being vegetarian and eating eggs
Hello everyone,
I am having an issue that I am struggling with and would like to hear other vegetrians take on eating eggs and still calling themselves vegetarian.
I am not trying to offend everyone, just trying to find out more information.
Eggs come from a chicken and you eat it, are you not eating an animal? My non veggie friend said it was ok because eggs are not fertailzed and therefore are not an animal. But I just still cannot comprehend how it is ok. If you do not eat fish, would you eat caviar, fish oil? How is it you would not eat a chicken or fish, but eat the eggs?
If you consider yourself a vegetarian and you eat eggs, how do you justify it being ok. I may be only talking to veggies that are because of moral issues, not sure, please let me know.
Thanks to all
Vegans don't eat animal by-products... not vegetarians.
I think you're confused about being vegan versus being vegetarian. Vegetarians don't eat ANIMALS vegans don't eat ANIMAL PRODUCTS. So that's the difference. An egg is like milk, it's a product from an animal. If that egg were to stay underneath the chicken for all eternity instead of going into your omelet, it would still never be a chicken. It's not fertilized so it's not an animal, it's a product. If eating eggs really bothers you you don't have to. THere are lots of different kinds of vegetarians. Ovo, lacto-ovo, etc. You get to choose!
I agree with both above comments. I have been a vegetarian for 15 years and during the last 5 i was vegan. During the time i was vegetarian i ate animal products including milk, honey, and eggs because they were simple by products and you dont have to kill the animal in order to retirve them. for caviar, i'd assume it kills the fish in order to retrieve the eggs. So, its a little different. Also the fact the chickens lay eggs and dont have to be manually pressed out of them, it is alot more humane. Same as fish oil. the Fish oil is extracted from a dead fish fats, it doesnt just release them for us to use.
Vegans dont eat any anlmals or their products. some don't even eat yeast which makes choosing your bread a bit more complicated. I was not that extreme of a vegan.
Both diets can be extreemly beneficial for your health, but make sure if you educate yourself on the proper nutrition needed in order to get all your vitamins from these diets. You cant just eat cheese pizza everyday and be a healthy vegetarian.
Eggs are something FROM a chicken.
If we were to stop eating their eggs, the eggs would come out, unfertilized, and then...rot. They'd never hatch.
It's like down comforters; I know that some of them are made cruelly, but I also know that other people go around and pick up leftover feathers from birds and make them.
And it's sort of like wearing wool; sheep's wool HAS to be shaved, or else they'll get super hot and die.
So why not make something out of the shaved wool?
Thus, if we didn't eat the eggs, they'd go to waste.
Original Post by oxymoron00:
So why not make something out of the shaved wool?
Thus, if we didn't eat the eggs, they'd go to waste.
Little wooly egg holders. :D
It's true what the others have said: an egg is not an animal. It is something that could have been an animal, but since it was not fertilized, it is a waste product. Humans do this, too. It's called menstruation.
However, it is not necesssarily true that consuming eggs doesn't hurt chickens. For the most part, eggs we eat come from concentrated animal feeding operations and the animals do suffer, and many boy chicks are killed because they have no market value (don't have the genetics to be good for eating and cannot lay eggs, so they are just thrown away). This is even true of free-range eggs, just so you know (http://afa-online.org/docs/freerangemyth.pdf).
Even though eggs aren't meat, I can see how it would seem like meat. I mean, it could have become meat. I could see how that could gross someone out.
I personally don't think it's gross. I haven't eaten eggs since becoming "vegan," but I'm not totally opposed to the idea if I knew the chickens who produced the eggs personally and could vouche for their health and wellbeing.
I don't feel bad about eating eggs as a vegetarian, since they are unfertilized and therefore would just be wasted. I do however make sure that I get organic eggs that claim (and I hope truthfully! though it's so hard to tell where you food comes from these days...) their chickens are cage-free and roam happily around the farm!
