- The hens must come from a hatchery in which the male chicks were not killed, but instead were well-cared for throughout their natural lives. The chicks should all grow up with a mother, not be hatched in an incubator.
- The hens should not be engineered through intensive breeding to lay far more eggs than they would in the wild. Nor should the hens' reproductive systems be "tricked" through artificial lighting into producing extra eggs. Laying 250 to 300 eggs a year instead of 20 eggs a year takes a tremendous toll on the hens' bodies, and causes them to lose calcium and other nutrients and develop osteoporosis.
- The hens should lay normal-size eggs, not "large" or "extra-large" eggs (again, the result of genetic tinkering). The larger eggs are more painful to lay, and, in combination with laying a high number of eggs, increases the chances for complications such as prolapse, a potentially life-threatening malfunction in which the egg sticks to the hen's uterine wall.
- The hens should be in a small, naturally-sized flock and have plenty of pasture in which to roam. The grounds should contain trees, bushes, bales of straw, sufficient shade to provide relief for the hens on hot days, ample sunny spots for sun-bathing, and piles of sand for dust-bathing. The ground cover should be diverse: expanses of grassy areas interspersed with clusters of various understory foliage. Water should be plentiful and fresh, always available, and distributed in both shady and sun-filled areas.
- The flock should be led by one or more roosters, who will steadfastly watch over the flock, maintain order, and look out for and notify others about any suspected dangers or interesting discoveries.
- The hens should have a sturdy barn with plenty of hay, roosting spots, and private nesting areas. The hens should be ushered into the barn every day at dusk and should be let out first thing in the morning.
- The hens should be able to eat their own eggs if they choose—the eggs, after all, belong to them. Hens may ingest some of their own eggs
as a way to restore vitamins and minerals lost during the laying process. This need may be greater for hens who, through breeding, have no
choice but to lay high numbers of eggs, or artificially large eggs. In fact, some farm animal sanctuaries collect the hens' eggs and
mix them into the hens' feed, since the eggs contain valuable nutrients. It's also possible that hens choose to eat some of their own
eggs for other reasons of which we're not aware.
Simply taking eggs from a nest may "trick" the hen into laying more, to make up for the ones that, from her perspective, were stolen. ("Men discovered that by removing from the nest eggs that they did not wish to have hatch [or that they simply wished to eat], they could induce the female jungle fowl to lay additional eggs and, indeed, to continue to lay eggs throughout an extended laying season." —The Chicken Book, Page Smith and Charles Daniel [University of Georgia Press: Athens] 1975 (p. 11-12)]) Hens' pristine ancestors only lay eggs in the spring, then give their bodies a rest.
Good luck meeting those requirements.
But those are just the mechanical, physical considerations.
Part of being ethical is to rid yourself of exploitative desires. In an ethical life, you should not be asking of your fellow creatures, "How can I get something I want from you?" Rather, you should be thinking, "How can I help you (including leaving you alone if that's what you prefer)? What can I do to make your lives as peaceful and satisfying as possible?"
When our attitude toward fellow beings, especially ones who have no rights and are far less powerful than us, is "How can I extract something from you?" it inevitably does not bode well for them. Such a mindset impedes our ability to empathize fully with them; it impairs our ability to genuinely respect them. An "I want—you give" starting point corrupts our relationship with those whom we designate as producers; for instance, rather than appreciating the hens, with no strings attached, for their intrinsic value, we tend to assess them in terms of their human utility value. Will we be disappointed when a hen lays fewer eggs? What about the hen who can't produce? Is she worth any less?
Ideally you want to get to the point where you feel a communion, perhaps a spiritual bond, with the animals with whom we share the planet. When you experience this, you will have compassion for them; their happiness will be your happiness, their sorrows will be your sorrows. You will have no motivation to exploit them; in fact, the very thought will be repugnant—and ethical behavior will be the inevitable and joyous result of your sympathy and deep respect for all sentient individuals. Their contentment on this earth will be reward enough.
In the developed world today, virtually no one needs animal products to survive. You can be perfectly healthy and have a greatly satisfying and diverse diet without them. With that reality in mind, "ethical egg-eating," like "ethical meat-eating," becomes a senseless oxymoron. Probably no one reading this is in dire circumstances, in which they must have eggs—or any animal products—to get by, so the answer to "How can I ethically eat eggs?" is: "You can't. In fact, the problem is that you're asking the question."
