{"id":763297,"date":"2021-03-23T08:38:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T12:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=763297"},"modified":"2021-03-23T08:46:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T12:46:34","slug":"heed-the-culling-billions-of-day-old-chicks-are-shredded-gassed-and-suffocated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=763297","title":{"rendered":"HEED THE CULLING: Ending the billions of day-old chicks from being shredded, gassed, and suffocated"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Animal rights groups suggest that quibbling over a technological solution to 'chick culling' distracts from what they see as the real problem at hand: the egg industry itself.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

JONATHAN MOENS:<\/strong> Every year, up to 7 billion day-old male chicks are tossed into shredding machines, gassed, or suffocated in plastic bags\u2014a process known as \u201cchick culling.\u201d This grim ritual is underpinned by both biology and economics: Male chicks don\u2019t lay eggs, and they fatten up too slowly to be sold as meat. Across the globe, culling has become the default strategy for the egg industry to eliminate unwanted hatchlings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is horrible. You see these puffy, newly hatched chicks on a conveyor belt,\u201d headed toward a large blade that slices them \u201cinto a gazillion pieces,\u201d says Leah Garc\u00e9s, president of Mercy for Animals, an animal-rights advocacy group in the United States. In recent years, local and international animal-rights groups, particularly in France, Germany, and the U.S., have been ramping up pressure on governments and the egg industry to commit to ending the practice\u2014particularly given technological innovations that allow producers to identify the sex of a developing chick before it hatches. The process is called \u201cin-ovo-sexing,\u201d and such technologies, versions of which are already deployed in some countries, can obviate the need for live chick culling…<\/p>\n

Nearly five years ago, United Egg Producers, an agricultural cooperative whose members are responsible for producing more than 90 percent of all commercial eggs in the U.S., released a statement pledging to eliminate chick culling by 2020, or as soon as a \u201ccommercially available and economically feasible\u201d technology became accessible. That pledge was negotiated with the Humane League, an animal-rights nonprofit organization. But 2020 has come and gone, and although UEP\u2019s pledge wasn\u2019t legally binding, some egg-industry leaders and scientists say there is little sign that the industry is anywhere near phasing in cull-free technologies that could still meet the colossal supply of more than 100 billion eggs produced every year in the U.S… What\u2019s clear is that as the hunt for a solution drags on, the U.S.-based culling continues apace…<\/p>\n

To be sure, some animal-rights groups suggest that quibbling over a technological solution distracts from what they see as the real problem at hand: the egg industry itself. \u201cInstead of putting a Band-Aid on a Band-Aid on a Band-Aid and trying to fix all these problems with more technology and more technology, here\u2019s another idea: Why don\u2019t we do plant-based eggs?\u201d Garc\u00e9s says. She and other activists point to food waste, animal suffering, and health-associated costs as reasons to divest money away from the egg industry to support companies that produce plant-based alternatives. SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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