I am. I also advocate for the animals on a personal level. The two aren't mutually exclusive-- and in the case of a consumer-driven institution like the meat, dairy, and egg industry, individual choices drive change quicker than legislation. If we put off standing up for animals until animal agriculture was no longer legal, Just Mayo wouldn't be taking over the mayonnaise market and Ben & Jerry's wouldn't be releasing a non-dairy ice cream line. The popular opinion of animal products is changing because thousands of us are talking about these issues, sharing veganism with our family and friends, and raising awareness. It's no small feat, and it would never have happened if we'd all decided to mind our own business.

I'm not very knowledgeable about honey, so I'll leave that for someone else to explain.

Milk, on the other hand, is an issue I could talk about at length. In order to produce milk, a cow needs to become pregnant. This is done through artificial insemination on something called a "rape rack." The calf is then ripped from its mother, usually within the first couple of days after birth-- an experience which is extremely distressing for both mother and baby-- and the calf, if male, is slaughtered. The milk intended, as is all milk, for the baby is taken and sold to us, despite the fact that we have no need for it. The process then begins again and continues until the mother can no longer produce enough milk to justify the cost of her upkeep, at which point she is slaughtered. What part of this could possibly be considered ethical?

That's my main reason. There's others. By definition, honey isn't vegan because it is aquired through the exploitation of animals.

Drones are often killed because they are not useful to honey production. Queens may also be killed or have their wings removed to prevent swarming.

Honey isn't actually a by-product of bees; they produce it to survive on during the winter months .

Farmed bees can crowd out the native, natural pollinators.

Honey is nectar that has been swallowed, regurgitated, and mixed with saliva- many times.

I know a lot of people that are beekeepers. They never do any such things. I'm not saying someone might do that, but they've never heard of it.

It is the "getting eaten" part that bothers me. Even if the male chicks aren't ground up at birth, as is often the case, they are eaten when they are very young. You can't have a bunch of roosters running around, they will fight. And inseminate the hens, which is a problem for people having issues with eating fertilized eggs.

So if I don't eat chicken eggs at all, however humanely their mothers are treated, then no one has to kill male chickens to accomodate my wanting to eat chicken eggs.

Mm-hm. Like the man whose neighbor has a magical milk farm where calves aren't separated and males live out their natural lives in never-ending fields of green. This neighbor only takes excess milk that the calf doesn't suckle AND turns a profit on such. Older cows go live in these wondrous fields when they're no longer profitable.

Or the lady whose uncle runs a humane chicken farm... the hens roam around happy and excess roosters are never culled, always fed and kept. Old hens are retired and never killed to save money.

Yes, bees kept for agricultural reasons *MAY* be treated more humanely than bees kept for honey production. However, honey, like milk and eggs, are products. They are produced and sold for profit. If an older queen isn't profitable anymore, replacing her with a young queen makes more sense.

That's why folks against the exploitation of animals refuse to use animal products.

Bees? Queens die, or they start new hives. People do keep chickens as pets, and they do lay eggs. Hens do not need a rooster around to lay eggs. So if you have a couple of chickens, you will get about two eggs a day. That's a lot of eggs, and there is nothing inhumane about it. Why would you not want that?

Jesus Christ, you would've been a perfect citizen when SLAVERY was legal. Hey it's legal, why do I care eh?

Sorry, I'm not trying to aggravate you. But legality does not mean it's moral. It's natural to feel disgusted by immoral actions even if the society at large does not think that action is immoral.

Do you not understand what factory farms are? How they operate? How could you condone that?

Backyard breeders are not immune to animal cruelty. Friends with chickens treated like pets... wonderful. I have some friends like that. From where did those chickens come? Most likely from breeders who cull useless males (or sell them off for cockfighting). What do they do when the chicken becomes useless for egg-laying? When an animal is used for it's produce or profit, he/she is generally discarded as waste or sold/used for meat when production declines. I do not see that as humane.

I'm sure that there are a few cases where people who exploit animals for their secretions, estrus waste, and vomit treat the animals great, keep all the "useless" offspring, and never cull any whose production drops. But you must be aware that this is not the norm.

In my experience, the folks who buy "humane" meat, free-range eggs, milk from "happy" cows, etc. realize that there is a problem with CAFOs. And that's a good thing. They are on the right path and beginning to make a connection. They feel a twinge of conscious about what happens to the beings from which their food comes, and they try to appease it.

Personally, I find the thought of drinking breast milk as an adult repulsive. Same goes for the waste from a bird's reproductive cycle, or bee vomit. If you find them appetizing, well, that's your business. These "products" are generally not humane, no matter how many smiling animal pics you slap on the package.

Eggs are not waste. They are what chickens do.

Sure, I don't like factory farms, or commercial feedlots. That's why I don't eat meat. But I am not going to take it the extreme, like saying bees are exploited for honey, when nothing is killed, or saying that humane eggs are bad because it's possible that the chicken's grandfather was born on a factory farm. That's pretty extreme.

