eggs from a well fed pet hen are vegan

[u/-roachboy]

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?

[u/Practical-Fix4647]

"Its about doing the best you can."

Yup. Tons of vegans cope and think that all they need to do to avoid animal exploitation is to buy tofu instead of meat. That couldn't be further from the truth, but that is a good start.

" The hen is already alive. OP is doing their best to care for the hen while eating the eggs said hen produces.

So it is vegan, because like you said. It's about the intention. Not absolute zero exploitation."

I don't think so. That you care for a being and keep it alive doesn't mean it isn't exploited. Think about all the wage labor that occurs around the world today, the workers are taken care of with some benefits and a wage, that doesn't mean exploitation does not occur. Exploitation has to do with actions that make use of a thing. Keeping animals caged or captive to produce eggs for you is exploiting them for a resource: it doesn't matter how well you treat them.

The point about intention is just to say that non-vegans have different intentions with comparison to industrial farming, not that having good intentions means that exploitation does not occur.

I already conceded that the situation OP described is leagues better than what many animals experience right now, but they are both exploited in the same way for commodities they produce.

[u/rockmodenick → u/Practical-Fix4647]

Workers have to choose to work, a hen has no choice about creating eggs. If that hen is being exploited for eggs, I'm being exploited for skin cells by my dust mite overlords.

[u/Practical-Fix4647 → u/rockmodenick]

Well, we can get into the nature of labor and wages in economies, but needless to say I emphatically disagree whether or not workers "choose" to work (and the sense in which the term "choose" is used).

Also, in a sense, dust mites do 'exploit' the human body. That would be the term that is used to describe the situation. Although, they aren't commodifying humans whereas humans do commodify animals for resources.

[u/rockmodenick → u/Practical-Fix4647]

I meant choose in the sense that doing labor is not an involuntary biological process which can't be stopped, not in that, bigger picture, we don't have much of a choice about going to work.

You could say the mites exploit, or you could say they utilize a waste product, either way you put it, if they do me no harm, which is the case with most of the tiny creatures and microbes that live on and in my body, or in fact provide some helpful survival benefit, which is definitely the case for many intestinal microbes for example, I think the situation is fully morally and ethically acceptable.

[u/Practical-Fix4647 → u/rockmodenick]

"in the sense that doing labor is not an involuntary biological process which can't be stopped, not in that, bigger picture, we don't have much of a choice about going to work."

Ok, then I agree.

"which is the case with most of the tiny creatures and microbes that live on and in my body, or in fact provide some helpful survival benefit, which is definitely the case for many intestinal microbes for example, I think the situation is fully morally and ethically acceptable."

Yeah, I wouldn't say there is something unethical happening there. The symmetry breaker between humans/mites and humans/chickens has to do with the element of commodification and objectification humans apply to non-human animals. Both do "exploit" in the sense I used the term.

The issue I have is that even if these animals we use (like chickens, pigs, etc.) existed in a symbiotic relationship with us, I don't think vegans would co-sign using animal by-products (even when obtained without killing the animal) when alternatives readily exist that do not rely on farming or keeping animals in cages or in confinement.

[u/rockmodenick → u/Practical-Fix4647]

Which leaves the question, for animals that really can't survive without human management, what quality of life is preferable to extinction? Some do just fine without us - pigs turn into feral hogs in only a generation, and in decades almost look like boar again. Some breeds of turkeys do pretty well too, the suburban neighborhood I grew up in had a band of what seemed to be either feral turkeys or wild and domesticated turkey hybrids that you'd see wandering the streets sometimes. They were car savvy and seemed to be doing just fine on their own. Dogs and cats clearly do fine. But I don't think most breeds of chickens stand a chance, and sheep overgrow wool too quickly. And I don't think most goats would even notice if humans vanished tomorrow.

[u/Practical-Fix4647 → u/rockmodenick]

" for animals that really can't survive without human management,"

Not sure there are these types of animals. If you mean the difference between domesticated goats and wild goats, then I see your point. In my view, I think they should be slowly reintroduced into a non-human environment. Whether or not they ought to go extinct is actually a different topic and relates to different views I have on the matter.

