Six billion male baby chicks are killed each year. Here’s what’s in the works to stop that.
. Some baby chicks, while still alive, are chopped up with rotating blades in maceration machines and others are gassed with carbon dioxide.
A wave of new technologies aims to end the killing by figuring out the sex of the chicken before it hatches. Concern over the fate of male chicks is growing in some western countries, with governments in Germany and elsewhere taking steps to end or limit the practice. Some retailers are trying to get ahead of the issue, pushing their suppliers to introduce technology that allows for sex sorting in the egg.
“We sort of do an abortion,” says Wouter Bruins, managing director of In Ovo BV, the Dutch company behind the sexing device used at Het Anker BV, the Netherlands hatchery. The machine’s early version can sex roughly 40,000 eggs a week, and a more efficient iteration in testing can sex five times as many eggs, Mr. Bruins says. The hatchery, the company’s first client, began using the machine for commercial production in November.