Ethical Eggs?

By: Megan

     Free-range. Organic. Cage-free. Vegetarian- fed. All of these are labels put on eggs. What do they mean to vegans? Absolutely nothing. The industry puts these labels on the eggs to make the consumer feel better about what they are doing. Ultimately, the hens used in these industries still are pumped full of hormones to make them produce more eggs than they would naturally. Then, when their bodies are exhausted, they are sent to the slaughterhouse to end up on someone's plate. Personally, I believe that the egg industry is worse than the chicken industry. 

Free-range

Free-range simply means that the hens have access to the outdoors. It does not mean that they are always outside or always have access to go outside. There is no minimum amount of time that they have to have outside. This means that farmers can let the hens outside for an hour out of a 24 hour time period and be considered free-range. After that, they are tightly packed into their cages or shed-like building where they are extremely stressed because there is not nearly enough room. The sad truth is farmers do not have to let the hens go outside at all to be considered free-range. There just has to be a door that leads to the hen enclosure that is open at some point.

Organic

Organic means that the hens are fed an organic diet. Organic foods are foods that have not been genetically modified. It does not mean that the hens are not pumped full of hormones or are not shoved inside a tiny building. Organic hens are treated the way hens that produce regular eggs are treated. 

Cage-free

Cage-free means that the hens are not in cages and have unlimited access to food and water. Unlike battery caged hens they are able to walk around and stretch their wings. This provides the hens with a more natural life and helps steer clear of unnatural behaviors. However, behaviors such as fighting still occur since the hens are in a stressful environment. 

Vegetarian-fed

Vegetarian-fed hens are simply not fed animals in their diet. However, they still can get ahold of insects by natural methods. Again, their diet has nothing to do with the way they are treated and ultimately murdered. 

Backyard Eggs

    Backyard eggs are from hens that small farmers have. They are taken care of a lot better than hens in the industry because it is a smaller scale. I still think it is wrong to take their eggs because they are not ours to take.

Cruelty in the Industry

    It is very important to discuss the cruelty in the industry. The obvious cruelty is the battery-caged hens. They are unable to spread their wings or walk around which causes unnatural behaviors and stress. However, there is much more cruelty that spreads across all egg industries regardless of the label. One common practice is cutting off the tip of the bird's beak. This is to make sure that the birds cannot fatally hurt each other when they fight. This is a painful procedure that is done without any medication. It can also affect the birds because they are unable to eat efficiently. Another part of the industry is fertilized eggs. The chicks have two options of what will happen to them in the egg industry. If the chick is female it will most likely be debeaked at only a few weeks old and be put into the egg industry to be used for her eggs until she will inevitably be killed for food. The males are useless to the egg industry. They are put into a grinder alive and ground up for animal feed. This is standard practice for every store-bought egg industry whether it is free-range or battery-caged. 

Ethics

   The ethics behind eating eggs is possibly the most important thing to discuss. It is so easy to just see the product and forget about the animal behind the product. I am going to do my best to make this topic as simple as possible. Hens work extremely hard to make and lay their eggs which can be a painful process for them. The simplest way to put it is using an analogy. Let's say I had to make a loaf of bread every day. I spent hours putting the ingredients together, letting the dough rise, and baking the bread. Then, someone comes and takes my bread because they think it tastes good. And this does not just happen one time. It happens every day when I make a loaf of bread. Would that be considered morally right? No. because I worked hard and someone is stealing my product so that they can benefit from it. It is the same thing with hens. They work hard to produce their eggs, so we should not be stealing them. Even if they did not work hard it still would not be right because it is taking something that is not ours. Many argue that hens do not have the brain capacity to even care that their eggs are being taken, and maybe they do not care. However, if a person had no brain function would it still be right to take from them because they do not understand? Of course not. Brain function does not equate to value, and hens should not be valued any less because they may not be able to understand. It is also important to note that the egg industry is doing so much more than just taking their eggs. They are devaluing their lives as well as making them mass-produce eggs. Hens are only supposed to lay 10-15 eggs a year, and that is about the number that hens in the wild lay because it is such an intense and time-consuming process. However, hens in the egg industry have been genetically modified to make them produce approximately 300 eggs a year. That is 30 times more than they are supposed to lay. These animals are being used for their bodies for what? Because we like the taste of an egg? 

What is An Egg and Where Does It Come From?

    Now comes the time to answer an important question. What exactly is an egg? Like most animals hens have to be able to reproduce. They do this by laying eggs. If the egg is fertilized then a chick will hatch. If the egg is not fertilized it will just be an egg. All eggs are excreted regardless of if they are fertilized or not because chickens do not have the ability to decipher. Eggs that are not fertilized are simply waste products. Now I will not sit here and debate on whether this is a chicken's menstrual cycle or not, but I will say that they are not some glorious food. The purpose of them is to be fertilized and if they are not then just like with mammals they are just a waste product. Now the fun part. Where do eggs come from? Chickens have a one-stop-shop for excreting all of their waste. Meaning they excrete urine, feces, vaginal fluid, and eggs from the same part called the cloaca. Now do not worry eggs do not come out of the cloaca covered in feces because there is a separation that ensures the two do not mix. However, it does not ensure that there will not be bacteria and organisms living in that area on the egg. It is something to think about before mindlessly choosing to eat them. 

So What Do We Need To Do With Eggs Then?

    Eggs should be fed back to hens. Eggs take a lot of calcium and other minerals to produce, so feeding them back directly to the animal replenishes the nutrients.

An Endnote

    Eggs are not something that we should see as food. We have to think about the victim in this situation and support them. Eggs are not and will never be ethical when they come from a living being.  Most of these hens do not see the light outside until they are put in a truck to be taken to the slaughterhouse. We should not be the ones dictating their life to be this way and instead, we should be trying to fix it.

Good sources of information on this topic

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/business/eggs-that-clear-the-cages-but-maybe-not-the-conscience.html

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/how-decipher-egg-carton-labels

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/cage-free-vs-battery-cage-eggs

https://freefromharm.org/eggs-what-are-you-really-eating/

https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/11/21/why-did-evolution-create-a-chicken-that-lays-so-many-unfertilized-eggs-when-that-is-so-wasteful/