Chick culling

Chick culling or unwanted chick killing is the process of separating and killing of unwanted (male and unhealthy female) chicks, for which the intensive animal farming industry has no use. It occurs in all industrialised egg production whether free range, organic, or battery cage. Worldwide, around 7 billion male chicks are culled per year in the egg industry. Because male chickens do not lay eggs and only those on breeding programmes are required to fertilise eggs, they are considered redundant to the egg-laying industries and are usually killed shortly after being sexed, which occurs just days after they are conceived or after they hatch. Some methods of culling that do not involve anaesthetics include: cervical dislocation, asphyxiation by carbon dioxide and maceration using a high-speed grinder. Asphyxiation is the only method in the United Kingdom, while maceration is the primary method in the United States.
Due to modern selective breeding, laying hen strains differ from meat production strains (broilers). In the United States, males are culled in egg production, since males "don't lay eggs or grow large enough to become broilers".
Ducklings and goslings are also culled in the production of foie gras. However, because males put on more weight than females in this production system, the females are culled, sometimes in an industrial macerator. Up to 40 million female ducks per year may be killed in this way. The remains of female ducklings are later used in cat food and fertilisers.
History.
Prior to the development of modern broiler meat breeds, most male chickens (cockerels) were slaughtered for meat, whereas females (pullets) would be kept for egg production. However, once the industry successfully bred separate meat and egg-producing hybrids—starting in the 1920s and 1930s—there was no reason to keep males of the egg-producing hybrid. As a consequence, the males of egg-laying chickens are killed as soon as possible after hatching and sexing to reduce financial losses incurred by the breeder. Special techniques have been developed to accurately determine the sex of chicks at as young an age as possible.
In November 2018, the "world's first no-kill eggs" were sold to the public in Berlin, Germany.
Methods.
Several methods are used to cull chicks:
Permitted methods in the EU.
The authorised procedures for killing chicks have been harmonised within the European Union. The regulations initiated in 1976 evolved in 1993, the first directive to specifically take chicks into account. A new directive was adopted in 2009, enacted on 1 January 2013 (replacing the 1993 directive) and last updated on 14 December 2019:
Recommended methods in the US.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AMVA) "Euthanasia" methods include: cervical dislocation, maceration, and asphyxiation by carbon dioxide. The 2005–2006 AMVA Executive Board proposed a policy change, recommended by the Animal Welfare Committee on the killing of unwanted chicks, poults, and pipped eggs. The policy states:
US producers announced in 2016 a goal of being able by 2020 to determine the sex of the developing chick long before hatching, so male eggs can be destroyed. However in January 2020 they stated that killing day-old male chicks remains unavoidable due to the lack of a viable alternative.
Controversy and phaseout.
Animal welfare advocates maintain that many of the current practices surrounding chicken slaughtering are unethical. Animal rights advocates argue that it is wrong to unnecessarily exploit and kill other sentient beings for food production, including chicks.
Scientific research into alternatives (2010s).
Several technologies may obviate chick culling by determining the sex of a chick before hatching. These technologies rely on measuring eggs (through spectroscopy, chemical assays, or imaging); they can determine a chick's sex within 4–9 days of laying. Some methods require genetic engineering to make male eggs fluorescent. Such methods are attractive not only for ethical reasons but to reduce the costs of employing human cullers and of incubating male eggs. Timothy Kurt, a director from the United States Department of Agriculture, said, "Everyone wants the same thing, and the right piece of technology could solve this right now."
A Unilever spokesperson has been quoted as saying "We have also committed to providing funding and expertise for research and introduction of alternative methods such as in-ovo gender identification (sexing) of eggs. This new technology offers the potential to eliminate the hatching and culling of male chicks."
In 2018, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, invested $844,000 to electronically "scan" fertilized eggs to determine if they are male or female.
In September 2019, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a company that was founded by the United States congress in 2014 will award six contestants from ten countries, $6 million for working entries. United Egg Producers intends to be cull-free by 2020.
