France Pledges to Ban Shredding of Male Chicks in Egg Industry by 2021

Did you know that around 7 billion male chicks from the egg industry are exterminated every year on a global level?

Therefore, animal welfare advocates are praising the recent decision of the French government to prohibit the live shredding of unwanted male chicks and castrating piglets without using anesthesia.

Annually, in the world, around 7 billion male chicks that can’t be sold to lay eggs or used for meat are shredded alive in macerators, gassed or suffocated.

France will be of the first countries which won’t allow the usage of this method in terms of disposal of male chicks.

Agriculture minister Didier Guillaume said that their goal is to oblige the firms to put the ban by the end of next year.

What Will Be Done to Prevent Mass Slaughter of Male Chicks?

The minister hopes that the poultry industry will find other useful methods to determine an embryo sex prior to the hatching.

For now, scientists have to pierce every egg in order to take samples and test the gender of the chicks.

However, this process is impossible to carry out on industrial level.

Shredding Live Male Chicks Is Forbidden elsewhere too

Shredding male chicks was recently banned in Switzerland where it was uncommon, as well as in Germany, where it was widespread-45 million male chicks are shredded yearly.

But, the courts in Germany ruled that the egg producers can continue shredding the male chicks until a proper means of determining the sex in an egg is discovered.

According to EU law, shredding male chicks is allowable, as long as the death is instant and the bird is less than 72 hours old.

Banning the Piglet Castration without Anesthesia

According to Guillaume, the same timescale applies to the prohibition of piglet castration without anesthesia.

They’re usually castrated to encourage them to put on weight for meat and because fat in the meat from the uncastrated ones can release a stronger smell when it’s cooked, which is also known as boar taint.

However, this happens in only around 20 percent of uncastrated pigs.

According to British group Animal Aid, this positive news are great and they salute the move of France to spare millions of male chickens and hope that other countries will also do the same.  

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