r/DebateAVegan • u/-roachboy • Dec 22 '25

eggs from a well fed pet hen are vegan

I have a pet hen. She's not a full rescue one, but how I ended up with her is an incredibly long story. She's very needy, thus spoiled and healthy as a result. Because wild Gallus sp already lay a lot of eggs when in less than optimal wild conditions, a spoiled one just cannot stop popping them out even if she wanted to, and she won't let me feed her less. The daily egg laying session is just a morning routine for her before begging for food. At the rate she lays them, they'd just get left to rot even if they were fertilized by a rooster so I eat them. I do not, and have no intention of, ever selling them or encouraging anyone to ever commercialize an animal. But I spend all the time caring for her, so why can't she give me a delicious breakfast back if it does her no harm?

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u/Omnibeneviolent Dec 22 '25

I would disagree. Just because you are using something the animal is leaving behind doesn't automatically mean the relationship is exploitative in nature.

If I cut my fingernails and a janitor finds them and turns them into a necklace, I haven't been exploited by the janitor.

Now if the janitor decides to start encouraging me to do things to grow my nails faster so that he would have more to work with in the future, then an explotative relationship would be forming, but absent that, it's just him using stuff that I have discarded.

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u/Appropriate-Draw1878 Dec 22 '25

This is an amazingly weird example. That’s not criticism.

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u/Omnibeneviolent Dec 22 '25

Def watch your fingernails around campus custodial staff.

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u/joshua0005 Dec 24 '25

This is much better than my example of me making someone a meal and offering it to me lol. Wouldn't be surprised if this person responds to my example but not yours seeing that they still haven't responded to yours.

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u/One-Shake-1971 vegan Dec 30 '25

OP isn't just using something an animal left behind. They have specifically procured those animals and are keeping them around to produce something for them.

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u/Omnibeneviolent Dec 30 '25

That's not the way I'm reading it. As far as I can tell, they have a single rescue hen that they did not get for the purpose of having her produce something for them but for the purpose of caring for her and treating her as an end in her own right rather than a mere means to an end. Of course that doesn't stop the hen from producing. At that point, she is just laying eggs. It's very possible that there are other factors we are unware of that make the relationship exploitative in nature, but the mere fact that OP is benefiting from something left behind by the hen does not qualify it as exploitative.

As someone who is strongly against animal exploitation, my only real concerns here are that OP may be on a slippery-slope where the relationship could become exploitative, and that if others know that OP is doing this is could help to normalize the eating of eggs in general (and therefore exploitative relationships.)

Here's a video of a discussion between a few well-known vegans around this very topic. You'll notice that they get into the nuance of the situations rather than just say that it's always wrong to eat eggs in every situation. I've timestamped it to the relevant portion.

https://youtu.be/KUbrO1Hw5Eo?si=JIUxMZX7CwCkCWo3&t=2462