Honytawk,

Chicken egg farmers sell eggs.

They don’t hatch those eggs.

Buddahriffic,

But if they want to always have chickens to lay eggs…

Honytawk,

Then they buy them from hatcheries

There is more to hatching an egg than just sitting on them, they need to be fertilized.

Lumisal,

Haven’t really seen it mentioned here, but for those who don’t know, the male chicks are not used for chicken nuggets, but primarily for pet food or plant fertilizer. Also not every country does this practice. Not only that, but eliminating eggs from the human global diet would be unfeasible. This is because eggs are the best source of protein, with only whey protein coming second. They are also the only food with such a high protein content that also contains all essential nutrients. And before someone posts “but da beans!” - no, they’re not on the same level. Although beans are a good source of protein, they’re neither complete nor are they actually as high as they seem, because the protein they have isn’t as bioavailable as that of eggs (speaking of, this is why there’s certain practices in vegan diets to gain more nutrients, such as eating leafy greens with an acid to get more iron or soaking pecans to remove the pyric acid in them to absorb the minerals they have better).

Removing eggs from the world diet would actually lead to more ecological harm, even without more ethical chicken rearing practices becoming wider spread, because the amount of farm land needed to ensure proper nutrition for everyone with a mixed vegetable diet would be significantly higher than ensuring there’s just enough eggs for everyone.

You don’t like baby chicks getting ground up? Don’t own carnivorous pets, and buy from more ethical egg farmers. Or if you can, honestly just get your own chicken or 2. You’ll have enough eggs with even a single chicken to be honest. Hens don’t need much space, males can be eaten once their 4am crowing drives you crazy - although they do keep the hens happy. If you can afford it or don’t have very particular diet restrictions, go vegan - you probably don’t need as much protein as you think. I used to be vegan until kidney failure, and now with a transplant am back to mostly vegetarian (at least for now until I can go back to being fully vegan). I also used to raise animals for food and farm because I came from a poor family initially. If you don’t care, then just consider eating less meat and eggs will ya? Too much ain’t good for your health either. Plus it’ll taste better if you don’t eat it every day. A weekend bbq is way more special when you haven’t had meat the prior everyday.

usernamesAreTricky,

Land usage is still lower

we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

Complete proteins matter much less than you’d think. As long as you get the other proteins in at some point in the day you are fine. It doesn’t take much for that as just adding rice to beans is enough to make it complete for instance

The bioavaliability of protein metrics are highly misleading when applying them to plant-based foods due to some their assumptions

While multiple strengths characterize the DIAAS, substantial limitations remain, many of which are accentuated in the context of a plant-based dietary pattern. Some of these limitations include a failure to translate differences in nitrogen-to-protein conversion factors between plant- and animal-based foods, limited representation of commonly consumed plant-based foods within the scoring framework, inadequate recognition of the increased digestibility of commonly consumed heat-treated and processed plant-based foods, its formulation centered on fast-growing animal models rather than humans, and a focus on individual isolated foods vs the food matrix. The DIAAS is also increasingly being used out of context where its application could produce erroneous results such as exercise settings. When investigating protein quality, particularly in a plant-based dietary context, the DIAAS should ideally be avoided.

link.springer.com/…/s13668-020-00348-8.pdf

BenchpressMuyDebil,

During my vegan phase I was counting calories with Cronometer - if you eat unprocessed foods you can count calories using data from food-related institutions. Because of that, the protein data is detailed and is split into the individual amino-acids rather than just saying “you ate 100g of protein today”. At the end of the day, my panel was all green (meaning 100% RDA) apart from lysine which was lower. I don’t see where my diet was lacking anything crucial protein-wise that necessitates eggs. I can get the micronutrient argument with B12 and dietary cholesterol, but protein?

The thread poster ridicules “da beans” but is infact “muh eggs” themselves. And I have drawn myself as Chad and them as Wojak to prove it

MilitantVegan,

I can respect that you mean well, but there’s a lot of issues with your comment, which I’ll get into.

Haven’t really seen it mentioned here, but for those who don’t know, the male chicks are not used for chicken nuggets, but primarily for pet food or plant fertilizer. Also not every country does this practice.

