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At the risk of this devolving into a typical online veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3 chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to produc

At the risk of this devolving into a typical online veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3 chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to produce unfertilized eggs that will just go to waste

whimsicalism 2y ago
1. I have personally never met someone who only eats backyard eggs. The conditions of commercial egg producers are well documented. 2. You are still essentially using another living being for resources. Why keep the chickens in the first place? They are only going to waste because you bought the chickens in the first place, probably also from an industrial breeder, essentially subsidizing the industry. 3. If your way of producing eggs is more ethical, you could sell your backyard eggs to displace the (pretty awful) commercial producers rather than eating them yourself. I agree that the case against exclusively consuming your own backyard eggs is weaker, but I also don’t think we are describing a considerable proportion of actual egg consumers in the West.
- leetcrew 2y ago
  1. how? healthy chickens lay an egg every 1-2 days. a small number of chickens produce more than enough for an entire household. everyone I know who keeps chickens gives most of the eggs away. 2. chickens are the ultimate garbage disposal. you can feed them any excess food from your household and they turn it into fresh eggs. 3. see 1. the volume of eggs gets out of control fast, but not quite on the scale that it’s viable for random people to build an FDA compliant business out of it. it’s hard to get rid of all of them, even for free.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    1 -> Sure, but are they declining the omelette when they're out for brunch? 2 -> I think the subsidy point still stands. 3 -> Totally agreed but I think your point about giving away eggs applies just as much, any eggs you eat rather than give away are just going to be an additional egg from the chicken CAFOs or at best case a fractional additional egg from the CAFOs. But I certainly agree that this is among the instances where the case is weaker.
collingreen 2y ago
There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their lives for our own ends. There are several important bits and nuances but the overarching point is to not have a world view where you see anything and prioritize what you can get out of it, regardless of the suffering you cause. Sometimes you hear it summarized as "they arent here for us". It is an interesting philosophical bit and it combines pretty standard modern morality with a pointed concept of not discriminating by species and instead trying to use the ability to suffer as when you decide if you should exploit something. In this paradigm the reasons not to rape or enslave people are the same as the reasons not to rape or enslave other animals. This still has plenty of inconsistencies and weird bits, both theoretically and practically. Silly questions like eating braindead people stymie both sides until you get into the weeds about stuff like dignity. Would the theoretical cows in the hitchhikers guide that WANT to be eaten be ok to eat? Is it ok to have second hand animal products, especially if they are high quality and will prevent additional exploitation/consumption? One of the most sticky conundrums I personally chew on is if this means we should actively try to prevent suffering, not just choose to personally try to avoid causing it. If the former, that means trying to make other people change their beliefs and behave in a way that is pretty objectively worse for them in society, which starts to edge toward causing suffering if you squint. It is easy to fall into trying to reason about which suffering is worse which is a terrible minefield where everybody loses. It's easy to SAY I value something no longer being tortured over my taste preference but is there a logical framework for that that can ever be objective and applied to harder problems? If it is only subjective then what makes it better than any other decision - people decide to eat pigs but not dogs every day but there is no more OR LESS reason behind that than the claim above. There might be answers but I haven't found them to be easy to pin down which is especially interesting because of how strongly I feel that not caring any hurting things is bad. tl;dr being vegan sucks
- bnt123 2y ago
  I think we can agree humans tend to see reducing suffering as a good thing, and that people who we believe have caused suffering are viewed with disdain. With that in mind, here's a framework: "given two choices, is there a choice that 1) reduces suffering, and 2) is not prohibitively expensive (or in some other way too difficult to make)". "Too difficult" or "too expensive" is obviously subjective, but I don't think having objective definitions is necessary here. An analogy that I like to illustrate this is: going shopping for clothes vs going shopping for food. Both tend to have ethics attached to them, e.g. with child labor for production of clothing, and slaughtering of animals for production of food. If you walk into a store to buy new clothes, and there are 2 sections of the store, 1 for clothes that were produced using child labor, and 1 for clothes that weren't, and both sections had clothes of the same price and quality, the decision of which section to shop in is very logical. This is how I see going shopping for food- you have sections for food that were produced using factory farming, and sections for food that weren't. Both sources of food are the same price and quality. So the decision to make about which source of food to buy is, again, a logical one. It's also a decision that most people in the developed world have to make every week, at least people who live in cities and do their shopping at grocery stores. While we unfortunately don't have visibility into whether our clothing is produced with child labor, many of us do know if our food comes from factory farms. In the US, the estimate is that over 95% of meat sold in grocery stores is factory-farmed. Why make the decision to buy that if you could easily avoid it?
yesfitz 2y ago
To keep it from devolving, I invite you to search for existing arguments in a search engine of your choice. However, in a show of good-faith, here are 2 answers to your question: 1. Male chicks of laying varieties are ground in a macerator shortly after hatching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling In your fantasy, you could get around this by getting a rooster and breeding your own hens for eggs, but then what will you do with the non-laying males? What about hens who stop laying? Keep in mind, their natural lifespan is 5-10 years. 2. Hens have been bred to produce exponentially more eggs than in the wild. Wild hens lay around 10-20 eggs per year. Domestic hens lay around 250. This development can lead to osteoporosis.

