Good news from The
Dodo: Germany is working to end the mass shredding and gassing of live male
chicks in the egg industry. Currently, about 45 million male chicks are
violently killed every year in the country.
Male chicks of the
egg-laying breed are considered useless to the egg industry since they’ll never
lay eggs and don’t grow large enough to be profitable for meat.
The article explains that unwanted male chicks “are often
dumped into a macerator, a blender-like machine that grinds up the baby chicks
alive. The other option is the “gas
chamber, which can take up to two minutes to kill them and often leaves them
shaking and gasping for air.
New research for in-ovo sexing, which will allow scientists
to determine the sex of a chick inside an egg, is a game changer for the egg
industry. The German government hopes to implement this research as early as
2016, with a complete halt to the “culling of male chicks by 2017.
This research has far-reaching implications for the egg
industry, and could possibly spare billions of male chicks from a grisly death.
In the United States alone, 200 million baby male chicks are gruesomely killed
each year.
Mercy For Animals has documented some of the appalling killing
practices through our undercover work in the United States. See for yourself:
Sadly, female chicks will continue to be exploited for their
eggs. Most egg-laying hens are crammed for life in tiny, filthy wire cages, mutilated
without painkillers, and mercilessly slaughtered.
The best way to protect chickens is to choose healthy and
humane plant-based alternatives to eggs.