The first problem here is that you’re still treating chicks like they’re commodities. What their carcasses are used for is irrelevant, because we’re never going to continue progressing morally until we can learn to see these beings - who think, feel, and have their own qualia - as someone, not something. We can discuss side issues all day, everyday, like the environment, health, and pandemic potential. But we also have to stop being afraid to recognize this as a matter of justice.

Not only that, but eliminating eggs from the human global diet would be unfeasible. This is because eggs are the best source of protein, with only whey protein coming second.

Protein is not the only nutrient that matters, and it’s generally effortlessly easy to get all the protein you need on plants alone. The view that people can’t get enough protein on plants is such a thoroughly debunked myth that it’s embarrassing that vegans have to dispell this nonsense in virtually every discussion still.

They are also the only food with such a high protein content that also contains all essential nutrients.

This is a dangerously bad take. In the first place, eggs do not contain all essential nutrients. Eggs either completely lack some essential vitamins and minerals, or have them in such low quantities that you would have to eat an insane amount of eggs to meet your daily needs. Just as importantly is that the nutrients are a package deal - eggs contain almost as much fat as they do protein, and are so high in cholesterol and saturated fats that the more you eat, the faster you are on your way to a heart attack, stroke, and/or erectile dysfunction.

And before someone posts “but da beans!” - no, they’re not on the same level. Although beans are a good source of protein, they’re neither complete

Protein “incompleteness” in plants is so misunderstood that it’s effectively an outright myth. Virtually all plants have all 9 of the amino acids that are essential for humans. Where the incompleteness comes in is that human muscle tissue is composed of amino acids in a particular ratio. If we don’t have enough of even one of those aminos in our diet, our bodies can’t synthesize new muscle. For this reason it was believed that the closer a food matches the amino acid ratios in our muscles, the better that food is for gaining muscle. Obviously this way of thinking supports the idea of consuming other being’s muscle tissue since that’s naturally going to be the closest to our own (and yes that kind of thinking implies that cannibalism provides the “best” protein).

But that line of thinking breaks down under scrutiny. For starters, there are thousands of chemicals our bodies make that require amino acids, why are they not a factor in discussing “protein quality”? Second, a food being really high in protein is not necessarily a good thing. There’s growing evidence that animal proteins themselves may be harmful for health and longevity.

pcrm.org/…/plant-based-protein-lowers-risk-premat…

Anyway, I really want to drive home the point that the protein incompleteness thing is damn near a nonissue. If you’re a person who is strength training on a vegan diet, yes, you will make your life easier by diversifying your protein sources. But for the average person, the low amount of methionine in beans can easily be overcome by either simply eating some grains from time to time (or daily, grains are fucking great), or the person could eat 4 servings of beans in a day to get their rda of methionine (and all other essential amino acids).

nor are they actually as high as they seem, because the protein they have isn’t as bioavailable as that of eggs (speaking of, this is why there’s certain practices in vegan diets to gain more nutrients, such as eating leafy greens with an acid to get more iron or soaking pecans to remove the pyric acid in them to absorb the minerals they have better).

Food synergies are important for everyone, not just vegans. If for example you’re trying to get the antioxidant and antiinflammatory benefits of eating berries, obviously you would rather increase those benefits by getting the synergies that come from eating a mix of berries, as opposed to mixing those berries with milk or bananas which are known to reduce or cancel out the berries beneficial effects.

Anyway, I’ll finish my protein rant with a link to a YouTube video on the subject, from a real nutritional scientist who specializes in the subject. Tl;dw? The bottom line is that it’s not only possible, but easy to get all the protein we need on plants alone. Carnists seriously need to just drop the whole protein thing because y’all just do not have a case in your favor here.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0…

Removing eggs from the world diet would actually lead to more ecological harm, even without more ethical chicken rearing practices becoming wider spread, because the amount of farm land needed to ensure proper nutrition for everyone with a mixed vegetable diet would be significantly higher than ensuring there’s just enough eggs for everyone.

I’m not going to get into this one because other commenters have already done so. But no, that’s preposterous on the face of it. Any animal agriculture is fundamentally going to take more land and resources to produce food because those animals need to be raised on plants, so why not raise the plants for ourselves directly? And before anyone chimes in about the suitability of land for agriculture, maybe take some time to learn more about things like Permaculture and regenerative ag. If a person can grow a small food forest on an abandoned parking lot with 12 inches of manure in the midwest, or Geoff Lawton can re-green the desert, it warrants investigating just how many places we can make abundant. Anyway, Cowspiracy is a good documentary to learn more about animal ag land use.

