Despite the commonly-held belief that eating eggs is an ethical alternative to meat, nothing could be farther from the truth. The stress of being treated as egg-laying machines causes hens to peck at themselves and others, ripping out feathers and eyes, a behavior that is unheard of in chickens raised outside of captivity. To prevent injury, most hens have their beaks are sliced off by a hot blade and without anesthetic. After laying about 300 eggs, her bones leached of calcium and often unable to walk, an egg-laying hen is killed for her flesh just a year after she is born.
For the more than 100 million male chicks every year, the day they hatch will be the last day of their lives. Unable to lay eggs and too small be sold as broiler chickens, male chicks have no commercial value and are gassed or ground alive at just one day old. Tragically this is a reality across all egg production; cage free or “humane” eggs are no different. The killing of male chicks and eventual slaughter of “spent” hens are standard industry practice and can only be avoided by rejecting eggs entirely.
There are plenty of free-range farms with good conditions (at least in the country I live in), and you're exaggerating in an attempt to equate all eggs with factory production (the conditions of which truly are appalling).
The stress of being treated as egg-laying machines causes hens to peck at themselves and others, ripping out feathers and eyes, a behavior that is unheard of in chickens raised outside of captivity.
Hens peck at each other to establish primacy in the wild, or in non-factory conditions very like the wild, losing feathers etc. Animal violence is not down to the conditions humans hold them in. Hence the phrase 'pecking order' which originated far before factory farming of chickens. Violence is probably worse in factory conditions and I'm sure some hens will simply go insane given the conditions you describe, but they do naturally peck at each other to establish dominance.
The killing of male chicks and eventual slaughter of “spent” hens are standard industry practice and can only be avoided by rejecting eggs entirely.
They are only standard industry practice in factory farms. On small free range farms or private holdings of chickens, these practices often don't hold. Note that most chickens won't survive in the wild though, so if they are released, they quickly die from predation.
Whether a vegetarian should eat the young of another species harvested before birth is another question (I can see arguments either way), but factory farming is not the only way to harvest eggs and not all eggs are produced that way.
They have access to a rather large chicken run and often have complete free range through our large lot (& sometimes the neighbors...). My kids were just watching a hen follow a robin around, waiting for it to get a worm out of the lawn, so the hen could rush in and steal it.
The hens peck each other, often viciously drawing blood.
We've continued feeding hens after they've largely stopped laying.
We got mixed runs of chicks, and when the males started crowing, they were freed on a neighbor's farm to live out the rest of their natural lives. (Neighbors liked the idea of chickens, but not roosters crowing...)
So, I imagine we're enslaving the hens and abandoning the roosters, as well as consuming their unborn offspring.
I don't mean to belittle your important message, but I'm quite sure the vast majority of this does not apply to my neighbors who have 4 hens as approved of by our city's law allowing backyard urban hens. In this context, the hens live in a modest backyard free-but-small-range area. It is becoming quite a lot more popular to do this and we've thought of doing it ourselves.
I think the problem is with brutal mass-production agriculture rather than with eggs per se.
Maybe some of us have friends with chickens who get to run around pretty much as they like. Not everyone buys factory farmed eggs. But thanks for playing.
Your friends most likely got their chicks from a hatchery that culls male chicks. It's not just factory farming that's an issue, the entire agricultural industry has serious issues.
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Despite the commonly-held belief that eating eggs is an ethical alternative to meat, nothing could be farther from the truth. The stress of being treated as egg-laying machines causes hens to peck at themselves and others, ripping out feathers and eyes, a behavior that is unheard of in chickens raised outside of captivity. To prevent injury, most hens have their beaks are sliced off by a hot blade and without anesthetic. After laying about 300 eggs, her bones leached of calcium and often unable to walk, an egg-laying hen is killed for her flesh just a year after she is born.
For the more than 100 million male chicks every year, the day they hatch will be the last day of their lives. Unable to lay eggs and too small be sold as broiler chickens, male chicks have no commercial value and are gassed or ground alive at just one day old. Tragically this is a reality across all egg production; cage free or “humane” eggs are no different. The killing of male chicks and eventual slaughter of “spent” hens are standard industry practice and can only be avoided by rejecting eggs entirely.
There are plenty of free-range farms with good conditions (at least in the country I live in), and you're exaggerating in an attempt to equate all eggs with factory production (the conditions of which truly are appalling).
The stress of being treated as egg-laying machines causes hens to peck at themselves and others, ripping out feathers and eyes, a behavior that is unheard of in chickens raised outside of captivity.
Hens peck at each other to establish primacy in the wild, or in non-factory conditions very like the wild, losing feathers etc. Animal violence is not down to the conditions humans hold them in. Hence the phrase 'pecking order' which originated far before factory farming of chickens. Violence is probably worse in factory conditions and I'm sure some hens will simply go insane given the conditions you describe, but they do naturally peck at each other to establish dominance.
The killing of male chicks and eventual slaughter of “spent” hens are standard industry practice and can only be avoided by rejecting eggs entirely.
They are only standard industry practice in factory farms. On small free range farms or private holdings of chickens, these practices often don't hold. Note that most chickens won't survive in the wild though, so if they are released, they quickly die from predation.
Whether a vegetarian should eat the young of another species harvested before birth is another question (I can see arguments either way), but factory farming is not the only way to harvest eggs and not all eggs are produced that way.
> Whether a vegetarian should eat the young of another species harvested before birth is another question [...]
Unless you are talking about Balut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)), the eggs we are eating are usually not fertilized. So it's not `eating the young'.
We have chickens.
They have access to a rather large chicken run and often have complete free range through our large lot (& sometimes the neighbors...). My kids were just watching a hen follow a robin around, waiting for it to get a worm out of the lawn, so the hen could rush in and steal it.
The hens peck each other, often viciously drawing blood.
We've continued feeding hens after they've largely stopped laying.
We got mixed runs of chicks, and when the males started crowing, they were freed on a neighbor's farm to live out the rest of their natural lives. (Neighbors liked the idea of chickens, but not roosters crowing...)
So, I imagine we're enslaving the hens and abandoning the roosters, as well as consuming their unborn offspring.
Oh, well.
I don't mean to belittle your important message, but I'm quite sure the vast majority of this does not apply to my neighbors who have 4 hens as approved of by our city's law allowing backyard urban hens. In this context, the hens live in a modest backyard free-but-small-range area. It is becoming quite a lot more popular to do this and we've thought of doing it ourselves.
I think the problem is with brutal mass-production agriculture rather than with eggs per se.
Maybe some of us have friends with chickens who get to run around pretty much as they like. Not everyone buys factory farmed eggs. But thanks for playing.
Your friends most likely got their chicks from a hatchery that culls male chicks. It's not just factory farming that's an issue, the entire agricultural industry has serious issues.