Do Vegetarians have problems with eating eggs?

[Jayson1]

I've always been curious about this. The main reason I suspect most people who are against eating meat is because a animal has to die but that doesn't happen with eggs? The egg never hatches a bird because it's cooked before the bird can develop so i'm not sure what argument could be made that eating eggs is a bad thing.

Jason

 

[Sibyl]

Many vegetarians will eat eggs and fish (?).

Vegans won't even touch milk.

The eggs we eat are not even fertilized, so there was never a chance that they would turn into a bird.

 

[Amaris]

I'm a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. It means I eat dairy (primarily cheese), as well as eggs. If a vegetarian eats fish, they're actually Pescetarian. I don't like fish, though, so for me it's no meat of any kind.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Some people believe It is wrong to eat eggs because of the cruelty of mass producing them. Even if the eggs are free range there is a huge problem of what happens to the majority of male chicks that are hatched.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Yeah, I do not have an ethical problem with eating an unfertilized egg or Drinking milk because it comes out of a different species.

I have a problem with the food industry shredding live male chicks just hours after they hatched because they are useless to them.
And unlike the pretty picture of a farm where you got dozens of hens with a single rooster, in reality we are talking roughly 50% of all hatched chicks here. HALF the freaking population.
Thousands, millions!
All thrown into a giant shredder painfully cut to pieces.
And then the hens get locked up in tiny cages, never seeing daylight again reduced to become egg machines starting the cycle all over again.
I think that's enough reason to avoid eggs if possible.

The cruelty involved in turning cows into breeding machines so they keep giving milk and then taking their calves away often also brutally killing them (again, what good are the males, right?), is the same story essentially.

I also do not eat fish anymore. This is mostly for ecological reasons, though.
The Überfischung in our oceans and seas is a major problem for the ecosystem.

Edit: full disclosure. I am a vegetarian with a strong leaning to vegan.
But I am not always able to avoid dairy and eggs, mostly when I eat out of home. Also cheese is hard to replace in general.

Edit 2:

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[Jayson1]

I still not sure why in this day and age we haven't been able to replace animals with cloned meat or something like that. I heard they were working on it but seems like things they should have moved forward faster than they have. I wonder if they are worried about any religious flak because I think religions kind of fear the concept of cloning and whatnot because it makes life feel primitive and something only a God can create.

Jason

 

[Sibyl]

Meat has been grown in the lab, but there are two factors preventing it from being popular, at the moment. First is that the "artificial" meat has no fat content, and a lot (most?) of the flavor of meat comes from fat. Second is that it's still pretty damned expensive and there aren't enough facilities creating it for it to be common enough to bring the costs down and meet demand.

 

[Relayer1]

I also do not eat fish anymore. This is mostly for ecological reasons, though.

I think fish get worse treatment than most other animals. Can you imagine the outcry if we routinely slaughtered pigs, cows or chickens by drowning them or gutting them alive ? That's in effect what we do to fish.

Fish tipped into refrigerated trawler holds can live for hours if they're not 'lucky' enough to be disemboweled.

 

[Jayson1]

I think fish get worse treatment than most other animals. Can you imagine the outcry if we routinely slaughtered pigs, cows or chickens by drowning them or gutting them alive ? That's in effect what we do to fish.

Fish tipped into refrigerated trawler holds can live for hours if they're not 'lucky' enough to be disemboweled.

Imagine what a lobster goes through. Boiled alive. My mom won't ever cook lobster ever again because she had to do it at work once and she says you can hear them scream or cry out when you put them in the pot.

Jason

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I think fish get worse treatment than most other animals. Can you imagine the outcry if we routinely slaughtered pigs, cows or chickens by drowning them or gutting them alive ? That's in effect what we do to fish.

Fish tipped into refrigerated trawler holds can live for hours if they're not 'lucky' enough to be disemboweled.