You don’t like baby chicks getting ground up? Don’t own carnivorous pets, and buy from more ethical egg farmers.

No, the purchasing and consumption of eggs is what drives chick culling. They do it because male chicks are considered a waste product of that industry, and any commodities sold from it likely grew out of a way to recoup costs. If you want to end chick culling, the best way to do it is go vegan.

Or if you can, honestly just get your own chicken or 2. You’ll have enough eggs with even a single chicken to be honest. Hens don’t need much space, males can be eaten once their 4am crowing drives you crazy - although they do keep the hens happy.

From a practical standpoint, raising your own chickens puts you at risk of getting h5n1. The more time goes by, the more that risk increases. From a moral standpoint, you might be causing less suffering to chickens this way, but you’d still be causing suffering as well as being an exploiter of that animal. Chickens have been unnaturally bred to produce way more eggs than their bodies can handle. Not only is this prodigious amount of egg laying an uncomfortable experience for them, it generally leads to nutrient deficiencies that end up causing their bones to break under their own weight. They can regain that lost nutrition by consuming their own eggs, which is something they sometimes naturally do.

As an alternative, consider either supporting an existing animal sanctuary, or start your own. As a bonus, you could use their manure to help grow a garden. Veganic agriculture can involve animals, as long as those animals are free-living, safe, comfortable, and they’re not being exploited.

If you can afford it or don’t have very particular diet restrictions, go vegan - you probably don’t need as much protein as you think.

But up there you just said… oh nevermind. 🤔 Yes, go vegan. Also, in most places it’s less expensive to be vegan, especially when you factor in the cost of healthcare.

I used to be vegan until kidney failure, and now with a transplant am back to mostly vegetarian (at least for now until I can go back to being fully vegan). I also used to raise animals for food and farm because I came from a poor family initially. If you don’t care, then just consider eating less meat and eggs will ya? Too much ain’t good for your health either. Plus it’ll taste better if you don’t eat it every day. A weekend bbq is way more special when you haven’t had meat the prior everyday.

A weekend bbq is a lot more special when it becomes fully uncoupled from the guilt of living on the commodification, exploitation, suffering, and atrocities of other sentient beings. Reducitarianism might be gaining traction, but it really hasn’t led to any appreciable results. Experts in fields like health coaching all insist that the most effective way to adhere to a more ethical diet and lifestyle is to go all in. If you mess up, that’s okay, just forgive yourself and try again. It’s absolutely worth it.

Nonononoki,

Not in Germany and France since 2022!

usernamesAreTricky,

France made a carveout that still allows it :/

An exception to a New Year’s resolution by France to end the massive culling of male chicks will still allow millions to be killed,

france24.com/…/20230102-france-fails-to-end-culli…

Mio,

I am just think that for a human to be a man or woman, then there is a 50 % chance. I see no reason for it to be different for chickens…

EvolvedTurtle,

Do they really just keep them in bags and boxes like that?

usernamesAreTricky,

That was a real photo. Can find it on the wiki page for chick culling

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling#Statistics

They’re also often run along conveyor belts and such too :/

10_0,

Vegans when you don’t listen to them

lefixxx,

Don’t they gender the eggs now? They just don’t hatch the male ones.

cows_are_underrated,

AS far AS i know, there are experiments with identifying the gender in the egg, but it isn’t practically usable on a big scale. I might be wrong, would love if someone knew more about this.

Johanno,

I mean shredding males to nuggets is also financially viable.

Johanno,

I mean shredding males to nuggets is also financially viable.

usernamesAreTricky,

Only in a select few places. It doesn’t scale super well among other potential issues

They have not yet tried to sell the technology to the US egg industry but, even if they did, the volume it can handle is currently too low for this technology to be used to get rid of chick culling across the board.

