Vegans and unfirtilized eggs?

Vegans don't eat animal products (edit - do their best to avoid any animal products - thank you Sheila). Simple as that.

It seems kind of odd to demand an answer to this question, unless you were trying to point out how silly vegans are or something (which the vast majority of them aren't). Its someone elses choice, and its not affecting you at all, so why get so frustrated with honest answers?

i do not know why a vegan would not eat an egg from a chicken they kept themselves. they dont eat animal products because of the conditions in factory farms, and they dont eat meat because of the conditions and the fact that they are killed. an egg from a chicken raised by you is treated well, happy, and definately not killed for the egg. the egg does not hatch into anything, it does not have a purpose whatsoever except for food for either a human or another animal. not eating the egg is wasting it. ie: it is more moral to eat the egg than to leave it to rot or throw it out. this is a perfectly logic qustion with a logical explanation, but for some reason you are getting the most illogical and nonsensical responses. (sidenote: i luuurve silkies!!! they are the most adorable things!!) 8]

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i also find the whole "keeping animals is wrong" thing illogical. The purpose of life is to live happy. we do things to make us happy, if we are unhappy we dont want to live. this is true for other animals too. So if you are keeping an animal and it is happy, healthy, and content, how could this be a bad thing? especially with chickens. chickens do not have any defenses againt predators. they do not live in the wild nowadays, they are only kept alive by humans. so theoretically, if humans didnt keep chickens, they would go extinct, or atleast extremely endangered. which is exactly what all the nature and animal conservationalists dont want to happen. therefore, again, logically keeping chickens and eating their eggs hurts no one and nothing.

There is much confusion about what exactly a vegan is. Most people who aren't vegans, and lots who are, think that it is a diet that excludes all animal products. By definition, veganism involves excluding the use of all animals wherever possible, not just in the diet. It doesn't directly have anything to do with factory farming, it is to do with using animals against their will and instincts. Vegans do not eat eggs because that involves treating the chooks as nothing more than little food factories. The chooks don't lay the eggs for humans to eat.

And regardless of how well the chooks are raised, there is the problem of what happens to the brothers of the egg-layers. They are considered a waste product as they're unable to lay eggs and unsuitable to raise for eating. They are killed as soon as they've hatched, and turned into fertiliser.

Personally the only ethical situation i can see of eating eggs is if you keep chickens like pets. Even at that it is common for chickens to consume the eggshell to get back nutrients as modern chickens have extreme stress on their system for developing eggs (their lay is completely unnatural) due to selective breeding by humans. Thus you're still taking from them something that isn't yours to take in the first place & treating the animal as a commodity to receive eggs from, it also raises the question of when the hen is spent (can't lay anymore) will you keep it as a pet?

But as it is, many vegans feel domesticating animals is unnatural & breeding them to sell is inherently abusive. You can ask further questions about this point or research

actually, if you leave the unfertilized egg it will start to rot and the chicken (or any other bird) will push it out of the nest. It usually won't explode under the chicken. It's like eating your friend when you are lost in Antarctica if he were to die. It is a psychological/moral thing. You don't harm him (unless it's your fault he died) but you still don't want to eat him. So, yes, saying it is animal protein is a moral thing. I also would like to know what a "chook" is.

Seems like you are simply trying to justify yourself in anyway you can, when many of us have given you our honest answers.

I'm happier with other people eating eggs that came from people that treated their chickens well, but I wouldn't be the one to eat them. I see it as taking something that is not mine. The chicken did not give their eggs to me, so I don't take them. As I said though, I'd rather people support local farms that treat their animals well, than factory farms.

This topic has been thoroughly discussed on vegan forums and most of the time, if any vegans adopted any chickens (not bought from hatcheries as they discard the male chicks), they said they would feed their eggs back to the hens, or use them in compost to help grow food for hem. Some also said they would be okay with eating the eggs, but they know that wouldn't be vegan , but that's okay with them.

Maybe they don't have a moral objection to humanely raised chickens and eggs, but they believe a vegan diet to be optimal for the health.