everybody must work. Trees must work to produce nuts and wood, hens must work to make manure and eggs, algae must work to make oxygen, and children must cook and clean. It’s not so important whether they are doing it for themselves or whether I benefit from their labour. They are just expressing their natural behaviours and I’m not interfereing with that. But that’s just my opinion.
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That’s a detailed and interesting argument, which I’d like to think about a bit more. I think my answer will be very long, if I can come up with one. But it only discusses the “BTW” part of my comment.
I’m much more interested in how this vegan philosophy holds together. What about my four questions above?
Edit: maybe i didn’t understand your answer. You do address some of the questions, but in a way that’s hard to follow. I’ll read it more carefully later…
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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:
- 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.
- 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”.
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I think most people think of veganism as being like a variant of vegetarianism like pescetariansim and the others - a dietary restriction.
Vegetarianism and pescetarianism are also based in ethical or religious considerations. Why else would you not eat meat or animal products?!
Sure, people have those diets for reasons, for altruistic reasons. The reasons can vary between individual vegetarians. But what they have in common, the essence of what makes someone a vegetarian, is their diet.
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
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