As far as I can see, the only humane way to get eggs is from a rescue chicken. I can respect eating these eggs. I wouldn't eat them myself, but I might feed them to my dogs.

Bees are exploited for their honey. That's not extreme; it's a simple truth, and the bees are often killed. Even the best beekeeper is going to kill some bees. We've all killed insects, whether or not we try to, but let's not say "nothing gets killed." The queen often gets her wings cut off, too.

I suppose that menstruation is just "what women do" when our own eggs haven't been fertilized, but why would that make menstrual blood a desirable food product?

You asked "why wouldn't you want that?" I ask: why would you? Considering that the vast majority of eggs are produced in a way that even you yourself recognize as inhumane, why would you want to justify eating eggs on the whole because you've heard that somewhere there are rescue hens laying eggs? Do you, personally, only consume eggs from backyard rescue hens? Do you never eat egg-containing products from restaurants or grocery stores? Why do you feel the need to eat eggs at all, since doing so is completely unnecessary?

Really? You don't see a difference?

If your argument is that unfertilized chicken eggs are food simply because laying eggs is "a thing that chickens do," then I don't see a significant difference, no. Menstruation is a thing that I do. Why are chicken eggs a delicacy worth the suffering and death of millions while my unfertilized eggs-- which could conceivably be obtained with my consent-- aren't?

The answer, of course, is that it's completely absurd for us to eat a woman's eggs. This is true for a female of any species. Chickens don't lay eggs for human consumption any more than I menstruate for human consumption.

Well, I suppose if you could pop out an intact egg every day, separate from some sort of uterine lining and bloody mess, then it would be the same thing.

So you've just changed your argument from "eggs are food, not waste, because laying eggs is what chickens do" to "eggs are food, not waste, if they're big enough to hold in my hand and not bloody"?

No, I'm pointing out the folly of your argument that your menstrual cycle somehow equatable with a chicken laying an egg.

It's not only comparable, it's the same: the part of the female reproductive cycle when our bodies discard an unfertilized egg. I pass uterine lining along with the egg; a chicken occasionally bleeds during laying. The only difference is that a chicken's egg is larger and therefore easier to clean. If I could effectively clean the blood off human eggs, would you consider them food products? Would you eat them?

Remember, this entire conversation began because you stated that chicken's eggs are food rather than bodily waste. I've been trying to understand how you arrived at this conclusion. Rather than clarifying your position, you've been dodging my questions. I don't think you want to admit to the real reason why you believe it's acceptable and appropriate to eat chicken's eggs, which is that you were told it's acceptable and appropriate. There is no logic behind it-- it's just how you were raised.

Are you menstruating 365 days of the year? Do you seriously believe you are like a chicken?

Why eat something that has been genetically modified and is to be used only for reproduction? Such as corn?

Studies have shown that the most effective way to combat bullying is for bystanders to not condone it by not doing anything. If the bystanders don't simply stand by, but rather condemn the act of bullying, the bullying behavior ceases.

How is the frequency of menstruation at all relevant to a discussion of why you consider a chicken's menstrual waste to be a food product? Are you suggesting that if I menstruated daily, then you would consider eating my unfertilized eggs in your breakfast burrito? Why does that matter?

It's a very simple question: why is a chicken's reproductive cycle a desirable food product while a human woman's is not? I don't understand why you've been evading the question. Just answer it plainly, if you know the answer.

Laying chickens, by the way, have been genetically modified. Ironically, that's precisely why they lay so many eggs so frequently. I'm not sure what corn has to do with anything, but for the record, I've not been arguing for or against genetic modification in this thread. I am simply pointing out the logical inconsistency in asserting that a chicken's unfertilized egg has some inherent quality which makes it "food" while a human's doesn't.

Both a chicken and I have reproductive cycles which involve the bodily discharge of unfertilized eggs, so in that sense-- the only one that matters for the purposes of this conversation-- yes, I am like a chicken. That's not a belief but a fact. It's not akin to saying "I am exactly like a chicken in every way," which would be absurd. That's not how comparisons work.

An egg is a good source of nutrition and is good for cooking other things. It does not kill a chicken to lay an egg, (or any other bird for that matter. My cockatiel used to lay eggs) A human egg is not the same as a chicken egg. It is not enclosed in a hard shell. It is not fresh. and, it is a human. Most humans do not take part in cannibalism.

Not eating eggs from a pet chicken makes no sense, since nothing dies when an egg is laid.

Also, an egg is not menstrual waste, unless you are aware of chickens that give birth to live offspring. Do you know of any birds that do that?

I don't believe the word "menstrual" was used by me.