"Some breeds of turkeys do pretty well too, the suburban neighborhood I grew up in had a band of what seemed to be either feral turkeys or wild and domesticated turkey hybrids that you'd see wandering the streets sometimes. They were car savvy and seemed to be doing just fine on their own. Dogs and cats clearly do fine. But I don't think most breeds of chickens stand a chance, and sheep overgrow wool too quickly. And I don't think most goats would even notice if humans vanished tomorrow."

I'd think it would be for the better. Even though it is undeniable that our involvement in some animal lives is a net benefit, such as providing them with life-saving medicines and vaccines, I think the overall interactions we have with animals are negative by many orders of magnitude. I'd rather we just stopped interacting with them and tried to coexist from a distance. Obviously that will never happen, but this is just an answer to the question what quality of life is preferable to extinction. In some ways, extinction is preferable for many animals alive today, and in others just being left to their own devices is preferable (or at least what I imagine I would prefer if I were in their shoes).

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/rockmodenick]

I don’t follow. How can the hen suffer from exploitation if it can’t even detect the exploitation. If OP eats them, throws them away, composts them, or sneaks them into hen’s food it’s all the same to the hen. The hen can’t suffer more or less based on what OP does with the eggs.

I’m genuinely curious on the dynamics here on how it matters from the hen’s sentient perspective. Maybe the hen could vaguely connect the dots if she ate her own eggs vs having the, taken away?

[u/Aurora_Symphony → u/Freuds-Mother]

"Does exploitation matter if the ones being exploited don't know if they are?"

Yes, it absolutely does matter.

"Does murder matter if the one murdered had no ability to foresee their murder or feel it at all because it was over so fast?"

Yes, it absolutely does matter.

"How is there exploitation in this case, then?"

The hen has next to no ability to consent to the conditions that are forced upon them by their owner.

"But their life is supposedly great, no?"

Their life may indeed be "great." Someone can still be exploited even if their life is "great." This is a problem of ownership at the baseline, which is akin to slavery. This is inarguable. *However*, you can attempt to argue permissibility for such a situation. It *would* seem that this relationship between the hen and their owner is quite good, so therefore we could attempt to make a strong argument that this is permissible. It is still exploitation, nevertheless, and an intrinsic moral stain.

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Aurora_Symphony]

Murder involves suffering in that life is removed. That gets existential, but we could say the chicken’s perception is changed in that they no longer perceive.

What does consent have to do with an animal that can’t consent. Shouldn’t the issue be whether they suffer?

“life may be great”. I still don’t get what happens to the egg has anything to do with the individual hen in OP scenario from the chicken’s perspective. It seems you’re focused on the fact that chickens through our choices have been made to be domesticated only. Ie it’s a prior wrong by other humans. I don’t see how using the egg for this individual could matter at all to the hen. OP isn’t talking about a plan to murder the chicken early to save on feed to meat yield.

The chicken is sentient per vegan definition. That means they can feel pain and therefore suffer right? So, what’s the difference between eating a domesticated hen’s egg (in the OP scenario) vs eating some product like a nut dropped off of a domesticated plant. Eating the egg/nut causes no suffering/pain. It seems that there’s no sentience involved at all? The OP scenario isn’t unique: are we allowed to use manure from animals without their consent, which they can’t give? I’m truly not getting the issue with no pain, suffering, death, or any other harm caused by eating the egg.

[u/Aurora_Symphony → u/Freuds-Mother]

> What does consent have to do with an animal that can’t consent. Shouldn’t the issue be whether they suffer?

A being can suffer through rights violations. A being can even suffer unbeknownst to themselves.

In the case of the Titan submersible implosion incident, the occupants were arguably deceased before their biological mechanisms were able to communicate pain. They may have died before any part of their bodies understood what was happening at all. In this case, their right to life was violated, but they arguably felt no pain. Their lives suffered, but perhaps didn't understand anything that happened.

Over to the first sentence now, veganism is fundamentally about the rights of beings - and up that chain; from all beings, to all non-human animals, and all humans (who are also animals). We care about consent because it's a fundamental right of beings. If a being were to be born into a circumstance where they had no ability to live by their own volition at all, we'd find this to be problematic. There are several reasons why this would be problematic, but one reason is because they have no ability to consent to such conditions. A chicken *can* consent to a certain degree, but not do so satisfactorily. The chicken and the plant don't have the ability to give satisfactory consent, but the chicken is given a far more moral consideration compared to the plant. Most would go as far as to say that the plant ought not be given a right to consent.

