exactly.
it's a non-sequitur. And it is deliberate.

As animal rights activist we need to suggest veganism, but if veganism is rejected then we must ask the obstinate meat-eater to ALWAYS consume ONLY organic "humane" animal products...(which is harder than veganism)...not because it is more ethical (because it isn't) but because if every meat-eater did that, the entire animal agriculture system would collapse.

We need to understand that as far as animal agriculture is concerned, factory farming is the best and most efficient model, proving that animal agriculture can NEVER be sustainable. No matter how many rules are put in place to attempt to make animal agriculture viable, like the water that wants to go down the drain into the sewers, animal agriculture will always go down the drain into factory farming. It's inevitable.

These kind of victories are good to make obstinate meat-eaters realize this.

People don't want to be cruel and so they want to buy organic free-range, blah blah blah... but if ALL production of eggs, meat, dairy etc, was organic free-range, there would not be enough to meet the demands...and the real cost would make a dozen eggs about 40 bucks!



As for chickens laying eggs anyway, well, let me just say that I used to believe that as well, until Farmer Brown educated me about the realities of egg-laying and then I researched it myself by calling and speaking with actual egg-producers (factory, organic and free-range)

1. MALE CHICKS DIE
Egg-laying hens must be born(hatched), and hatcheries that produce egg-laying hens, only sell hens (because the males are useless to them: too thin too produce meat and they can't lay eggs) so all the male chicks are killed. Meat chickens are called broilers,and they are bred to become VERY large VERY quickly... male chicks born in a hen hatchery just aren't big enough.
Most of the time they are simply thrown in the dumpster or in a garbage bag while they are still alive and left to suffocate...or worse. There are no organic or "humane" hatcheries (just like there are no "humane" slaughterhouses), and even if there were "humane" hatcheries, what would they do with all the males? Nature is pretty much a 50/50 male/ female split... so?
Organic free-range and factory farms all buy their chicks from the same place.

2. ALL HENS ARE FORCE_MOLTED
The hens who lay eggs, lay unfertilized eggs because they are kept away from a rooster, so it's less like a period (natural and happening anyway) and more like a miscarriage(traumatizing and very taxing on the body and mind).
It takes one hen about 30 hours to produce 1 egg. It seriously depletes their bones and bodies. The ancestor of the modern chicken, the red jungle fowl, would produce about 6-12 eggs a year! and all would produce a chick. Now through domestication hens have been conditionned to produce more, but realistically, without force-molting they would not produce enough for even an organic farm to make a profit.
Force-molting is the process of starving the hens (and usually keeping them in the cold too) for two weeks to FORCE their body to enter another laying cycle.
And PLEASE do not compare this to having your period every month! Again in nature a hen would have one or two cycles a year, maybe a third if their was a drought. And it is not like feeling a bit weak and cranky from a period, it is like GIVING BIRTH.
"domestication" by the way is simply two things: keeping the rooster away so that the eggs are not fertilized, and taking the egg away from the hen as soon as she lays it, so that she will lay another.
The desire to reproduce is very strong in all species, and so the hen lays another egg in the hopes that, that one will be fertilized, but there is no rooster, so? but she keeps trying...:-(
Hens speak to their chicks in the shell, and teach them the basics of life, right there while they are nesting. You know the term "mother hen"? it comes from observing hens cooing lovingly to their chicks even in the egg! The bond between a mother hen and her chicks is VERY STRONG! Nurtured from the egg!
But if the egg is not taken away, when the hen realizes that there is no chick in there, she tosses the egg away...which is why even backyard farmers say that hens toss their eggs away ("so why not eat them?") but that is missing the point:

POINT: If WE had not interfered by "domesticating" the hen, all the eggs would be fertilized and no eggs would ever be "tossed" for us to eat.

Think about it: Chickens are very closely related to pigeons, so if chickens "lay eggs anyway" , we all live with lots of pigeons in our cities, have you ever seen pigeon eggs just laying around unused waiting to be eaten? If this myth of the hen who just "wants" to produce eggs for our meals were true we would be walking on pigeon eggs everyday. It's just like the myth of the cow and the goat who WANTS to be milked, and to an extreme the pig who WANTS to be eaten, please! Think about who is perpetrating these myths.

3. ORGANIC IS NOT HUMANE
Organic has nothing to do with humane or kind treatment. Organic has everything to do with which foods the animals are fed, and antibiotics, and chemicals used, etc... Free-range is almost non-existent these days what with the fear of bird-flu...which is why they label it as cage-free now... and all that means is the animals are not in cages, they could easily be in a basement in the dark and their eggs would be labelled as free-range.

4. ALL FARM ANIMALS ARE KILLED
Hens produce eggs to reproduce. They do not produce eggs for our omelette, so to use them for our food goes against their basic rights. Plus, all hens are killed eventually. There is no "retirement community" for farm animals. So the argument that it is "humane" to buy from a small organic farms where the animals are well-treated (sic) is kind of eclipsed by the fact that this good treatment ALWAYS ends in a brutal violent death. Killing someone goes against their rights.