The story of male chicks in the egg industry is a short one. Once they hatch, and a “chick sexer” determines it’s a male, then the hours-old animal is deemed useless in the egg business. Males cannot lay eggs and don’t have the right body structure to be raised for meat. Branded as a by-product of egg production, they are disposed of – killed by either gas, electrocution, or maceration (getting ground up alive). Approximately 7 billion are killed yearly worldwide.
According to the U.K.’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the grinder is the kinder choice as it can kill the chicks within one second, compared with gassing, which can take up to two minutes. This practice, known as culling, has been going on for decades. Still, its ethicality has been a topic of much debate. So, banning or finding a way to avoid the massacre has been simmering in the background of food industry decision-making for many years.
Meanwhile, in Germany, a company called SELEGGT has found a way to combat the problem. With a 5-million-euro investment from the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), and initial research conducted by the University of Leipzig, Prof. Einspanier, SELEGGT developed a technology that enables the sex of a chick to be known before it hatches. The process of determining the gender of layer chick eggs before they hatch is known as in-ovo sexing.
How It Works
- All fertile eggs are put to incubate.
- After nine days, they remove the eggs from incubation and extract a tiny drop of liquid from each egg using air pressure and a laser. The system takes one second to complete the process per egg.
- The liquid is tested by mixing it with a hormone that causes a chemical reaction which reveals if the chick in the egg is male or female.
- The female eggs are put back in the incubator, and the male eggs are sent off to be used by animal feed producers, and potentially the cosmetics industry, or vaccine manufacturers as well.
Thanks to SELEGGT’s patented pioneering technology, around 30,000 “no-kill” female chicks hatch in Germany every week. BMEL said:
As a result, male chicks will simply not be born anymore. This technology has already been used and is now entering the stage of series production. Next year this technology will be at the disposal of all hatcheries.
There is currently a SELEGGT system being used in a Dutch hatchery that can sort as many as 3,000 eggs per hour. The fertile female eggs from these selections will soon reach laying age, and the company looks forward to supplying kill-free eggs to over 5,000 grocery stores across Germany.
Way back in November 2018, SELEGGT began selling its first-ever eggs resulting from the technology in Berlin. Ever since then, their eggs have been sold by the supermarket chain Rewe Group, who even helped develop the system. Now they are selling the eggs in hundreds of their grocery stores, some even beyond Berlin. Customers can pay a few extra cents for eggs stamped with a heart labeled ‘respeggt’ and know that they are eating eggs laid by hens that did not hatch alongside male chicks destined for slaughter. By the end of the year, they plan to be selling the SELEGGT eggs throughout Germany.
