Eating eggs in Sikhism.

[N30S1NGH]

Best way to think of it as - human female withdraws egg (rakth) every month but not each and every egg has potential to conceive, its only at

ovulation period eggs are fertile ready to be conceive with male's biraj.

I don't know how else to explain, can we get input from science university students here?

[luckysingh99]

Best way to think of it as - human female withdraws egg (rakth) every month but not each and every egg has potential to conceive, its only at

ovulation period eggs are fertile ready to be conceive with male's biraj.

I don't know how else to explain, can we get input from science university students here?

I am one of those past students. I was trying to keep it all simple so that everyone can understand.

On a scientific level, I can assure that as much cruelty goes in to milk supplying as goes in to getting your eggs.

So I can't endorse eating eggs either but don't get the wrong impression that drinking milk is any better than eating eggs.

Because this is the real misconception among us indians, alot of us falsely believe we are doing nature favours by drinking milk and not having eggs- This is wrong, and the damage is equivalent in both.

Which is why many white and goras laugh at us when we say we are veggies that eat dairy !!

We come across as half way picky people, who make our own rules on what we class as animal cruelty and what not.

This is the real point to address and like I say it was white and gora folk that informed me of our crazy indian egg/milk myths !!

[gurdssingh]

very interesting points luckysingh99.Vegans must laugh at our defintion of veggie just like how we think some goreh and muslims don't think of fish as meat. Muslims don't have to halal the fish. Whereas its as clear as day a fish is a living animal.

This egg debate has been very informative. However I don't think it changes anything, as in our community eggs will always be seen as meat and drinking milk is seen as a good thing totally veg. But I find this fascinating still trying to get my head around it. As what your saying is correct, but still I cant associate eggs being as bad as milk even though it is the case.

[luckysingh99]

very interesting points luckysingh99.Vegans must laugh at our defintion of veggie just like how we think some goreh and muslims don't think of fish as meat. Muslims don't have to halal the fish. Whereas its as clear as day a fish is a living animal.

This egg debate has been very informative. However I don't think it changes anything, as in our community eggs will always be seen as meat and drinking milk is seen as a good thing totally veg. But I find this fascinating still trying to get my head around it. As what your saying is correct, but still I cant associate eggs being as bad as milk even though it is the case.

I know it's difficult to see it like that because we have become conditioned into thinking this way.

Yes the muslim and fish story is a joke,,because in non halal environments they go as veggie with fish !!

That's their issue and I'm not going to debate here.

However there are no goreh that follow this exception. A real vegan will NOT eat fish either.

In my case, I feel guilty if I drink the mass produced milk from supermarkets where the animals have gone through cruelty.

To overcome this I started getting fresh farm milk where the cow has not been pumped up to produce. A little like back in punjab.

The problem is that I ended up with a few severe infections because of this risk, so what do I do ?

Well it's safer for me to have the treated milk back in the store, but then again I'm cotnributing to the further cruelty.

Bottom line is that it is better NOT to have milk and eggs if we really care.

However, chaa and coffee is difficult to abandon, so it may be better to just have milk, ie.. to help cause harm to the cows only rather than cows and chicks if you were to take eggs as well.

We should have a guilt factor for the milk consumption, if we don't then that is simply ignorace.

[Singh559]

Yeah technically it isn't a fetus, but it's still an unfertilized egg and is coming from the ovaries of a chicken. The conditions chickens are put in are really bad as well, but a lot of mass produced milk (like you said) is horrible in the way they force them to produce so much milk.

Would be nice if we could stop both and change it so getting milk was much more humane like back home in Punjab and some select local farms.

[Not2Cool2Argue]

The potential for life is still there. In the wild, all those eggs would be fertilized. And the reason we Indian's believe that milk is okay, is because people raised the Indians raised the cows themselves, so there was no animal cruelty. So now, we should make sure to get milk from organic, free range, places.

Or otherwise if we stop milk usage, there will be no prasaad, as it is made from butter.............

Eggs unfertilized or not, contain animal proteins, which are sort of like cannibalism.