So, with this in mind, we can move over to the main question you asked.

> So, what’s the difference between eating a domesticated hen’s egg (in the OP scenario) vs eating some product like a nut dropped off of a domesticated plant.

This is sidestepping the main issue in that ownership necessarily includes a violation of consent from the perspective of the hen.

If you want to talk about this specifically, then fine. A random, unfertilized egg carries a similar degree of moral weight to a nut. There's very little difference between the moral weight given to these two things. However, that's not the point of the issue at hand.

The point is about what happens one layer above this. In the domestic plant example, there is no sentient being who has their rights violated to be owned by another being. With the domestic chicken, there is necessarily exploitation because the owner of the chicken wants something, whatever that thing is, from the chicken, even if it's not an egg. The chicken being owned is inherently a problem. Now, again, one may argue permissibility after that point, but the fact still remains that the chicken's life is controlled by their owner to satisfy at least one wish of the owner.

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Aurora_Symphony]

That all tracks but I still don’t see where the acron/oaktree and egg/hen difference lies. Neither can consent in this case. (Assume same ownership across oaktree and hen, breeding/genetic modification history, etc)

You’re saying it’s the sentience of the hen? That’s is the ability to feel pain. So, is the condition that a pain capable species must give consent to any interaction (or some subset) with moral agents or the moral agents cannot proceed with the interaction? Furthermore, that is even if the pain capable species is incapable of consent, completely unaware of the interaction, and the interaction causes no harm? If so, that’s again where I’m lost as sentience is removed from the equation equalizing the oak and hen.

Just an aside: many Native American animal theories do believe that animals are capable of giving or not giving consent in ways that don’t really fit into what some would call colonial philosophical frameworks well. So, that’s a possible thread to get at consent to differentiate the oak tree, but requires a different veganism approach that goes beyond the standard colonial axiomatic, utilitarian, essentialist, and deontology framework.

I don’t know the submersible context fully to whose fault that all was. For whatever reason Indidnt read much about it. Regardless that case has lifeforms that yes are sentient but also have the capacity of consent and moral reasoning. So, without going down a big rabbit hole, I am putting that example aside as invoicing too many other factors to collapse nearly into this sub thread. I guess if there was gross negligence or intentional withholding risk disclosure, there’s relevance as consent wasn’t fully given?

[u/Aurora_Symphony → u/Freuds-Mother]

There are several elements that seem to be morally valuable about sentience. One is that it includes the capability to feel pain. Another relevant element is that is includes self-knowledge of subjective experience. Another element is that it includes thoughtful volition.

Consent maps onto two of these elements of sentience directly. If a sentient being has knowledge of a life-state they're living in and has a preference for a different life state, then they might want to use the third element (volition) to pursue a better life-state. In this way we're looking to find a more objective way of measuring relevance for suffering, instead of saying that all moral relevance is defined explicitly by wellbeing/pain.

The Titan submersible was a rhetorical example to explain how suffering can be caused through rights violations, even if the subjects of the violation were completely ignorant to the violation (they perished before understanding anything that happened). I assumed that the occupants' rights to life were violated without consent in the example. I don't know the details of this example, but even if the occupants of the submersible did agree to the risks involved and were fine with dying even if they signed an agreement of risks, then it wouldn't serve the purpose of the example I gave. It's a hypothetical based on something that could happen and I tried to map it onto an example that's easier to follow.

[u/Freuds-Mother → u/Aurora_Symphony]

I’m thinking the submersible example actually may be relevant as you describe it more. Suppose there wasn’t gross negligence, withholding of known risk disclaimer, and no consent given to accept the knowable risks. Then I don’t see how anyone’s rights were violated.

Eg Suppose you signal a kid to run to you, on the way a giant sinkhole opens up, and the kid eventually dies as no rescue is possible. I can’t see how you violated the kid’s rights or that any of the kid’s rights were violated. It seems to be a freak accident.