whimsicalism 2y ago

1. I have personally never met someone who only eats backyard eggs. The conditions of commercial egg producers are well documented. 2. You are still essentially using another living being for resources. Why keep the chickens in the first place? They are only going to waste because you bought the chickens in the first place, probably also from an industrial breeder, essentially subsidizing the industry. 3. If your way of producing eggs is more ethical, you could sell your backyard eggs to displace the (pretty awful) commercial producers rather than eating them yourself. I agree that the case against exclusively consuming your own backyard eggs is weaker, but I also don’t think we are describing a considerable proportion of actual egg consumers in the West.

leetcrew 2y ago
1. how? healthy chickens lay an egg every 1-2 days. a small number of chickens produce more than enough for an entire household. everyone I know who keeps chickens gives most of the eggs away. 2. chickens are the ultimate garbage disposal. you can feed them any excess food from your household and they turn it into fresh eggs. 3. see 1. the volume of eggs gets out of control fast, but not quite on the scale that it’s viable for random people to build an FDA compliant business out of it. it’s hard to get rid of all of them, even for free.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  1 -> Sure, but are they declining the omelette when they're out for brunch? 2 -> I think the subsidy point still stands. 3 -> Totally agreed but I think your point about giving away eggs applies just as much, any eggs you eat rather than give away are just going to be an additional egg from the chicken CAFOs or at best case a fractional additional egg from the CAFOs. But I certainly agree that this is among the instances where the case is weaker.

collingreen 2y ago

There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their lives for our own ends. There are several important bits and nuances but the overarching point is to not have a world view where you see anything and prioritize what you can get out of it, regardless of the suffering you cause. Sometimes you hear it summarized as "they arent here for us". It is an interesting philosophical bit and it combines pretty standard modern morality with a pointed concept of not discriminating by species and instead trying to use the ability to suffer as when you decide if you should exploit something. In this paradigm the reasons not to rape or enslave people are the same as the reasons not to rape or enslave other animals. This still has plenty of inconsistencies and weird bits, both theoretically and practically. Silly questions like eating braindead people stymie both sides until you get into the weeds about stuff like dignity. Would the theoretical cows in the hitchhikers guide that WANT to be eaten be ok to eat? Is it ok to have second hand animal products, especially if they are high quality and will prevent additional exploitation/consumption? One of the most sticky conundrums I personally chew on is if this means we should actively try to prevent suffering, not just choose to personally try to avoid causing it. If the former, that means trying to make other people change their beliefs and behave in a way that is pretty objectively worse for them in society, which starts to edge toward causing suffering if you squint. It is easy to fall into trying to reason about which suffering is worse which is a terrible minefield where everybody loses. It's easy to SAY I value something no longer being tortured over my taste preference but is there a logical framework for that that can ever be objective and applied to harder problems? If it is only subjective then what makes it better than any other decision - people decide to eat pigs but not dogs every day but there is no more OR LESS reason behind that than the claim above. There might be answers but I haven't found them to be easy to pin down which is especially interesting because of how strongly I feel that not caring any hurting things is bad. tl;dr being vegan sucks

bnt123 2y ago
I think we can agree humans tend to see reducing suffering as a good thing, and that people who we believe have caused suffering are viewed with disdain. With that in mind, here's a framework: "given two choices, is there a choice that 1) reduces suffering, and 2) is not prohibitively expensive (or in some other way too difficult to make)". "Too difficult" or "too expensive" is obviously subjective, but I don't think having objective definitions is necessary here. An analogy that I like to illustrate this is: going shopping for clothes vs going shopping for food. Both tend to have ethics attached to them, e.g. with child labor for production of clothing, and slaughtering of animals for production of food. If you walk into a store to buy new clothes, and there are 2 sections of the store, 1 for clothes that were produced using child labor, and 1 for clothes that weren't, and both sections had clothes of the same price and quality, the decision of which section to shop in is very logical. This is how I see going shopping for food- you have sections for food that were produced using factory farming, and sections for food that weren't. Both sources of food are the same price and quality. So the decision to make about which source of food to buy is, again, a logical one. It's also a decision that most people in the developed world have to make every week, at least people who live in cities and do their shopping at grocery stores. While we unfortunately don't have visibility into whether our clothing is produced with child labor, many of us do know if our food comes from factory farms. In the US, the estimate is that over 95% of meat sold in grocery stores is factory-farmed. Why make the decision to buy that if you could easily avoid it?

yesfitz 2y ago

To keep it from devolving, I invite you to search for existing arguments in a search engine of your choice. However, in a show of good-faith, here are 2 answers to your question: 1. Male chicks of laying varieties are ground in a macerator shortly after hatching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling In your fantasy, you could get around this by getting a rooster and breeding your own hens for eggs, but then what will you do with the non-laying males? What about hens who stop laying? Keep in mind, their natural lifespan is 5-10 years. 2. Hens have been bred to produce exponentially more eggs than in the wild. Wild hens lay around 10-20 eggs per year. Domestic hens lay around 250. This development can lead to osteoporosis.