[Singh559]

The potential for life is still there. In the wild, all those eggs would be fertilized. And the reason we Indian's believe that milk is okay, is because people raised the Indians raised the cows themselves, so there was no animal cruelty. So now, we should make sure to get milk from organic, free range, places.

Or otherwise if we stop milk usage, there will be no prasaad, as it is made from butter.............

Eggs unfertilized or not, contain animal proteins, which are sort of like cannibalism.

Well said.

[luckysingh99]

The potential for life is still there. In the wild, all those eggs would be fertilized. And the reason we Indian's believe that milk is okay, is because people raised the Indians raised the cows themselves, so there was no animal cruelty. So now, we should make sure to get milk from organic, free range, places.

Or otherwise if we stop milk usage, there will be no prasaad, as it is made from butter.............

Eggs unfertilized or not, contain animal proteins, which are sort of like cannibalism.

Good fair points and We should make the effort in resourcing the milk from more natural and humane sources.

You mention that the eggs, no matter if fertilised or not contain animal proteins.- AND YES, this is a sort of cannibalism if we look at it in this manner BUT milk also contains the same animal nutrients, so we can't just ignore and make different rules for that can we ?

[WaheguruJiKiFateh]

In Gurbani, there's a line,

I don't remeber the Punjabi, "You say The Lord is in all so why do you kill the chicken?"

In my opinion the egg would originally have an animal/chick inside it, but its obviously dead so it's the yolk..

Which practically makes it meat:) Sikhi is against any consumption of meat, the chicken bit in the lines means all animals

[Dhan Guru Nanak]

Thank you to everyone who has replied. It has been very good reading all the responses.

The potential for life is still there. In the wild, all those eggs would be fertilized. And the reason we Indian's believe that milk is okay, is because people raised the Indians raised the cows themselves, so there was no animal cruelty. So now, we should make sure to get milk from organic, free range, places.

Or otherwise if we stop milk usage, there will be no prasaad, as it is made from butter.............

Eggs unfertilized or not, contain animal proteins, which are sort of like cannibalism.

I agree that when an egg is first released by the hen from it's ovaries there is potential for life/fertilisation. However, when you know that the egg is going to be unfertilised does that not make a difference? Even in human females there is a potential for life when they release an egg each month from the ovaries. However most of the time it remains unfertilised and is expelled along with the period. But because it is not fertilised we do not consider it as loss of life/killing an embryo.

However, sort of touching on the point you made, I had a discussion yesterday with a friend who made a good point that eggs are probably not eaten in India by vegetarians because for the large part there is no guarantee whether they are going to be unfertilised or fertilised. This is because the cockerels are not kept separate from the hens in traditional Indian farms. But then that begs the question whether we are not allowed to eat all eggs or just fertilised eggs specifically?

In terms of the animal proteins, as luckysingh99 mentioned (along with other good points in his previous posts), even cow milk contains animal proteins and a small quantity of blood cells.

In Gurbani, there's a line,

I don't remeber the Punjabi, "You say The Lord is in all so why do you kill the chicken?"

In my opinion the egg would originally have an animal/chick inside it, but its obviously dead so it's the yolk..

Which practically makes it meat:) Sikhi is against any consumption of meat, the chicken bit in the lines means all animals

Your first part is definitely correct. As written by Bhagat Kabir Ji:

Jao Sabh Mey Ayk Khudae Kehat Hao Tao Keo Murgi Maarai.

You say that the one Lord is in all, so why do you kill chickens?

However, like I said previously I am not discussing whether or not it is ok to eat meat (which I am personally against). Rather I was more interested in finding out about the consumption of eggs if they are not fertilised = no potential for life. Yolk is not the same thing as a dead embryo. Only if the egg becomes fertilised would a chicken have been born. The yolk is only there to provide nutrition to the embryo if the egg had become fertilised. The hen still lays the egg each month regardless.

Anyway thank you again to everyone for their replies. It has been very informative and given me lots to think about. It would be great if others shared their opinion on this as well.

WJKK WJKF