Further Thoughts
To take something from an animal simply because you can, or for superficial "pleasure"—that fits into no ethical framework. To create animals purely for self-gratification is a violation of basic principles such as the Golden Rule—imagine if that were done to you—and to manipulate the animals at their expense in order to satisfy your inessential desires is a gross ethical transgression.
Fortunately, it's easy to stop eating eggs. You just stop. It's fairly straightforward. It's a lot easier than trying to fool yourself with unconvincing reasons not to stop. Keep in mind that "no eggs" means not just passing up the egg department at the supermarket—and the farmers market—but checking labels of baked goods to make sure they don't contain eggs. When in doubt, assume most cookies, muffins, and cakes have eggs.
The most common barriers to giving up eggs (and meat and dairy) are psychological: You're used to certain foods, you've eaten them since before you can remember, you like to fit in with the group and don't want to be the one for whom your friends and family have to make special arrangements or who has to frequently ask, "Is that made with eggs?" Maybe you don't see yourself as a "vegetarian" or "vegan;" it clashes with your self-image—that's actually a fairly common though invisible stumbling block. There are lots of good articles with tips and hints on how to get eggs out of your diet, and some excellent sites on the web (including this one) that provide friendly support and encouragement for going egg-free. For now, let me just give you the bottom line: The thing that will enable you to ditch eggs permanently is, above all, your conviction. Everything else is just details.
As Spike Lee says, "Do the right thing." What's beautiful is that you can do it immediately. I can almost promise that you'll feel great about it, and it's quite likely that you'll look back and ask yourself: "Why didn't I do this earlier? Why did I waste my time trying to justify something that's not right and so easy to give up? Why did I think it would be so hard?" Then you'll help others, and before too long, "ethical egg-eating" will be seen as a misguided anachronism from a less enlightened time.
This Article Came About...
...primarily because of two related scenarios that I often witness.
The first is when someone asks, "How can I eat eggs humanely?" as if there were a few simple rules that, once followed, would ethically permit one to take hens' eggs. It may be an indication of the deep level to which animal exploitation in general and egg-eating in particular is entrenched in our society that such questions arise so frequently, almost always with the assumption that using hens as vessels to provide us with eggs is a given, and perfectly acceptable; the questioner just wants someone—perhaps a handy vegan who cares about animals and can speak with some authority—to provide the ethical check-off list that will leave the egg-eater in the clear.
The other variation is, "How can I eat eggs without any guilt?" There are basically two ways an egg-eater can address this problem. One way is for them to harden their hearts, and/or to engage in denial or willful ignorance about the death and suffering they cause. This fixes nothing. In addition, if you are of sound mind, I believe it's impossible to completely suppress guilt that's caused by repetitively doing something you know is wrong. When you succumb to meanness or selfishness, when you depart from the Golden Rule and other fundamental moral principles, at some level you destroy inner balance and create turmoil. Even if you are distanced from the harsh effects of your actions by elegantly constructed defense mechanisms that are second nature at the conscious level, your conscience isn't fooled. Neither is your spleen or your liver or your back. Chronic, unrepentant wrongdoing may come back to strike you in the form of ulcers, headaches, back problems, ill tempers, or disturbing dreams.
There is a much simpler approach to avoiding guilt: Don't engage in the behavior that causes it. Rather than make minor tweaks here and there, just stop doing it, then you won't have to play all these rationalization games; you'll be free and clear. That the solution is so jarringly straightforward may be one reason it's often passed over in search of something more convoluted, incremental, and long-term. It's a bit easier on the conscience and perhaps the psyche—and perhaps the lifestyle—to have a long-range phase-out plan; you can put off a lot of the changes until tomorrow.
All that said, I'm grateful that people are actually—finally—asking these questions, even if they fall far short of a serious attempt to rid one's self of exploitative behaviors or challenge the underlying assumption that birds' eggs are our entitlement. I'm glad there is at least some emerging concern for hens' interests. I'll take that over apathy any day. If people don't care one bit about the ethical consequences of their food choices, and mindlessly pick up the cheapest carton of eggs whenever they go to the store, we're doomed; if they're at least showing some awareness of the issue and experiencing some conflict between their ethics and their behavior—even if they're somewhat stuck in exploitative habits, misinformed, self-protective, or reluctant to change—we have something to work with.
The goal of this article, which started as "notes to self" to help in my activism, is to leverage, as much as possible, the aforementioned queries; it's an attempt to most expeditiously get askers to the bottom line, to realize that the only way to "ethically eat eggs" is not only to refrain from eating them but not to want them in the first place.