Male chicks are not wanted by egg producers because they cannot produce eggs. Until fairly recently, they were identified at birth and shredded. On 1 January 2020, shredding live chickens was banned in Switzerland. Since then, suffocating the unwanted chicks with CO2 has been a popular alternative. This week, egg industry association Gallosuisse announced that a new process is under development, reported RTS.
The new process, which is expected to become fully operational by the end of 2025, involves identifying the sex of the future bird before it hatches. The process is able to detect sex by the eleventh or twelfth day of incubation, before the foetus can feel pain.
The technical equipment required to implement the new process comes at a cost, which is estimated to add 1.5 cents to the cost of producing an egg.
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