How to Tell if a Baby Chick Is Alive Inside an Egg

Maret 06, 2022 Posting Komentar

Most egg farmers in the United states of america will stop grinding male baby chickens to expiry over the adjacent four years.

United Egg Producers, the industry group that represents 95 percentage of egg producers in the country, announced Thursday that they would end the process of "alternative" male chicks past 2020. Instead, they'll utilise technology that determines the sexual practice of a craven embryo still inside an egg.

Let's back up a minute. Why were egg producers ever grinding up newborn chicks to begin with? Basically, considering they're useless to the egg industry, explained David Coman-Hidy, executive director of The Humane League, a farm animal protection group that negotiated the agreement.

An industry group representing most egg producers in the U.S. has pledged to end the practice of mass-slaughtering male chicks. — An industry group representing most egg producers in the U.Southward. has pledged to end the practice of mass-slaughtering male chicks.

Egg farmers don't sell off the chicks to be raised for meat, considering in industrial agriculture, the breeds of chickens raised for meat and for egg production are totally unlike.

"Egg layers are bred to be egg-laying machines who tin can pump out hundreds of eggs each year. They're expected to live for approximately one yr, typically confined to a tiny cage," Coman-Hidy told The Huffington Post in an email. "On the other hand, broilers are bred to be grotesquely large, growing to a huge size within ane calendar month — this is similar having a toddler that weighs hundreds of pounds — when they are slaughtered. This leaves the male laying breed as the odd homo out — also minor to be really assisting to heighten for meat and unable to lay eggs."

The exact lifespans of broilers and egg hens varies. The U.Southward. Poultry and Egg Clan says hens "usually" have a two-year "production cycle." The U.South. Department of Agriculture puts typical broiler slaughter age between 38 and 61 days.

Until now, the manufacture'south solution to deal with these millions of unwanted male chicks has been to throw them, typically notwithstanding alive, into high-speed grinders like to woodchippers. Sometimes instead, the chicks are suffocated, or killed via their spinal cords being severed, according to a Humane League news release most the decision.

But now United Egg Producers is pursuing an alternative called ovo-sexing, which involves sticking a needle into an egg to discover slight differences in DNA to betoken whether the hatched chick will be a male or a female. Eggs that will hatch into males can so merely be put into the egg supply chain, Coman-Hidy said.

The reason this might have until 2020 is because "the technology is not commercially available nonetheless — just it will be soon," according to Coman-Hidy.

Republic of chad Gregory, United Egg Producers president and CEO, said in a press release that the group will adopt the technology "every bit soon every bit it is commercially available and economically feasible."

While the change will spare millions and millions of male chicks from a painful decease, the deplorable truth remains that the surviving hens largely go on to atomic number 82 miserable lives in cages so small the animals tin can barely move. "Cage-free" eggs are a step in the right management, but a cage-free label is no guarantee that eggs are cruelty-free. "Cage-free" hens often still live in crowded barns with no windows or stimulation.

Just Coman-Hidy is optimistic that these changes represent a major shift for the meliorate in the manner that people think about the animals humans use for food.

"Information technology'south an indicator that society is coming to recognize that farmed animals have lives, they feel pain and that they matter," he said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story referred to many barns for egg-laying hens as "dark." They are typically artificially lit. Language has also been added to analyze the life expectancy for broiler and egg chickens.