Original Post by alibsam:
I love when people post ridiculous threads and then never come back to them when everyone disagrees with them.
lol
But as everyone else said, eggs are unfertilized so there is no 'chicken' in them. If it's unfertilized, it's gonna come out and sit there. There was no murder involved so I don't feel guilty. I had eggs this morning actually.
Fish oil I believe is made from fish, so to get it you have to kill fish. To get eggs or caviar, you don't have to kill anything. i keep chickens in my backyard - they lay every day and never pay attention to their eggs. if i didn't collect them they'd rot or the chickens would eventually eat them themselves.
Hi Sashabee,
What is it like to have chickens? Are they hard to take care of? Are they friendly and sociable? Do you have roosters, too? Do they wake you up? Do they get sick often?
Sorry for the barrage of off-topic (sort of) questions...I'm just really curious.
Original Post by pumpkin314:
Hi Sashabee,
What is it like to have chickens? Are they hard to take care of? Are they friendly and sociable? Do you have roosters, too? Do they wake you up? Do they get sick often?
Sorry for the barrage of off-topic (sort of) questions...I'm just really curious.
Hey, I know your weren't asking me, but my granddad owns a little farm and I've been around chickens a lot. Chickens are actually kinda cool to observe (At least I think so!) As far as being 'sociable', I would say they are with each other, but it's kinda hard to tell with humans. They get scared very easily (Hence the term of 'being chicken') so they don't really give you a chance to touch them. And they're constantly on the move. Just clucking and wandering around.
They don't really get sick that often, given they're not being kept in a tiny cage in a filthy factory and being fed hormones and antibiotics everyday. Ahem. Anyway, my mom did tell me that when she was growing up she often witnessed the chickens eating each other's... er uh.. feces. So I would guess that would make them sick every now and then.
Ok I just wanted to give you that little tidbit of information since the other poster hadn't responded to you yet.
I respectfully disagree with everyone above.
Eggs are meat; it is NOT just vegans to abstain from eating it, but full vegetarians consider eggs as meat, and should not be eaten.
A chicken suffers in a farm when they are being taken advantage of by farmers in mass egg producing facilities. They feel pain and anguish. They are later killed for their meat after producing eggs. If you guys/gals are vegetarians for ethical purposes, then you really shouldn't be eating meat.
When I hear someone is a vegetarian, and then they're eating an egg product, I do not consider them to be vegetarians. It doesn't matter if they are fertilized or not; it still could have been a chicken, no matter how you look at it.
This confusion about whether vegetarians can eat eggs reminds me of the whole pescatarian fiasco, where some people think fish isn't meat. And now we have a nice term like pescatarian to say, hey, you are not a true vegetarian because you eat fish, and fish are animals just like chickens and cows. Similarly, an ovo-vegetarian is not the same thing as a vegetarian. One day, there should be a new term to describe those who eat eggs because it defeats the purpose of vegetarianism to eat meat (eggs), and call yourself vegetarian.
I have been a vegetarian for almost 14 years and almost the entire time I avoided eggs and products with eggs because of the immense amount of cruelty involved in the treatment of the chickens. Free range may be a little better but they are not cruelty free in any way. Of those 14 years I have only been vegan for 2 years. I have always a maintained veg*n diet for ethical and political reasons. For me, health and preservation of the environment are added benefits.
I do not consider eggs meat. If I had a pet chicken or duck that I rescued I would probably eat their eggs.
Original Post by enchantedsky:
I respectfully disagree with everyone above.
Eggs are meat; it is NOT just vegans to abstain from eating it, but full vegetarians consider eggs as meat, and should not be eaten.
A chicken suffers in a farm when they are being taken advantage of by farmers in mass egg producing facilities. They feel pain and anguish. They are later killed for their meat after producing eggs. If you guys/gals are vegetarians for ethical purposes, then you really shouldn't be eating meat.