[…]

One issue that complicates these efforts is the difficult-to-answer question of when an embryo becomes a chick. Some researchers say day seven is when chick embryos can begin to experience pain. If that’s right, sexing the eggs eight to 10 days after incubation as Respeggt does, and 14 days as Agri-AT does, may still end up inflicting pain on the embryo, which could be trading one animal welfare problem — culling — for another

vox.com/…/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling

littlecolt,

I have been seeing a lot of animal abuse posts on here lately. I hadn’t noticed 196 being like that in the past on here or Reddit. Is there a trend toward that for this community in general? I’m well aware of how fucked the industry is, but I also don’t sub to this community for that. I am here for little gay people shit posting in my phone. These just make me sad. I can’t personally do anything to stop this. I don’t want to unsub, and there’s not a great way to filter, unless it’s all the same OP? :(

debil,

I can’t personally do anything to stop this.

You can always upvote or share a post like this to spread awaraness and hence maybe make people buy less eggs, or at least make them pause to think before they buy their next eggs.

pyre,

“i don’t want to see shit like this”

“you can upvote it so more people see shit like this as well”

thanks, very cool

debil,

Yes, so that maybe some day in the future this horrible shit is no more. Until then, get used to bumping into a thought provoking meme every now. The mild discomfort pales in comparison to the practice itself.

thatsTheCatch,

Pretty sure it’s mostly the one poster

MindTraveller,

You can go vegan and stop giving these people money

shneancy,

this won’t stop the fact it’ll keep happening and keep making people sad

MindTraveller,

But feeling guilty as well as sad would be even worse

VictoriaAScharleau,

vystopia isnt any fun either

inb4_FoundTheVegan,
@inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world avatar

You sound like queer people in the 80s and 90s.

“What does it matter if one person accepts me? Won’t change anything and it just bums me out.”

Now, acceptance is the default position for most folk.

shneancy,

as a queer person in the now I do not think this is comparable, at all.

inb4_FoundTheVegan, (edited )
@inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world avatar

Well, as a queer vegan. Its really hard not to notice that bigots and carnists say the same sort of things.

“You’re just trying to feel special.” “It’s unnatural, your gentials/teeth were evolved for a specific use”. “Stop trying to convert kidsto your cult.” “Queer/vegan people always think they are so enlighted.”

But more to the point, defeatism is always an easy excuse to do nothing. But individual actions can have ripple effects through generations. Do you think that those at stonewall would expect an entire month celebrating their actions? Enough people making a choice not to support animal agriculture puts the concept out of business. Do I expect that or liberation soon? No. But it’s gotten LIGHTYEARS better on both fronts in my own lifetime.

littlecolt,

Similar to recycling, the impact is small. There must be large systemic change. My adoption of a vegan diet, or my diligent recycling of aluminum and plastic, is a drop in the bucket.

MindTraveller,

Yeah, you should go vegan, and also post depressing memes on 196 that make all the carnists feel guilty. That’ll have a bigger impact.

threeduck,
@threeduck@aussie.zone avatar

Couldn’t that logic be used against literally any good action? Like giving $100,000 to a malaria charity isn’t going to stop malaria. If everyone thought like vegans, the world would be vegan, the climate crisis would almost entirely be averted, rivers swimmable, billions of animal lives saved each year.

If during your supermarket shop, you use vegan recipes instead, you’ll be one of those dominos. You could be the systemic change!

usernamesAreTricky,

The issue is how then do you get that systematic change? Governments are going to be extremely hard to convince to do anything as along as people expect to consume animal products en mass. It’s going to have to start with individual action until systematic change is palatable

And with systematic action, it’s still going to have to involve change in consumption in the end. Factory farming is pretty much the only thing that scales. Want to avoid it? We’re going to need to see great drops in production and in turn consumption

The impacts of people taking action do add up. For instance, in Germany there’s been declines in per capita meat consumption over the past decade

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

vox.com/…/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-veg…

fracture,

yeah i feel you. i don’t think this would be better even if i were vegan (i’m not bc i think i would starve due to a number of dietary restrictions /allergies, but i cycle in the vegan food i can)

ArmokGoB,

Trolls found out they can post here with impunity, so they do so.

MilitantVegan,

It might still not be popular to be vegan yet, but the movement is growing rapidly. It could be a symptom of a larger trend - that the injustices against non-human animals is too terrible to keep Ignoring.

Sometimes it just needs to be recognized that a problem isn’t going to go away until we start doing the hard work of solving it together.

commie,

the movement is growing

google trends says otherwise

littlecolt,

That also wasn’t my point at all. I’m making no statement here about veganism. I’m saying 196 isn’t a vegan activism community and these bummer posts are obnoxious.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Never understood this. Why not raise the roosters for their meat and feathers and leave the hens for laying eggs?