Not something I feel comfortable with either, for sure.
My original decision to stop was based on the ecological damage to the environment mass fishing does.
Those reasons are not mutually exclusive, I just didn't need any other reason to stop consuming fish in the first place.
But thanks for pointing out the unnecessary cruel practices here, too.

 

[Relayer1]

But thanks for pointing out the unnecessary cruel practices here, too.

No problem - I make myself feel good by making other people feel guilty...

 

[Spot261]

Imagine what a lobster goes through. Boiled alive. My mom won't ever cook lobster ever again because she had to do it at work once and she says you can hear them scream or cry out when you put them in the pot.

Jason

If it helps your mum, that "scream" is the sound of rapidly expanding air escaping the shell. Still can't be pleasant though.....

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

What are vegetarians/vegans going to eat if someone were to demonstrate conclusively that plants have nervous systems and can feel pain or even exhibit intelligence? I guess fungi, bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes would be acceptable.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01...may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm
https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/what-about-plants/

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Plants having an analogue to a nervous system in the way, that they can react to outside stimulus is not that new, I think.
But those are involuntary responses since they do not have a CENTRAL nervous system/brain that produces anything resembling consciousness.

And even if they did... then the argument that we have to eat something and "hurting" plants would be unavoidable.
There would still be a world of difference in the amount of suffering we inflict unnecessary on actually sentient beings.

 

[scotpens]

Many vegetarians will eat eggs and fish (?).

According to the standard definition of meat (animal flesh considered as food), fish is meat. According to some religions, it isn't. Go figure.

Imagine what a lobster goes through. Boiled alive. My mom won't ever cook lobster ever again because she had to do it at work once and she says you can hear them scream or cry out when you put them in the pot.

If it helps your mum, that "scream" is the sound of rapidly expanding air escaping the shell.

That's correct. Lobsters don't have any vocal apparatus and can't actually scream. Furthermore, they have a very simple nervous system and there's considerable debate over whether lobsters are capable of feeling pain.

However, if you're concerned about possible cruelty, now there's a way to humanely electrocute the tasty crustaceans before cooking them.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The way to upset some vegans is to ask them how they feel about the countless animals which are killed during the growing and harvesting of food crops.

 

[Amaris]

Unfortunately, some cruelty is inherent in the food production system. I do my best to minimize that cruelty, but I doubt we could completely remove it, at least with our current resources and technology.

 

[scotthm]

Unfortunately, some cruelty is inherent in the food production system. I do my best to minimize that cruelty, but I doubt we could completely remove it, at least with our current resources and technology.

The world is a cruel place to wild animals even without the intervention of people. Sickness, starvation, or being eaten alive is the fate of most wild animals. They don't just die peacefully in their sleep in the absence of people.
---------------

 

[MacLeod]

Unfortunately, some cruelty is inherent in the food production system. I do my best to minimize that cruelty, but I doubt we could completely remove it, at least with our current resources and technology.

What are the ways to minimise it?

Buy only free-range products such as eggs?
Buy only products that use free-range products?
Buy only products that are made buy comapnies holding to a higher welfare status for animals.

And we haven't even gotten to cosmetics testing on animals, so once again buying products which aren't trsted on animals.

 

[Refuge]

I think fish get worse treatment than most other animals. Can you imagine the outcry if we routinely slaughtered pigs, cows or chickens by drowning them or gutting them alive ? That's in effect what we do to fish.

Fish tipped into refrigerated trawler holds can live for hours if they're not 'lucky' enough to be disemboweled.

I totally agree. I also think that chickens when commercially slaughtered suffer chlorine treatments before the inevitable hoisted by the ankles and killed. I used to get quite self-righteous about hunting and people who went fishing, until a friend of mine got me thinking. He explained when he caught fish or speared them it was - quick. That he had seen dumped fish left on beaches because the trawlers had exceeded their quotas.

I'll pay for meat if the critter has been humanely killed. I'm a hypocrite. I don't eat pork/pig at all unless it has been given to me when I go to someone's place for dinner. Free range eggs are fine.