Questions about vegans?!
Answers: I'm not trying to be disrespectful I'm just curious. Why is it that you all decide not to eat eggs or drink milk. I understand not wanting to harm animals but aren't milk and eggs just a natural thing that we take advantage of?
That's a good question. About 95% of eggs come from factory farms, where egg-laying hens are so intensively confined that they can't even flap their wings. These birds are denied everything that is natural to them. Male chicks are useless to the egg industry, so they are commonly thrown into grinders alive or suffocated in plastic bags.
One of the main problems with dairy is that cows must be impregnated in order to produce milk, and the dairy industry has no use for the male calves who are born. (Male = unable to produce milk). These male calves are turned into veal. Also, dairy cows are slaughtered after about four or five years, when they stop producing so much milk.
More info:
http://www.chooseveg.com/eggs.asp
http://www.chooseveg.com/dairy.asp
No, sorry to burst your bubble, but the dairy industry is full of suffering.
no.. the baby cows are ripped away from their mothers. The male cows are what they like to call Veil.. and will be on your plate.. the females are injected with hormones, not keep in a not very nice living situation... then the chickens are kept in crates to where they can't move around and put at a 5% incline so they will porduce more.. then when they die.. they make chicken Mcnuggets out of them..
We over produce milk in the dairy industry - cows are forced to be pregnant to keep them producing milk. Their calves are then turned into veal because they are considered a 'byproduct'
And because the cows are constantly being milked, their utters become infected and actually leak pus and blood into the milk - it is legal to have a small percentage of pus and blood in your milk.
And eggs are baby fetuses, so some people consider them as killing an animal.
And think about it - cows produce milk to feed to their young, not humans. Their milk is designed to grow calves into cows, just as human milk is designed to help babies grow...
Yes, I think you already made the key point. "...Natural thing(s) that we take advantage of." Eggs and milk are completely edible, though they often have bad side effects (cholesteral, animal fat, etc). But do we have the right to take these natural things away from the animals? In a natural setting chickens will produce unfertile eggs, and cows will produce extra milk for their young, but some of us feel that people don't need to "take advantage" of our animal brethren. :)
Besides, the outrageous factory farming industry has tortured animals for years, both with physical violence and reproductive manipulation...
Some of us also think of food in literal terms - ie eggs = chicken placenta; cow milk = baby cow food. Would you drink your mother's milk above the age of 3? Etc, etc. Because our Veg brains are hard-wired to percieve food in this literal fashion, we tend to consider milk and eggs as gross, on par with drinking blood or other bodily fluids. (Eew factor? Yeeahhh). It's pretty gross, but I'm one of these literal-thinking kinds of Vegans.
For the most part, we try to avoid "taking advantage" of what belongs to the animals. That's how we feel we are being compassionate. I think you answered your own question, in a way.
well i still drink milk and eat eggs
really i'm not harms them with the milk because women gaves milk and so does alot of animals'
eggs i really don't know
i haven't eaten a egg since feb. i feel sorry for the babys but
they aren't born yet so really i'm not harms anything
ok this isn't a good answer SORRY
"Take advantage of" is an apt term. We take advantage of the fact that we're capable of keeping enormous numbers of animals in inhumane and unnatural conditions. We take advantage of the fact that a cow cannot stop us from artificially inseminating her repeatedly. We take advantage of the fact the fact that laying hens can't prevent us from grinding up their "useless" male offspring as soon as they are sexed.
Dairy and eggs are very cruel industries. They directly contribute to animal suffering every day through practices like debeaking, keeping hens in battery cages, force moulting, repeated artificial insemination, removing calves from ther mothers within hours of birth, and the use of selective breeding, hormones and steroids to increase milk production. Every milk cow or laying hen is slaughtered for food when their productivity is exhausted (well ahead of their natural life spans.) The dairy industry directly supports the veal industry (male calves being, of course, of no value to a dairy.) Labels like "cage free" and "free range" are meaningless marketing ploys.
I have no major ethical objection to someone keeping a few hens as cherished pets and eating the inevitable unfertilized eggs. But that's simply not the fact of the matter for the vast majority of eggs and dairy products consumed in our country.
if we stop eating eggs and milk nothing bad will happen to us
if we stop eating eggs and milk so many animals will not have cruel treatment.
eggs + milk = cruelty for animals
human diet - eggs - milk = nothing happens
The dairy and egg industries are just as full of suffering as the meat industries. You know how, when an animal is in great pain, we sometimes will kill it so that it doesn't have to suffer? Well, the dairy cows and egg-laying hens have to live a life full of misery, and they are never "put to sleep" until they can't give any more milk or lay any more eggs.
Also, humans weren't ever meant to drink cow's milk. The latest scientific reports show that actually, dairy products are not beneficial to your body! Eggs aren't actually bad for you (so says the current evidence, but things change...), but we can still make choice based on compassion for others and environmental concerns, which veganism adresses quite fully.
not really anymore. unfortunately to get milk and eggs animals are still in factory farms suffering in cruel conditions. for a lot of people that are veg, it's the process more than just consuming animals/animal products. so to get eggs and milk animals are put through as much pain and suffering as they are to get meat an din the end are slaughtered for low grade meat also.