Eggs are produced and laid regardless of whether they are fertile. True story. Unfertilized eggs are, therefore, a waste product of the reproductive system.

http://freefromharm.org/eggs-what-ar...really-eating/

http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/nielsen/ww...vianrepro.html

We don't simply eat anything that provides nutrients (dogs, cockroaches, kittens) and, for all we know, consuming a woman's menstrual waste may very well be nutritious. It's certainly high in iron.

By "good for cooking other things," do you mean that chicken's eggs are often listed as ingredients in recipes? If I were to write a recipe book full of creative and interesting ways to utilize my menstrual waste in the kitchen, would my unfertilized eggs become "food" in your view? Does something become a food product, by definition, the moment someone eats it? (Recipe ideas: spaghetti and "on the Ragu" sauce, Blood orange smoothie...)

It doesn't kill me to menstruate, either, although it sometimes feels that way!

The texture of an egg seems like a rather arbitrary measure for determining whether it is food or waste, and even as an arbitrary measure, it doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny. Fish eggs are considered "food" by many despite their lack of a hard shell.

I don't know what you mean by the word "fresh" in this context. In what capacity are a chicken's eggs "fresh" while mine are not? (Should I be offended?)

It's a bit of a stretch to call the eating of menstrual blood cannibalism. A human egg isn't a human; it comes from a human-- like spit, semen, urine. I doubt you would consider someone who ingests such things cannibals. You certainly couldn't report it to the police. But I think you've touched on a true and honest justification for eating chicken's eggs: speciesism. That is, the idea that we, as humans, are fundamentally superior to other species of animal, to the point where we don't view their lives or their bodies as their own, but rather ours to use as we please. We would never consider harvesting a human woman's unfertilized eggs for food, even if we enjoyed the taste and could really use the iron, because doing so strikes us as innately wrong, a severe invasion of that woman's privacy and autonomy. We allow human women the ability to exist, to menstruate, to lactate, to procreate without taking anything from their bodies to sell or consume for our own benefit. We do not offer this same basic decency to female chickens or cows.

By that logic, not eating unfertilized eggs from a human woman makes no sense, since nothing dies when a woman menstruates. I would (and do) argue the opposite: forcibly taking any bodily secretion from any animal for the purpose of eating it makes absolutely no sense to me, unless we're in some kind of survival situation. If we don't need to eat things that have come from someone else's body, or if it's not some sort of consensual sex thing between adults who are presumably into that, then why do it? "Because my favourite cake recipe calls for eggs" strikes me as a flimsy excuse. Use applesauce or crushed banana instead. Google around for a vegan cake!

I think what you probably meant to say was that "eating eggs from a chicken isn't inhumane, because chickens don't die" or that "eating eggs from a pet chicken isn't inhumane, because the animal is well looked after."

In the first case, I would point you to the fact that laying hens live tortured lives in horrible conditions before slaughter and that male chicks are ground alive shortly after hatching-- in other words, everyone dies.

In the second case, I would stray from the accepted vegan position and say: You know what? If you've rescued hens from farm life, if you treat them well and know that they're healthy, if you plan to let them live their remainder of their lives in peace, and for some reason you get your kicks from eating their reproductive waste, then go for it. I personally find it revolting, but aside from the obvious speciest attitude involved, I can't really think of a good moral argument against it. Knock yourself out. However, don't try to use this as a justification for eating eggs obtained from any other source. The eggs you order at restaurants, or buy at the store or from your local farm, are not eggs taken from pampered rescue hens.

An unfertilized egg is reproductive waste. There's no uterine lining, so you're right that "menstrual" isn't the proper term, though I don't think "reproductive waste" sounds much more appetizing. It's not as though the idea of an unfertilized human egg sounds delicious until you mention that a uterus was involved.

Yep, that was me. I apologize for using the wrong terminology. I was getting sick of typing "unfertilized egg" repeatedly and was searching for another descriptive phrase, and I unwisely chose one that's factually incorrect. Sorry! I'll stick to the factual "reproductive waste" from now on.

When will we start serving bloody mary in a vegan's mooncup ?

I only buy local honey, and the people who produce it love their bees. They would never do anything to harm them. And the bees are good for the local plant life. If everyone raised bees, the world would be a better place.

Dude, that is freaking disgusting. Seriously.

OK, now you are getting way out there. Humans eating humans is cannibalism. To say we use other animal species is common in the animal kingdom, and that includes us. Lions eat gazelles. They don't eat other lions? Are they wrong? Porpoises eat fish. Are they wrong? Humans eat meat? Is it wrong? It's not something I would do, but it's just as wrong to judge other by your standards, which even you have to admit, is pretty extreme.

I'm sorry I have to jump in here. When a woman has a period she is expelling waste. A human reproductive cycle takes place inside the body from start to finish. A live human emerges at the end. A chicken does not. A chicken expels an egg to then be further nurtured into a live critter. To compare the waste from a uterus to the egg of a chicken really shows a lack of complete common sense and any rational thought process.