Egg producers are up in arms after Google designers removed the egg from their salad emoji in order to make it more "inclusive" to vegans.

Google User Experience manager Jennifer Daniel hailed the change on Twitter: "There's big talk about inclusion and diversity at Google so if you need any evidence of Google is making this priority may I direct your attention to the salad emoji— we've removed the egg in Android P beta 2, making this a more inclusive vegan salad."

While this move was welcomed by some vegans, members of the egg industry were less than impressed.

The British Egg Industry Council, which represents British egg producers, told The Register: "Are the people at Google cracking up?

"We completely understand that vegans choose not to eat eggs, but in the UK egg sales are up by almost 5 per cent and many people love them, so it seems a shame for the majority to be missing out due to concern for offending one group."