CRISPR technology uses a "pair of molecular scissors" to illuminate the male chicks after being conceived and before being placed in the incubator to be hatched, thus eliminating all male chicks from being hatched.
Legal challenge in Germany (2013–2019).
In 2013, the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia issued a decree banning hatcheries from killing chicks, against which two egg hatcheries in the state appealed. As paragraph one of Germany's Animal Welfare Act stipulates that "No-one shall inflict pain, suffering or harm on a pet without a reasonable cause," a lower court ruled that killing for food production was a "reasonable" ground. This led to a challenge in the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. On 13 June 2019, this court decided that the current way of culling chicks "violates the country's laws against killing animals without a justifiable reason." However, the court allowed hatcheries to keep culling chicks on a temporary basis until alternatives, such as sex determination in eggs, are introduced. Such "no-kill eggs" had been introduced into the German market in 2018 and were available in more than 200 shops by June 2019, but there was no industrial-scale solution available yet.
Political efforts (2019–present).
In response to the June 2019 Leipzig court ruling, German Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner stated chick culling was "ethically unacceptable" and argued it should be prohibited. The Grand Coalition agreement of March 2018 stated that chick culling should have been ended 'by the middle of the current legislative period', which would have been in October 2019, but this goal was not met. At that time, gassing was the most common method of chick culling in Germany, which killed up to 50 million chicks a year. Although the federal government had already invested millions of euros in stimulating scientific research into two alternative methods for sex determination in eggs by then, these were still not ready for the market yet.
In September 2019, in Switzerland, the parliament voted to outlaw the shredding of chickens. This is despite this practice not being used in Switzerland. It was further commented that: "This tendency to rear species only for the production of eggs or for meat turns animals into mere objects. It has led to absurd practices such as the shredding of living male chicks". However, the practice of gassing chicks, which kills about three million male baby chicks in Switzerland per year, remained legal.
In late October 2019, French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume told France Inter: 'We announced last week with my colleague, German Minister for Agriculture [Julia Klöckner], that we were going to stop the shredding of chicks, which is no longer bearable today. We said end of the year 2021.' He further argued that the practice needed to be phased out and not immediately discontinued: 'If we do it right away, what will happen? There won't be eggs anymore.'
On 13 January 2020, during an official visit of Guillaume to Klöckner, the Ministers said in a joint statement that France and Germany wanted to end the mass shredding of male chicks at the EU level by the end of 2021. Guillaume stated that 'France and Germany should be the European motor to advance on this issue', with Klöckner adding that Germany's EU presidency in the second half of 2020 was a good opportunity to do so. The countries planned to bring together various groups to share scientific knowledge and implement alternative methods. On 28 January 2020, Guillaume repeated at a press conference that the culling of unwanted male chicks (by shredding) would be outlawed in France by the end of 2021. While some animal rights activists welcomed the move, others said that the decision did not go far enough. The minister's entourage told Agence France-Presse that it was unclear whether his announced ban also included asphyxiation by CO2 (which was excluded from the Swiss ban), pressing him to explicitly prohibit that chick culling method as well.
In early February 2020, four Dutch animal rights organisations sent letters to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the Parliamentary Commission on Agriculture urging them to follow the examples given by Switzerland and France, and phase out all chick culling including gassing in the Netherlands by the end of 2021. The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture cautiously responded that 'a political solution is being explored' and that the Agriculture Minister would soon provide more information. In March 2020, the Directorate of Production and Agrarian Markets of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture stated that it is working with egg producers to end the annual culling of 35 million male chicks in Spain in 2021. The Ministry said producers were testing two different techniques of in-ovo sex detection.
In January 2021 the German federal government approved a draft law banning chick culling, to be effectuated at the end of 2021. If passed by the Bundestag, Germany will become the first country in the world to ban this practice, confirming its joint commitment with France made in January 2020.
Business efforts (2018–present).
Currently, the following businesses (producers, distributors and retailers) are in the process of introducing no-kill eggs (also called 'brotherless eggs') and phasing out kill eggs:
The following businesses are considering or have committed to introducing no-kill eggs and phasing out kill eggs: