Thought I’d start populating this sub. Seems nice!
So, say you rescue chickens or raise them yourself without the intention of eating them. And they just live their lives and lay unfertilized eggs, e.g. eggs that will never become chickens. And the hen just lays them. Would it be alright to eat the eggs since they’re the equivalent of menstruation?
You do have to do all kinds of little hocus pocus to make the hen produce a useful amount of eggs. It includes having a fake egg in their nest all the time and other little things. Without those, the chicken would lay less eggs.
Being pregnant is a huge task for the body, and when the chicken makes the egg, it puts in basically all the resources it would need to put if the egg was actually fertile. If it didn’t need to lay so many eggs, its life would probably be more relaxed. And without human interference, it would lay far less eggs.
And then, of course, if the hen is fed with food grown elsewhere, it would be better for the climate if the hen did not exist.
How much weight these arguments have is another thing :) Depends probably on what you’d be doing otherwise, if you completely stopped eating eggs.