The egg industry hides a terrible secret. Because male chicks do not lay eggs or produce valuable meat, they are usually killed the day after hatching and usually ground up alive in industrial shredders.. The practice, known as chick culling, results in the deaths of an estimated 6.5 billion male chicks each year worldwide.
But now an American egg producer plans to start selling eggs from hens purchased from a hatchery equipped with new technology that prevents that grisly outcome, a first in the United States.
“The average consumer just isn't aware that this is even an issue,” said producer John Brunnquell of Indiana-based Egg Innovations, which sells 300 million eggs a year.
Brunnquell said his main poultry farm was on track to adopt the technology in early 2025 and anticipated starting selling eggs produced with the new technique late next summer. “The assumption is that once we get started, others will follow,” he said.
Several European countries use the technology, known as in ovo sexing, which determines the sex of a chick before it hatches. The unwanted eggs can then be destroyed before, according to studies, the embryo feels pain. The technology would add a few cents to the cost of the egg, experts say.
Germany and France prohibit the slaughter of chicks, and Italy plans to end it in 2027. Eggs from poultry hens using this technology are sold in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, and some of them carry the label “ free from chick slaughter.”
“I think you don't have to be a philosopher to believe that it is morally problematic to let some animals be born only to immediately be killed.s,” said Robert Yaman, founder of Innovate Animal Ag, a nonprofit organization focused on technology that improves animal welfare.
The Food and Agricultural Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by the U.S. Congress, said that Widespread adoption of in ovo sexing could reduce costs because about half of the fertilized eggs would no longer need to be incubated until they hatch. Late last year, the group announced three finalists for a multimillion-dollar prize to develop in ovo sexing technology that can be used on a commercial scale.
But, Brunnquell said, there is one “unknown”: “Is there enough innate concern about euthanasia of male chicks that people will pay a little more?”
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