The main way of differentiating vegans and vegetarians is that vegetarians consume eggs and dairy, while vegans do not. But, are eggs and cheese actually vegetarian? That is, are they meat products? Yes, they are. They're just as much a meat product as that big fat steak on the plate of the nearest omnivore. If you're eating eggs and cheese, you're directly eating meat. If you're eating other dairy products, you're still contributing to animal death. All you have to do is give it a little thought and do some quick research to see that it's true and why.
How is cheese made?
Conventional commercial cheese is made with rennet. What is the definition of rennet?
According to one trusted online dictionary:
“Rennet is a complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach, used in the production of cheese. Rennet contains many enzymes, including a proteolytic enzyme (protease) that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey).”
Rennet is a meat product. Therefore, cheese made with rennet is a meat product. That is, it contains a meat product, therefore, it is not vegetarian.
Note: You can buy vegetarian cheese that is not produced using animal rennet. However, that's not the type of cheese referred to here.
What is an egg, actually?
If a hen were a human, the egg equivalent would be an unfertilized egg, traveling down the fallopian tube, waiting for Mr. Sperm to come along and turn it into a human being. Am I right? So, isn't that unfertilized egg a piece of meat (albeit a tiny one)?
If you ate a human egg, wouldn't it be a meat product, whether it was fertilized or not? Abortion debates, aside, whether it's a “person” or not, it's still a piece of meat.
So is a hen's egg. So is any egg, fertilized or not. It's still a meat product, just like any other non-waste product produced by the body is meat. So, there you go. Eggs are not vegetarian at all because they are an animal by-product.
Wait a minute, what about those milk products?
They don't contain any meat at all, do they? You don't kill the cow to milk it, do you? You don't kill the cow to get cream for butter, either, right? Well, that certainly makes sense, doesn't it?
I guess if you are being technical, there are no meat products in milk and butter. Or are there? Milk and cream are products produced by a cow, right? A cow is a meat product, right? Or at least, that's the way most people look at cows; as products.
So, aren't milk and cream just more animal by-products after all? Of course they are. They are produced by a meat product. They are not waste products. They are, or once were a part of that meat “product”. Therefore, they are animal products.
Unfortunately, that's not even the biggest revelation.
The meat industry, the egg industry and the dairy industry are the same industry.
So, whether you believe that eggs and dairy products are meat or something else entirely, animals always die to produce them. Shall I explain? Let's start with dairy.
A dairy cow is a mammal. That means she must be lactating in order to produce milk. In order to lactate for a long period of time, she must keep having babies. Those babies are taken away from her so that humans may have the milk.
What do you imagine happens to all the millions of male calves taken from their mothers? Well, where does veal come from?
Where do the female calves go? They are used for milk production, just like their mothers.
What do you suppose happens to those mother cows once they can no longer produce milk? They become meat products.
It's an ugly look into the meat industry's circle of life. That's right, the dairy industry is the meat industry and it's an ugly thing, whether you are a vegetarian or not..
Who dies to produce eggs?
Baby male chicks die. Millions, possibly billions of them are ground alive, smothered by foam, etc. every year. Why? Because they are no good as egg producers and a tough, inferior meat product. We haven't yet figured out how to produce only female chicks for meat and egg production purposes. So, our way of sorting out the “bad eggs” is to kill most of the male chicks once they are born.
Some are sold as roosters for breeding purposes, of course. It's a small percentage, though. What happens to them when they have outlived their usefulness? Well, they're killed, of course. It doesn't pay to keep them alive if they're not doing anything for us, right?
You may not be a true vegetarian if you eat eggs and dairy products.
This is not a judgment. It's a fact. Eggs and dairy are a product of the meat industry. Not only that, they either contain animal products, require the production of animal products or actually are animal products, depending on how you look at it. Therefore, they are not technically vegetarian at all.