- Joined
- Jan 3, 2016
- Reaction score
- 1,814
- Age
- 44
- Lifestyle
- Vegetarian
Now my daughter eats less meat she eats more eggs than ever, so the actual amount of animal suffering has not necessarily been reduced.
I found a local producer with egg production basically in their large garden. It is only a few miles from my house to theirs. Bravial | Granja Familiar
Where it says "huevos de gallinas libres, solteras y felices" it means "eggs from free, single and happy hens". They have solar panels for their energy and say that they use no pesticides and fertilisers. She says she has 950 hens. You can see from the photo at the link above how much space they are in. At the time I visited the majority were indoors (although not hermetically sealed off as you can see) but some (maybe around 100) were outdoors. She didn´t let me see the indoor part because she said she didn´t have time to go through the safety protocols and suiting up in the 5 minutes I was there buying eggs.
I asked her about beginning of life when I visited. She says that she buys the hens and they get delivered at 10 weeks, so we don´t really know what their early life is like. I am not too thrilled about that. I asked about what she does when the hens are older and no longer productive. She says she gives them away to locals who use them to get started with egg production (this is when egg production has declined due to age, but is still enough for an amateur to get started by trying out an old hen available for free). There´s no (easy, fast,non-intrusive) way of finding out how many of these animals ultimately get killed and eaten and how many are looked after forever until they die of old age.
I asked if she ever sells any for meat. She says yes occasionally she has done, although she doesn´t like to.
I bought 30 eggs. My wife and daughter judged no difference in taste vs supermarket eggs.
They are around 30%-60% more expensive than supermarket eggs but that is not an issue for us. The carbon footprint and other environmental impact is quite likely lower than supermarket eggs.
I´m not going to be able to stop my wife buying supermarket eggs for now, and probably can´t persuade my daughter to give up eggs, but if I go and buy these eggs regularly then we won´t buy supermarket eggs. In the short term, that should mean reduced animal suffering.
However, there is some value to just saying to my daughter that she should just go vegan. The risk is that by buying these eggs I normalize the idea of eggs and create the arguably mostly false idea that there are good and bad eggs, which could cause her to continue eating eggs for longer and not go vegan. It´s the classic welfarist vs abolitionist debate in a way.
I found a local producer with egg production basically in their large garden. It is only a few miles from my house to theirs. Bravial | Granja Familiar
Where it says "huevos de gallinas libres, solteras y felices" it means "eggs from free, single and happy hens". They have solar panels for their energy and say that they use no pesticides and fertilisers. She says she has 950 hens. You can see from the photo at the link above how much space they are in. At the time I visited the majority were indoors (although not hermetically sealed off as you can see) but some (maybe around 100) were outdoors. She didn´t let me see the indoor part because she said she didn´t have time to go through the safety protocols and suiting up in the 5 minutes I was there buying eggs.
I asked her about beginning of life when I visited. She says that she buys the hens and they get delivered at 10 weeks, so we don´t really know what their early life is like. I am not too thrilled about that. I asked about what she does when the hens are older and no longer productive. She says she gives them away to locals who use them to get started with egg production (this is when egg production has declined due to age, but is still enough for an amateur to get started by trying out an old hen available for free). There´s no (easy, fast,non-intrusive) way of finding out how many of these animals ultimately get killed and eaten and how many are looked after forever until they die of old age.
I asked if she ever sells any for meat. She says yes occasionally she has done, although she doesn´t like to.
I bought 30 eggs. My wife and daughter judged no difference in taste vs supermarket eggs.
They are around 30%-60% more expensive than supermarket eggs but that is not an issue for us. The carbon footprint and other environmental impact is quite likely lower than supermarket eggs.
I´m not going to be able to stop my wife buying supermarket eggs for now, and probably can´t persuade my daughter to give up eggs, but if I go and buy these eggs regularly then we won´t buy supermarket eggs. In the short term, that should mean reduced animal suffering.
However, there is some value to just saying to my daughter that she should just go vegan. The risk is that by buying these eggs I normalize the idea of eggs and create the arguably mostly false idea that there are good and bad eggs, which could cause her to continue eating eggs for longer and not go vegan. It´s the classic welfarist vs abolitionist debate in a way.
Last edited:
