Going Vegan in a Non-Vegan World

I’m torn.

Today I have received tweets, emails, and read posts about the truly wonderful news that the HSUS has worked with the United Egg Producers (UEP) to come up with a plan that will “mark the beginning of the end of the era of barren battery cages in America”. The news is thrilling beyond words.

And yet I’m scared that if these changes are enacted (and that is a big if), the general public may then believe that now the horror of farming egg chickens has been fix and the urgency to end the farming of chickens will no longer seem so urgent. Now before anyone gets upset and accuses me of not being grateful for the wonderful news and that I’m asking for too much, tell me, what happens to the millions of baby boy chicks hatched each year as part of the farming of egg producing chickens? No, they are not raised as meat chickens. They have not been bred to grow fast enough to be profitable. The industry standard is to put the live baby boy chicks in a grinder. They are ground up while alive. Think I’m exaggerating? That is what I thought when I first learned about the practice. But some checking around confirmed that baby boy chicks are treated pretty much the same as the egg shells they just came from.

Next time someone asks “What is so wrong with eating eggs? No one is killed”, think about the millions of baby boy chicks.

I deeply, deeply want the changes the HSUS is proposing. But I hope we don’t forget this is only one step in a very urgent journey to end the needless abuse and killing of innocent beings.