Posted on 12/22/2018 5:52:43 AM PST by Bon mots
Scientists can now quickly determine a chick’s gender before it hatches, potentially ending the need to cull billions of male chicks worldwide.
The world’s first ever no-kill eggs are now on sale in Berlin after German scientists found an easy way to determine a chick’s gender before it hatches, in a breakthrough that could put an end to the annual live shredding of billions of male chicks worldwide.
The patented “Seleggt” process can determine the sex of a chick just nine days after an egg has been fertilised. Male eggs are processed into animal feed, leaving only female chicks to hatch at the end of a 21-day incubation period. “If you can determine the sex of a hatching egg you can entirely dispense with the culling of live male chicks,” said Seleggt managing director Dr Ludger Breloh, who spearheaded the four-year programme by German supermarket Rewe Group to make its own-brand eggs more sustainable. “It’s not about winning or losing,” he added of the worldwide race to find a marketable solution. “We all have the same goal, which is to end the culling of chicks in the supply chain.
Of course, there’s competition, but it’s positive in that it keeps us all focused on that goal.” An estimated 4-6 billion male chicks are slaughtered globally every year because they serve no economic purpose. Some are suffocated, others are fed alive into grinding or shredding machines to be processed into reptile food. The culling is a messy solution to a thorny problem of modern poultry farming. Humans have bred chickens for one of two purposes: to produce eggs, or meat. Yet half of all the animals bred for this purpose are considered useless.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I've actually read the American Veterinary Association manual on humane euthanization methods. Over lunch. Yes, I'm weird.
Some of the methods (like maceration) are extremely uncomfortable to contemplate, but the goal is to render death with as little distress and pain as possible.
That is because different breeds of chickens are specialized for specific uses. The chickens most commonly used to produce eggs are white Leghorns; they tend to be very skinny because they are bred to use all of their metabolic resources for producing eggs. So there really is not much meat on Leghorn roosters.
Breeds of chickens that are raised for meat grow very quickly and are quite large compared to Leghorns. There are several breeds of meat chicken. It typically does not matter if they are male or female, since they are usually processed before they reach sexual maturity.
Most people who raise chickens at home buy mixed-use chickens that are not ideal for meat or eggs. They might buy for other characteristics, for example, for cold-resistance in northern climates, or for pretty feathers.
I’m a grandmother also NEBO, and God bless you and your beautiful family. So glad you raised your children to appreciate life. These precious angels to have a way of stealing your heart. I pray that your granddaughter continues to improve and hope your family has a wonderful Christmas.
And to tell you the truth, I don't believe a chicken really has any sort of awareness of itself, or consciousness of pain.
“If you can determine the sex of a hatching egg you can entirely dispense with the culling of live male chicks,”
SAY WHAT? I worked in chicken hatcheries years ago.
We had Japanese “sexers” come in and separate the male chicks from the females. The females were sent to grow to produce eggs, the males were sent to grow and three months later processed into people food.
Excess female chicks also were raised for people food.
***An estimated 4-6 billion male chicks are slaughtered globally every year because they serve no economic purpose. ***
Male chicks are raised for people food. Many growers would rather have male chicks than female as they seem to grow heavier. At three months old they are tender and tasty.
“Scientists can now quickly determine a chick’s gender before it hatches”
So...it’s accepted that chickens are either male or female prior to hatching. But humans are not male or female in the womb, since they may disagree with it later (say, at 5 years old) and want one or more of dozens of genders, based on emotional whims. And for this we must uproot and destroy centuries of science, morality and our common sense understanding of human nature in order to proceed. Got it.
Human life is a continuum beginning at fertilization.
Chickens are most certainly capable of feeling pain; they have pain receptors and nerves that feed into the brain just as we do. They are not as intelligent as many other animals, but they do form social hierarchies and are capable of learning.
The question of self-awareness is highly philosophical, IMO. Is language necessary to have true self-awareness? Actually... considering some liberals who have use of language, but no apparent self-awareness whatsoever, then we must ask, is language an indicator of self-awareness? I dunno, it seems like a topic that a philosophy major might explore.
I doubt it. You could make an android, complete with sensory receptors and a central "brain" that not only could speak, but respond intelligently to sensory input and even "react" to "pain." That's hardly an indication that an assembly of mechanical parts has self-awareness.
However, what leads to language is the ability to think in abstractions. This gives us the ability to remember the past and anticipate the future. Without those qualities, we live eternally in the present, which is not, I think, a state amenable to consciousness of self.
So far as animals are concerned, Western philosophy has instituted any number of laws and customs to mitigate their suffering, not because it's been proven that they suffer, but simply because there is doubt. And while I admire that, and support it, I find that the taking of it to the extremes taken by the animal rights "nuts" is completely absurd.
That’s why they get their wee wees chopped off. It doesn’t increase their worth but it lets them “pass” and get into lady pageants.
Emphasize "ex" ... and a very good thing, in this case. I have noticed, over the years, that most "ex-priests" and "ex-nuns" did the Church in particular and the world in general a huge favor by leaving.
They were eaten
It was a tiny farm. He ordered maybe 30 hen chicks. He got a bunch of young roosters mixed in . (These numbers are just a guess). This was in the mid 1970s. Don’t know if the ratio is better today because of better techniques.
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Insanity rules supreme!
Can’t they just do a sex change on the roosters? Seems to be the popular thing to do these days.
The time I was speaking of was in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The commercial hatcheries did a *very* good job of sexing the chicks.
LOL
Well, you certainly burned down that straw man of your own creation.
The guy who had the farm was telling me when the chicks arived and their sex was unknown at the time all about how they hire Asians to sex the chicks as they’re good at that. Obviously they must have hired some people who didn’t give a darn.
“The question of self-awareness is highly philosophical, IMO.”
__________________________________________
I believe animals are self-aware at such a level that we don’t even begin to comprehend.
In the Bible (gasp!) Eve spoke with the creature who tempted her to take a bit of the Forbidden Fruit.
Neither she, Adam, nor God were shocked that the creature could speak. And as Eve, Adam, nor God displayed shocked that they could actually understand the creature. That implies the creatures were already on a level that required self-awareness.
Over time, due to the gradual degradation of the entire system, I believe we lost the ability to communicate with animals. As such, we no longer can tell they are able to communicate with each other and/or the how they can communicate with each other.
So we, as the higher life form, naturally (insert pun) assumed that we many life forms are not self-aware.
I truly believe we’re all going to be in for a shock come one day when we find out just how smart the Lord’s creatures truly are.....
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