Tyfud,

I presume, like everything else wrong with Capitalism, it comes down to cost. It’s more cost efficient somehow. I don’t understand the details, because I’m not a chicken farmer, but I have been in the capitalism machine for a long, long time, and I’d bet a shitton of tax payer money that it’s purely down to cost.

If it saves $0.02 per chicken, they’ll gladly poison the rivers, oceans, lakes, etc. with refuse and baby chick corpses.

ephemeral_gibbon,

In this case it’s because if you raised them no-one would want to buy them. The egg laying breeds are a lot tougher and have a lot less meet than the ones bred for meat. They also cost more per amount of meat in the end.

The simple fact is that people don’t want to buy that, so it’d just be wasteful to grow them out.

Tyfud,

Right. So cost savings.

ephemeral_gibbon,

Not mostly, mostly consumer preferences. You wouldn’t be able to sell them and it’d just be wasteful

nucleative,

I suspect the optimized egg laying DNA is different from the huge breasted good tasting chicken meat DNA.

So the male born egg laying DNA chicks are unfortunately not useful to the farmers except for whatever they used the ground up remains for, which I suspect is probably feed or fertilizer.

cows_are_underrated,

The hens are bred for laying as much eggs as possible, on the cost of meat production. this means, that it isn’t profitable to raise them, just to get some meat, when you can raise other chicken breads to get twice the amount of meat.

JohnOliver,

I am guessing, only based on the fact that the immorally fast growing chickens only make a few more cents, that they are not profitable.

Also I am not sure if roosters can be kept together past a certain point maybe?

booly,

Dual purpose breeds for both egg laying and meat production are poorly optimized at either. So the industry has moved onto specialized breeds that are best at doing one of them.

Plus raising roosters together is much more logistically challenging than raising hens. So they’d need much more space and much more oversight/labor. So rather than devote some resources to raising males of breeds that are good for laying eggs, they’d rather devote those same resources to raising much more meat from females of meat breeds.

driving_crooner,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

Did they use the chickens for something? I guess cat food or something like that would be useful.

Fredselfish,
@Fredselfish@lemmy.world avatar

Chicken nuggets are made this way.

driving_crooner,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

Didn’t they use the bones and cartilage for that?

Ragnarok314159,

Chicken lips and hooves.

ssj2marx,

They use everything that’s not used to make other chicken products, it’s gross but also very efficient.

uriel238,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’d think they could genetically engineer the egg layers to only produce males in certain conditions (such as when they’re incubated at a higher temperature), then only breed males when they need more roosters.

OR, if sex is selected by sperm type (as with humans) artificially inseminate the hens.

I suspect there are dozens of valid technical solutions that are cost effective and would allow them to not shred male chicks.

usernamesAreTricky,

They don’t scale super well at the moment. See my comment elsewhere about just that

lemmy.ml/comment/11760500

driving_crooner,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

You’re thinking about turtles

Ragnarok314159,

And if we crossbreed chickens with turtles, they might become ninjas or something worse.

uriel238,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

And why not think about turtles? I ask. 🐢

CubitOom,

I raised mine to roosters. I got a grey cock, a brown cock, and the biggest is my black cock.

Agent641,

My wife wants to know your location

pewgar_seemsimandroid,

34 wallaby way

StupidBrotherInLaw,

42069 Rooster Rock Way

lseif,

i dont mind

jabathekek,
@jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

Lil’ nuggets => McNuggets

PeteBauxigeg,

Can’t win the argument? Have you tried posting content likely to upset to argue your case in communities unrelated to your cause?

usernamesAreTricky,

?

196 is a meme/miscellaneous community. This is a meme ergo fits within the community. Pretty much the only rule of this community is “if you visit the community you must post” besides rules like no transphobia, racism, etc.

Daxtron2,

Don’t worry, that person is a “devils advocate” for Israel, Russia, and Trump so their opinion doesn’t matter here.

usernamesAreTricky,

Oh fun skimming through their comments shows them also dissmising climate change effects too. Comments downplaying a senario of +5°C average temperature increase

Daxtron2,

Classic

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