When I hear someone is a vegetarian, and then they're eating an egg product, I do not consider them to be vegetarians. It doesn't matter if they are fertilized or not; it still could have been a chicken, no matter how you look at it.This confusion about whether vegetarians can eat eggs reminds me of the whole pescatarian fiasco, where some people think fish isn't meat. And now we have a nice term like pescatarian to say, hey, you are not a true vegetarian because you eat fish, and fish are animals just like chickens and cows. Similarly, an ovo-vegetarian is not the same thing as a vegetarian. One day, there should be a new term to describe those who eat eggs because it defeats the purpose of vegetarianism to eat meat (eggs), and call yourself vegetarian.
You're speaking from the ethical point of view. If you choose to abstain from eating eggs (or milk) because of the cruelty of the farmers, then... Okay. But this particular question is By eating eggs, "Are you eating an animal?" The answer is no. There was no life, in itself, lost by eating an unfertilized egg.
The pescetarian thing is different because as you said, fish ARE animals with a heartbeat, a face, blood , reproductive system, etc. Unfertilized eggs do not have heartbeats or any other biologic characteristic that would qualify it as 'living'.
So I see the point you were making, but eggs are still not animals.
Original Post by enchantedsky:
I respectfully disagree with everyone above.
Eggs are meat; it is NOT just vegans to abstain from eating it, but full vegetarians consider eggs as meat, and should not be eaten.
A chicken suffers in a farm when they are being taken advantage of by farmers in mass egg producing facilities. They feel pain and anguish. They are later killed for their meat after producing eggs. If you guys/gals are vegetarians for ethical purposes, then you really shouldn't be eating meat.
When I hear someone is a vegetarian, and then they're eating an egg product, I do not consider them to be vegetarians. It doesn't matter if they are fertilized or not; it still could have been a chicken, no matter how you look at it.This confusion about whether vegetarians can eat eggs reminds me of the whole pescatarian fiasco, where some people think fish isn't meat. And now we have a nice term like pescatarian to say, hey, you are not a true vegetarian because you eat fish, and fish are animals just like chickens and cows. Similarly, an ovo-vegetarian is not the same thing as a vegetarian. One day, there should be a new term to describe those who eat eggs because it defeats the purpose of vegetarianism to eat meat (eggs), and call yourself vegetarian.
seeing as how eggs are fertilized, they are not meat. It could never have been a chicken if the egg was never fertilized. Maybe you should research reproduction again.
Original Post by enchantedsky:
When I hear someone is a vegetarian, and then they're eating an egg product, I do not consider them to be vegetarians. It doesn't matter if they are fertilized or not; it still could have been a chicken, no matter how you look at it.
So by this reasoning, it is also considered abortion every month when you pass an egg through menstruation.
Women's eggs are the same as chickens'. But instead of humans being developed within a shell outside of our mothers, we remain in the uterus and come out when we're done cooking :)
The eggs we pass are not fertilized and are thus, not baby humans. They only have the potential to be a baby human.
Eggs = chicken periods
Periods =/= babies
Vegans do not eat animal products (dairy, eggs, honey, flesh, organs, bone). Vegetarians do not eat animals (flesh, organs). Haven't we covered this enough on this forum?
On a side note, my best friend's mother keeps chickens, mainly for their eggs. (: I don't consider this wrong or immoral at all, I don't even think it's comparable to factory farming, but I still don't think I'll eat them any time soon because, well, they're chicken periods. >.<
I've been a vegetarian for 12 years and haven't eaten eggs directly. Even though I know they are not, I just can't help thinking of eggs as dead baby chickens. I eat things with eggs in them like bread, but if you can see egg or taste it I can't bring myself to eat it.
Eggs aren't alive!
... I guess that's why I find it more OK.
I try to make sure I only eat free-range organic eggs so at least the chickens have a happy life.
Plus my mother currently has about 12 hens in her back yard which are in a massive pen under the apple and fig trees, so I usually just have those eggs during spring/summer when the hens are laying.
Since then I KNOW where they're coming from.
... Otherwise my mum just buys free-range eggs when she can afford it.
I do consider cutting out dairy products and eggs and becoming vegan, but at the moment, i simply can't demand that my mum buy all the expensive vegan alternatives when food prices are already so high!
Once I'm in my own living situation, I will probably consider becoming vegan.
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