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Egg Farmers Say They’ll Stop Grinding Up Millions Of Chicks Alive
Source: Huffington Post
Egg Farmers Say They’ll Stop Grinding Up Millions Of Chicks Alive
Since baby males aren’t useful to the industry, they usually meet a horrific death.
06/10/2016 03:45 pm ET | Updated 23 hours ago
Hilary Hanson
Viral News Editor, The Huffington Post
Most egg farmers in the United States will stop grinding male baby chickens to death over the next four years.
United Egg Producers, the industry group that represents 95 percent of egg producers in the country, announced Thursday that they would end the process of “culling” male chicks by 2020. Instead, they’ll use technology that determines the sex of a chicken embryo still inside an egg.
Let’s back up a minute. Why were egg producers ever grinding up newborn chicks to begin with? Basically, because 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.
Egg farmers don’t sell off the chicks to be raised for meat, because in industrial agriculture, the breeds of chickens raised for meat and for egg production are totally different.
“Egg layers are bred to be egg laying machines who can pump out hundreds of eggs each year,” Coman-Hidy told The Huffington Post in an email. “They’re expected to live for approximately one year, typically confined to a tiny cage. On the other hand, broilers are bred to be grotesquely large, growing to a huge size within one month — this is like having a toddler that weighs hundreds of pounds — when they are slaughtered. This leaves the male laying breed as the odd man out — too small to be really profitable to raise for meat and unable to lay eggs.”
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Since baby males aren’t useful to the industry, they usually meet a horrific death.
06/10/2016 03:45 pm ET | Updated 23 hours ago
Hilary Hanson
Viral News Editor, The Huffington Post
Most egg farmers in the United States will stop grinding male baby chickens to death over the next four years.
United Egg Producers, the industry group that represents 95 percent of egg producers in the country, announced Thursday that they would end the process of “culling” male chicks by 2020. Instead, they’ll use technology that determines the sex of a chicken embryo still inside an egg.
Let’s back up a minute. Why were egg producers ever grinding up newborn chicks to begin with? Basically, because 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.
Egg farmers don’t sell off the chicks to be raised for meat, because in industrial agriculture, the breeds of chickens raised for meat and for egg production are totally different.
“Egg layers are bred to be egg laying machines who can pump out hundreds of eggs each year,” Coman-Hidy told The Huffington Post in an email. “They’re expected to live for approximately one year, typically confined to a tiny cage. On the other hand, broilers are bred to be grotesquely large, growing to a huge size within one month — this is like having a toddler that weighs hundreds of pounds — when they are slaughtered. This leaves the male laying breed as the odd man out — too small to be really profitable to raise for meat and unable to lay eggs.”
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Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/egg-producers-killing-male-chicks-stop_us_575b0adde4b00f97fba8406f