Dear Chicken:

How's it going?

Probably not great, as you have yet to figure out why you crossed the road. Early Alzheimer's, perhaps.

But I'm not writing to you, Chicken, to kindly reply to anything you've written. You, after all, never write anything legible to me all you do is scratch.

I'm writing because a coworker of mine asked a very common question for vegans.

"Why can't you eat eggs? The chickens are going to produce them anyway," he or she asked.*

(* The gender of the question asker is hidden to protect the pronoun's identity.)

Chicken, you and I know the answer to that.

We certainly know in an overwhelming majority of cases, the eggs at the grocery store are not being raised in some chicken spa resort where all the chickens never have to lift a feather.

Those long, windowless, metal buildings along the turnpike or Route 30 are where chickens like you are kept in the dark for most of your lives. At least Motel 6 leaves the light on for you. And Motel 6 doesn't debeak you, either.*

(* I have never been debeaked at a Motel 6. So far.)

"I ate eggs grown on a family farm when I was growing up, and I'm fine," the pronoun continued.

Nowadays, that's called organic. And if everyone got all their eggs from a nice York County farm like that, the argument against it would be more difficult I'd love for that to become a reality, if only because that's a step in the right direction.

But I'm guessing, Chicken, that those farm-fresh eggs aren't used in any of the other products he or she uses, from baked goods to pastas to frozen foods.

And Chicken, I hate to say this, but you regularly pass on salmonella to people like a six-year-old passes around a cold. Not cool, Chicken.

With all that said, Chicken, there's a bigger reason why I don't eat eggs one of the primary distinctions between a vegetarian and a vegan -- and it has nothing to do with the thought of eating the placenta of another animal. I eat Oreos, so there's not much of a difference.

It's knowing that most eggs used in the country come from big hatcheries.

Those hatcheries hate dudes more than York Countians hate property taxes.

If you are a male chick born in a hatchery, you go into a meat grinder. Alive.

You can't produce eggs, male chicks, so you go the way of the Dodo bird, except the Dodo bird didn't go extinct through some Darwinian macerator.There's one hatchery in Iowa that grinds up 30 million male chicks a year. A Mercy for Animals estimate puts the overall male chicks killed by the egg industry at more than 200 million it's a widely accepted practice by the industry.

There's no shorter stick to draw in nature than being born a male chick in a hatchery.

As it turns out, pronouns matter.

-- Reach Andrew Shaw at ashaw@yorkdispatch.com