An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide: The Use Of Eggs In Food & Food Products

When I was born, this question was nonexistent in the Jain community, but not anymore. Every day, I see some Jains using eggs either as a food itself or in many prepared and ready to use food items such as cakes, pastries, cookies, ice cream, and some breads, including Indian-made naan and roomali roti served in restaurants. These days, it is not uncommon to see the use of eggs containing cakes at special occasions (for example, weddings or anniversaries) by Jain families. I personally have never eaten such cakes or pastries. Today, eggless cakes are readily available in many places in North America and other countries and they are just as tasty, if not more so.

Since there are two types of eggs available these days - fertilized and unfertilized - some Jains have also posed the question, “What is wrong in using unfertilized eggs?”

I admit that I am not an expert on eggs and types of eggs in the market but Fertilized eggs are eggs that are the product of natural conception between a male chicken and a female chicken; the egg in this case bears life, and would become a chick in due time if not taken and eaten. An unfertilized egg is laid by a female chicken (a hen), but without having been inseminated by a male chicken; in this case, the egg does not contain the embryo of a young chicken. However, when we use unfertilized eggs, we are still committing stealing what belongs to another creature. Additionally, we are keeping the hens in a kind of permanent slavery to harvest their eggs, and so consume what they produce in suffering.

The Incredible, Inedible Egg: FOOTPRINTS OF HIMSA.

On factory egg farms, egg laying hens are housed in intensive confinement buildings where up to 100,000 birds are crammed into a single warehouse in stacked rows of bare wire cells called “battery cages.” Four to six laying hens are crowded into each cage, each of about the size of a folded newspaper, unable to stretch their wings, walk, or even roost. Because of this inability, hens’ feet frequently grow directly around the bare wire of their cages.

To reduce stress-induced pecking and fighting resulting from over-crowding, the hens’ beaks are painfully severed at the tip. This delicate tissue is amputated without the use of anesthesia, using a hot knife or a crude guillotine-like device. De-beaking causes excruciating pain and severe shock and frequently results in death.

Hens are also forced to undergo a production process known as “forced molting.” This common egg industry practice involves denying the birds’ food and water for days on end in order to shock their systems into another egg laying cycle. Ultimately, this destroys a hen’s immune system and greatly increases the risk of salmonella contamination of her eggs.

A hen in a natural environment might live to be fifteen to twenty years old, In contrast, a factory hen, at the age of just eighteen months, when she is no longer capable of producing eggs at the rate required to be lucrative for the business, like her sister the dairy cow, will meet her demise in the abyss of the slaughterhouse. Here she will be ground into pet food or boiled for chicken soup.

Many people naively view dairy and egg production as less abusive than meat production because milk and eggs do not necessitate the immediate deaths of the cows and chickens that produce them. Clearly, dairy and egg farms are not innocuous industries as so many of us have been led to believe. Their alliance with animal abuse and slaughter is inextricable and undeniable.

But What About “Humane” Farms and “Free-Range” Eggs?

Although “free-range” hens are generally given slightly more space to live in than hens kept in battery cages, there is no uniform, industry standard defining how “free-range” hens must be housed. The hens may simply be put into larger cages than their sisters who live on factory farms. In addition, it is common for “free-range” layers to be de-beaked just like battery cage layers. But even if “free-range” hens were given all the space they could use and an environment in which they could fulfill normal social and behavioral needs, they will still be killed for meat when their egg production rates drop off, usually after just one or two years. And, like other “free-range” animals, they are subjected to the horrors of abusive handling, transportation, and slaughter.

It is a myth that “free-range” poultry and egg production is separate from industrial animal production. All forms of animal production are economically related. For example, many small farms buy their birds from mega-industrial factory- farm hatcheries such as Murray McMurray in Iowa. McMurray alone ships 100,000 chicks each week to buyers. “Free-range” producers have joined together with the U.S. Postal Service, cock-fighters and other vested interests to force the airlines to ship baby chicks like luggage, because it is cheapest.

Millions of chicks die en-route of starvation, dehydration, and terror. Despite the factory-farm connection and total inhumanity involved, Polyface Farm owner Joel Salatin speaks for the “free-range” lobby: “We small independent producers rely on that transport. It’s our very lifeblood.” He continues, saying, “People have a soul; animals don’t. Unlike us, animals are not created in God’s image.”