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I have just read a piece in the papers about a company in Erode, Tamil Nadu that is going to produce "100 percent vegetarian eggs. The article is headlined "Now, eggs to go veg!"



"You have given up meat and fish, but finding it hard to stay away from eggs? Here's some good news for vegetarians who love to tuck in eggs. India's leading egg manufacturer and exporter will launch a "100 percent vegetarian egg" in the coming year both for domestic production and export. The company is already exporting 100 percent vegetarian egg powder, egg yolk powder and egg albumen powder to 27 countries. So the next time you gobble up an egg pastry, just don't feel guilty. "

What does this poultry company say is a vegetarian egg ?

Their chicks are brought to poultry farms and when slightly older, they are forcibly made to lay eggs – as many as 300 each in a year. The company says that the difference is that while other poultries feed their chickens fishmeal , their company feeds their 1.5 million soya powder. Therefore their eggs "are fully vegetarian," (This same company , by the way, had its eggs rejected previously by the EU because their eggs contained more antibiotic in each egg than is allowed.) ... Is an egg vegetarian ?

The most obvious answer is that an egg comes out of a chicken. It is not from an aubergine or the child of a mango. It is from the sexual organs of an animal. Therefore it cannot be vegetarian. Why does the chicken have eggs ? In order to reproduce. The eggs are menstrual blood. If fertilized they turn into chicks.

If not, the egg menstrual blood has been discarded by the hen's body the way women discard their infertile blood every month. So they cannot be vegetarian by any definition of that term. Don't excuse yourself by confusing the definition of the term. Would you eat human period blood. That too is discarded eggs. There is a debate on whether human placenta which is the result of abortion can be used in anti-ageing creams . Would that be vegetarian ? After all the human is an animal just like the chicken.

This tendency to reclassify food simply because you want to eat it is annoying. The Bengalis call fish " river vegetables" and the vegetarians eat them. Abroad you have ovo-vegetarians, lacto vegetarians, ovo lacto vegetarians, piscitarians – anything that will bypass your conscience while filling your stomach.

Let us look at some more arguments made by the pro egg eating vegetarian: ... Arg: if eggs are non-vegetarian then how come many vegetarians eat eggs?

Ans: Murder is illegal and immoral. But so many people commit murders. So shall it be regarded as legal and moral ? Vegetarians are humans and humans – all of them- are self delusional . Each one of us lives a construct of life that we can cope with and make excuses for. And no greater excuses are made than in the field of eating. There are laws in every country that allow advertisers to exaggerate the quality of their product but not lie. The vegetarian egg sellers need to be dealt with legally. And vegetarians who delude themselves need to deal with their own moral issues.

-Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@...

-- read full article: http://news.in.msn.com/columns/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1408453