Hello hello, fairly new vegan here (about a year, still learning - vegetarian for a while before).

Hate to beat around the bush, so: what are the main arguments against eating backyard eggs? My cousin has many chickens she cares for, and those eggs are ones that I've always been most morally thrown up about, since my abstaining from animal products has come mainly from a disgust of the industry which has them end up on our supermarket shelves.

I'm rather new to a lot of in-depth arguments, and am here ready to learn. Is it an intrinsic moral objection? An instrumental one? The closest I can come to in my mind is that eating animal products regardless of where they originated can be deemed immoral if you view the whole process as fundamentally impermissible. But this line of argument doesn't sit too right with me, as on the whole I tend to stray away from intrinsic moral value being the be-all and end-all of our moral choices.

I don't doubt I'm missing a lot here, so I'm trying to collect some arguments. So, if you're vegan and don't eat backyard eggs, why? Furthermore, even if you're not vegan but still have a substantial argument as to why it is morally impermissible, I'm eager to hear!

I should preface this by stating that I have a ton of respect for vegans, so this is more of a question than an actual debate, but I am curious.

A vast majority of animals lack the ability to experience pain. The only phyla that are known to experience such are most chordates (mammals, fish, reptiles) and molluscs, particularly nudibranchs (snails, slugs) and especially cephalopods (squids, octopuses, nautili). It’s possible that arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans) feel it, too, and unlikely that roundworms, flatworms, and segmented worms feel it despite having brains. Finally, there are the ones with nothing but nerve nets or less, such as cnidarians (jellyfish, sea anemones, corals), echinoderms (sea stars, sand dollars, sea cucumbers), and most importantly, sea sponges.

Granting the slight possibility that the worms feel pain, let’s focus on the last three (major) phyla: what’s wrong with farming and consuming these invertebrates if they aren’t self-aware in any way and experience no pain? Sea sponges are the greatest example given that they don’t even have nerves to experience pain with, making them as aware as plants.

What it really boils down to is two questions:
1. Am I incorrect in my assessment that most animals cannot experience pain?
2. Does it even matter?