Addressing the Tragic Reality: Seven Billion Newly Hatched Chicks Killed Annually, Advocates Seek Alternatives Beyond a Simple Ban

According the researcher, resolving dilemmas in the industry and our food system require that it is approached as a whole:

“Chick culling can be seen as an expression of an industry driven by efficiency logics due to intense competition. Combined with decades of intensified breeding, the system has rendered male ‘layers’ effectively worthless” says Rutt.

This breeding has roots especially in the 1950s in the United States. Here, chickens began to be aggressively bred so that some would lay as many and as large eggs as possible, while others would gain as much weight as possible in the shortest time. This has resulted in hens that currently lay around 300 eggs a year but are not very meaty, and broilers that put on two kilos in just 35 days.

“My own and colleagues’ research has found that quite a few farmers would like to produce differently, such as at a smaller scale including a slower pace, to allow better living conditions, and perhaps return to the ‘heritage’ or ‘dual purpose’ breeds of the past that provided both eggs and eventually meat – though at much smaller quantities. Yet most today wouldn’t survive economically. So such shifts would require more fundamental changes that must be driven by legislation, which typically follows from public pressure,” says Rutt.

She concludes:

“Shedding more light on practices like male chick culling, and putting current ‘solutions’ into the wider perspective, is an important part of informing this process.”