World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin

The Guardian - US Edition ^ | December 22, 2018 | staff

[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.

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[Does so]

In many ways it would be easier if humans laid eggs...

Much of the animal kingdom has discovered many advantages to laying eggs.

[piasa]

I think at the commercial level, since factory farms maximize profits by raising as many birds per sq ft as they can, male chicks are impractical because they start play-fighting long before there is enough meat on their bone to be slaughtered, and even get to serious fighting quite early. It would require too many expensive enclosures to separate them all until slaughter.
This kicking and pecking [which would normally not result in injuries on open ground] would be a bloodbath in a confined setting where the weaker bird cannot escape or take cover, and not just for the males - they would also have to be separated from young females for their safety as well or else the girls would get tackled 500 times a day by juvie cockerels.

Males are manageable in small farm setting where runs are more spacious or there is free range in the daytime, so small timers use them for fryers, usually eating the first one to crow.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Do not understand why the cocks cannot be raised as poultry meat.

Because the egg layer breeds are just that. They do not turn into nice plump birds.

The meat birds tend not to be good egg layers.

If you raise chickens for home use most of us tend to raise what are known as "duel use" breeds. Our Plymouth Rocks will not lay as many eggs as a Leghorn and will not grow as large as a Jersey Giant. They will always fall somewhere in the middle.

For us that is fine. If we were selling eggs for a living it would not be fine.

[Louis Foxwell]

Got it. Thank you. Sometimes I forget my days on the farm.

[Louis Foxwell]

I raise tropical fish. It is perfectly clear that fish are intuitive creatures. In a tank full of fish the one I am trying to take out will always hide. The rest, not so much.

[Notthereyet]

LOLOL