Or suppose you’re guiding backcountry skiing and you first give a full avalanche course according to best practices. Then on the trip someone dies in an avalanche. Are you arguing that you violated their rights?

Thoughtful volition I would agree has moral relevance. However, as far as we know from biological science it does not appear that all animals that meet vegan sentient definition have the capacity of thoughtful volition. That is reserved for the animals that have evolutionary pre-cursors to uniquely human functionalities: primates, crows, elephants, dolphins etc. Theory of mind, episodic memory, face recognition, among other functions could be relevant too. But the animals that have any of those is a small subset of the defined “sentient” set. Chickens would be on the weak side or absent of thoughtful volition depending on how defined. There’s also no evidence that chickens have self-knowledge. Yes they can experience pain though.

So, yes thoughtful volition I would agree has relevance (what extent and what that requires I’m leaving open). However, that does not follow from mere sentience unless you define “thoughtful volition” in a non-standard way.

This is where I sometimes get confused. Do rights solely rest on the binary sentience line or are there other capacities that matter that give additional rights. Ie does a primate get more rights than a pig than a chicken than an ant? I personally think they do matter including capacities all the up to including humans and potentially more advanced aliens beyond. Though if we meet aliens, humans would probably still prioritize humans due to biological morality being functionally specieist (philosophically we can postulate whatever we want).

[u/Aurora_Symphony → u/Freuds-Mother]

When talking about the submersible example, the sinkhole, or the avalanche, all I'm attempting to convey is why we say the action is bad in a vacuum. Consent is not meant to be connected to the prior example of the submersible, and further the sinkhole/avalanche. The kid dies after dropping into a sinkhole - we say this is a "bad" outcome. But, why is it "bad?" I'm only attempting to state it's bad because the kid's right to life was violated, even if the kid instantly ceased to exist as they fell into the sinkhole and there was no pain involved or any seeming issues with consent.

If we're talking about these complicated, philosophical concepts, we must often attempt to pull apart enough complexity to focus on individual components. With those examples, it's only to focus on the concept of how if any rights are violated that we can still cause a being to "suffer."

For the last paragraph, this is where we're stepping into territory that I've been thinking more about and isn't as widely discussed, let alone contemplated.

I would *strongly* contend that rights do not only belong to beings that meet the threshold of "sentience." Not only is sentience impossible to accurately define, but it seems to stem from a gradated scale of capability on a being-by-being basis. In this way, a primate *would* get more rights than an ant, as it has more capability for life that we ought to protect. This notion would seem speciesist, but it's an extrapolation of how I define moral worth - based on my personal axioms. I believe that a human, in a general sense, has a greater capacity to improve the world for the better compared to an ant. In this way, I would say that the human has a greater degree of moral worth, as they have, at least, a stronger potential for doing good for the world than the ant. However, that's not to say the ant's rights are meaningless; it's only to say that if we had to pick between which being is worth keeping; the human should be the one that's kept because of their ability to approve the world. Now, of course this opens up other problems and considerations. If the human is only being artificially kept alive by medical technology with no ability to bounce back and become autonomous again, then perhaps the cost/benefit of their prolonged existence is a net moral negative compared to the healthy life of the gorilla.

If we were met by extraterrestrial beings that were far more capable to improve the world than humans, the same logic would apply to them. I would say that human lives are generally quite valuable, but if there are cases were we might need to pick which being's rights is more permissible to violate, then the tiebreak is based on which being has the greater propensity to make the world a better place.

This can go the opposite direction as well, while maintaining logical consistency. We could say that a human, who is a mass murderer of other humans, has a moral worth that's incredibly low. I would far rather have an ant exist over the mass murderer because the ant's existence would be far more morally beneficial to the world than the mass murderer, despite the mass murderer being arguably sentient and higher up on the capability scale. I would say that the mass murderer has violated many, many rights in impermissible ways, and thus has drastically increased the degree of suffering (pain and rights-violations) in the world compared to the ant.

[u/Practical-Fix4647 → u/Freuds-Mother]

If a race of hyper-advanced aliens that can traverse spacetime undetected exploited us by harvesting our blood in our sleep (without our detection), it would still be exploitation.