I go back on forth on this business, but for anyone who's interested, I recommend David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster"

It's the fairest, most intelligent take I've seen about the ethics behind eating animals and it's also very funny

I am vegetarian, i eat dairy and eggs, but am considering becoming fully vegan.

Two Iowan egg farms owned by DeCoster have just recalled over 500 million eggs due to Salmonella contamination, perhaps caused by the factory farm hens consuming the feces of rodents running up and down the feed troughs. Egg supplier has lengthy violation history before recall - USATODAY.com

This DeCoster company has in the past been found guilty of immigration violations, unsanitary conditions for workers, enabling sexual assault of female workers, and animal welfare violations. So, both humans and non-human animals suffer to produce cheap animal products.

The situation is all just very depressing to me, especially since Iowa is the main egg producing state in the U.S. Not only do egg-laying hens (and their dead brothers, killed as chicks) suffer during life, but then the surviving hens are slaughtered and people eat them. The treatment of egg-laying hens and their brothers was one of the reasons I became vegan.

Here is a video of the conditions in a DeCoster factory farm filmed by an undercover worker from the non-profit organization, Mercy for Animals:

^The sad thing is that suffering like that seems inevitable in a capitalistic world. The factory-type egg production might be, for many farmers, the only viable choice to do it if they want to be competitive at all in the market and make any money. In those factory style farms, how much money does the farmer get per chicken? The answer is almost nothing. It takes several chickens to earn a pound or a dollar.

edit :

Also, it's difficult to stay away from this kind of egg production. You can stay away from the eggs, but other food production companies like those who make pasta or mayonaise or whatever has eggs in it are also likely to get their eggs cheap from somewhere.

But that doesn't make them one bit less tasty.

Actually, I think it does. It's quantity before quality.

If you're talking about that **** McDonalds calls chicken (I would REALLY love to see how that's made), then I agree. Whatever they're doing isn't promoting good quality. I was more speaking of eggs, you know the old saying "you can't screw up an egg..."

^Well, that's true in a sense :) factory style eggs still taste good even though there might be better eggs out there.

I tried some "all natural" cage free farm eggs not long ago from a farmer's market, and honestly, I couldn't tell the taste difference between those eggs and regular factory store brand. The only thing noticeable about them was they were a lot smaller, but more dense. I suppose that's normal.
I've been buying standard jumbo eggs recently, and those things are so full of steroids or something, there's often 2 yolks in every other egg. The consistency of the egg whites is thinner than the all naturals, but I don't noticed a difference in taste.

this seems odd, especially that the all natural eggs were smaller. my uncle hooked up a bunch of family back home with fresh eggs all the time and it was normally hard to close the lid on a dozen, they were HUGE. double yolks weren't that rare either - at least they weren't until the foxes got into his henhouse.

as for the taste, the difference is marginal at best, i just like the idea of knowing exactly where they were coming from.

in terms of the main points of discussion, yeah meat could be seen as murder but it's not going to stop me from eating it. i do still thank whatever little piggy provided me with pork chops every time i slap them into the pan though.