I suppose it's slightly more animal friendly. On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals and just continuing on with a small number of animals to live reasonably natural lives and produce goods for realistic, high, prizes to be consumed as a luxury or exotic thing. Sorry, I'm a dreamer I guess, continuously disappointed by a world that doesn't seem to be able to set any significant goals nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit and likely at the cost of the rest of the world.
The chickens we raise on our hobby farm are "dual purpose" birds in that they are good for both meat and eggs. That is traditionally how all poultry was raised, really, on family farms, etc. Roosters were raised and fattened until a few months in, and then slaughtered and eaten, while a portion of the hens were kept for laying. The meat from roosters isn't as good, but it's frankly fine overall.<p>There's no reason the meat industry couldn't divert the male chickens into a separate supply chain where they were raised until 6-8 months and then slaughtered and sold as stewing meat or some other (decent tasting) protein product for human consumption. The roosters don't develop aggressive behaviours until much later.<p>But that would be inefficient by market measures. So it doesn't happen.
I've been buying no-kill eggs for years now, there are plenty of egg distributors that hatch two-use chickens, the males grow large enough to be edible, the females lay eggs. Available for years.<p>I really don't see an advantage of this technology for the consumer, the real advantage lies with the producers.
I am by far not an animal rights activst and enjoy my daily portion of meat and dairy, but shreddering millions of male chicks always struck me als plain wrong, even by my carnivorian standards. This is progress that I fully support and I would not mind paying a little(!) extra to make sure that for my scrambled eggs no male chicken are shreddered.
So, they're still culling fertilized eggs with males, they just do it before they hatch now. I guess it's a little more visually appealing to the public, but it literally changes nothing. The same number of chickens are still culled, they still get turned into animal feed.<p>Honestly, what difference does it really make if male chickens are shredded and ground up into feed pre or post hatching? It's the same result in the end.
To everyone who keeps bringing up that creatures eating each other is simply nature, the way things have always worked for eons:<p>We are not simply just eating animals.<p>In nature there is an equilibrium; every prey has a chance to escape. If an species cannot avoid predators, that species ceases to exist.<p>In our world there is no such merciful release.<p>We force millions of creatures to be born and live their entire lives in cramped squalid conditions only to be butchered off, sometimes for no good reason at all. [0][1]<p>That’s not nature. That is a fucked up hell.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993157" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993157</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990724" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990724</a>
Orbem from Munich is creating an MRI based approach to determining chicks genders and egg fertility which may be more scalable. <a href="https://orbem.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://orbem.ai/</a>
This is cool, but doesn't seem like it would scale. When I say scale, I mean farms with a few hundred to a few thousand bird operation, good luck affording this machine. When the article says scale, they mean being able to do this with millions of eggs on an industrial feedlot. Trying to make industrial farming ethical is like trying to make fossil fuels not harmful to the environment.
> Instead, a laser beam burns a 0.3mm-wide hole in the shell. Then, air pressure is applied to the shell exterior, pushing a drop of fluid out of the hole. The process takes one second per egg and enables fluid to be collected from eggs without touching them.<p>This seems counterintuitive. If the external pressure is equally applied around the egg, what forces the fluid to escape?
It's very strange to kill male chicks, I'm eating capon instead of regular chicken nowadays because it has much more flavor and a better bite. If people would simply eat them more they also don't have to be killed. Castration is not super animal friendly though.
I had no idea male chicks were disposed. As a vegetarian, I understand humans killing animals for food(people have done this for generations). At the end of the day we share a huge amount of DNA with other animals (so we're a lot like other animals that eat other animals to stay alive).<p>It's nice that someone figured out a way to optimize this and reduce unnecessary death. Massive kudos to them.<p>I've been raised to think: "what if there was a higher species of Aliens that farmed humans for their meat?" Yeah I definitely wouldn't want those aliens to kill me just because I'm male.
It's still killing the egg. But I guess we feel better about killing an egg than a hatched, fluffy chick?<p>I think it could only be called "no kill" if there was a way to ensure each fertilised egg is female.
I was wondering what happens to the (hopefully) very small amount male chicks that still hatch because no testing is free from false positives/negatives.<p>The good news is, according to section 5.2.4 of the the "respeggt System Manual"[1] they are forbidden to kill earlier than 12 weeks old.<p>[1] <a href="https://respeggt-group.com/files/respeggt-Systemhandbuch_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://respeggt-group.com/files/respeggt-Systemhandbuch_en....</a><p>Edit: link to the English system manual
I've seen the videos of the male chickens who go straight into the grinder on hatching, but what happens then? Does it get turns into feed or some other useful product?
Given that this article is from 2018 - does anyone know if this spread to other countries in the mean time? (And for bonus points: to the Netherlands?)
<i>>Male chicks don’t grow fast enough to justify the cost of feeding them up for meat.</i><p>Why is this? Logically that would mean that either 1) females grow faster than males, or 2) all chickens that are used for meat are first used for laying eggs, because that's the only economic way. I'm fairly sure that neither is the case.
A little late, but I don't see (ctrl-F reptile) anyone who noted the odd statement that male chicks have no economic purpose, <i>but</i> are processed into "reptile food". Does that imply reptile food has no economic value? Do the reptiles eat as much if there are no male chicks culled?
For some background:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-ovo_sexing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-ovo_sexing</a>
As a hobby grower, I'd pay a premium for birds like this. We buy sex links and the idea that the dude chicks get slaughtered bothers be some.<p>Though my SIL has expressed a willingness to slaughter the roosters so perhaps I'll just buy straight runs from now on and eat fresh chicken.