As the U.S. egg industry continues to kill male chicks, scientists are racing to develop accurate and affordable methods to engage in sex before chicks hatch

Every year, as many as 7 billion day-old male chicks are thrown into the chopper, inflated or suffocated with plastic bags-a process known as chick culling. This harsh ritual is supported by biology and economics: male chicks do not lay eggs, and they grow too slowly to be sold as meat. Globally, culling has become the default strategy for the egg industry to eliminate unwanted young birds.

"This is terrible. Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals, an American animal rights advocacy organization, said that you will see these puffy, newly hatched chicks on the conveyor belt" walk towards a large blade and "cut them into countless pieces." In recent years, local and international animal rights organizations, especially in France, Germany, and the United States, have been increasing pressure on the government and the egg industry to commit to ending this practice—especially given the fact that they allow producers to identify gender. The developing chicks before the incubation of technological innovation. This process is called in-ovo gender identification, and a version of this technology has been deployed in some countries to avoid the need for live chicken culling.

About five years ago, United Egg Producer, an agricultural cooperative whose members are responsible for producing more than 90% of commercial eggs in the United States, issued a statement promising to eliminate chick culling by 2020, or to “commercialize” it as soon as possible. "Available" and "economically feasible" technologies become available. The promise was negotiated with the Humane Alliance, a non-profit organization for animal rights. But 2020 has come and gone. Although UEP’s promise is not legally binding, some egg industries Leaders and scientists say that there are few signs that the industry is about to gradually adopt non-elimination technologies, which can still meet the needs of more than 100 billion eggs produced in the United States each year

Critics say that part of the reason for the slow pace of change is that the United States has been investing in and nurturing the development of complex, non-exclusive technologies. Although promising, these technologies are still expensive and may take several years to develop, expand, and expand. Nationwide deployment-especially considering that the Covid-19 pandemic has closed laboratories and slowed the pace of innovation. At the same time, a method for in-ovo gender identification of eggs has been used in Europe-although some US stakeholders have stated that this method involving the use of a laser to make a small hole in the egg shell is substandard because it increases The risk of pollution. However, European developers have raised objections. As of this year, thousands of supermarkets in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and France can buy eggs without culling, while consumers and hatcheries only need to increase costs moderately.

Obviously, as the search for a solution has been delayed, the US-based phase-out operation continues to proceed at a rapid pace. "I don't like false promises," said Michael Sencer, executive vice president of Hidden Villa Ranch, a California-based food company that owns egg and dairy products subsidiaries. Sencer expressed support for UEP's commitment, but he admitted, "They supported some groups, and they said they could come up with this technology, but nothing happened."

UEP declined to be interviewed by Undark and instead provided a press statement emphasizing its continued commitment to ending the phase-out. "We still hope that the breakthrough is coming," UEP President and CEO Chad Gregory said in a statement.

Whether American producers will be pushed by critics to explore existing technologies instead of pursuing new ones is unclear, but animal rights organizations and industry leaders agree that chicken culling is not only cruel but wasteful. "I mean, please name another industry where 50% of the finished product will go into the trash can immediately," said Jonathan Hoopes, president of Ovabrite, a Texas-based startup An in-ovo gender identification technique is being developed. Hatching male eggs also takes up unnecessary space, energy and money. This is a culling solution that is in the interest of animal rights activists and egg producers.

"Forget the ethics of not killing all these birds and look at the money saved," Sencer said, who estimates that the industry can save billions of dollars with the right technology. "It's incredible."

Since the announcement in 2016, the largest funding program to eliminate chick culling came from the Food and Agricultural Research Foundation (FFAR), which launched the "Egg Technology Award"-a funding program for scientists and startups The public-private research program seeks to develop in-ovo gender identification technology-in collaboration with Open Philanthropy in 2019. The deployment of this technology will not only make chicks culled out of date, but also allow the industry to reuse unwanted male eggs for food, animal feed, or vaccine development.

In November 2019, FFAR announced six finalists who received more than US$2 million in seed funding for the development of gender recognition technology. The second phase of the competition will provide up to $3.7 million in rewards for a single working prototype.

According to Tim Kurt, FFAR's scientific project director, due to the Covid-19 delay, the submission deadline has been postponed and is now set for the spring of 2022. However, if any team is not, the foundation can also decide not to fund any team that is satisfied with the schedule. Contender for the award, Tom Turpen, said this is a real possibility, especially considering that at least some teams—including him—have experienced setbacks since the pandemic began. Kurt said that due to travel restrictions and the closure of university laboratories, access to data, equipment, and supplies made it more difficult for the team to make progress on specific aspects of the project.

The prize money for the finalists ranged from US$396,000 to US$1.1 million, including startups and research laboratories with big, out-of-the-box ideas. This includes the German startup Orbem, which combines high-speed scanning of eggs with artificial intelligence technology to perform intercourse on chicks, and SensIT Ventures, Inc., a California-based company led by Turpen, The use of microchips to identify the emitted gas to perform sexual intercourse on chicks through early-developing eggs. Kurt said that the selection team specifically funded projects that could disrupt the egg industry.

Kurt, who participated in the selection, said that the selected technology "has the potential to truly change the industry." "Their risk may be higher, but if they succeed and our funds can help them succeed, they are really the ideal solution."

Kurt and other industry leaders are optimistic that some of these technologies will help eliminate chick culling in the near future, but others are less optimistic. Sencer said that changing current practices will require "billions of dollars in investment in new equipment. And it will not happen (soon), it will happen slowly." Sencer added that he predicts that the technology may Expansion at the end of the century.

Even the researchers who participated in the Egg-Tech Prize competition admit that although gender identification technology may be about to emerge, at least for two years, uncultivated eggs will not be able to expand. Turpen said the biggest obstacle lies in the development of a technology that can not only quickly and accurately sex-identify chicks, but also affordable to consumers and hatcheries across the country.

"You can do a lot of things to determine the gender of an egg. This is not the point. The point is: can you do it and there are eggs that people can afford?"

Turpen said that in order to avoid sudden cost increases that would inevitably lead to the sudden adoption of new production models, the more likely and reasonable way to expand across the country will be a slow and gradual process. "Adopting and replacing existing equipment-it looks more like making the coal industry disappear." The industry "is disappearing," Telpen said, "but it will last a long time."

Other researchers from the Egg-Tech Prize also made it clear that an all-encompassing culling solution has not yet emerged. Benjamin Schusser (Benjamin Schusser) and his colleagues at the Technical University of Munich turned into a spin-off company Orbem, he declined to be interviewed, he said: "We do not want to wake up [n] hope there is a solution that is almost ready to go public "Orbem CEO and co-founder Pedro Gómez (Pedro Gómez) said in an interview with the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy in 2019 that they hope that "by 2025, there will be 1 billion eggs per year. sort".

Given the expected mismatch, some people are puzzled by UEP's ambitious promise to eliminate culling. Hoopes said the industry has made similar promises in the past, but failed to achieve tangible results.

But David Koman-Hidi, Chairman of the Humane League, believes that the development of research and development since 2016 is a “major victory” and believes that UEP’s commitment to raise awareness of cruel and largely unheard practices, while supporting innovation . Egg sex technology. In fact, the Humane League believes that the 2020 goals are somewhat flexible, Koman-Hidi said. "At the time, it was too early. We didn't know how soon or how many companies would be involved, and we didn't know what the research would look like."

At the same time, Germany and France already have commercially viable in-ovo gender identification technology. After the government approved a draft law to end this practice from 2022, Germany is expected to become the first country to ban industrial culling of male chicks.

Currently, respeggt GmbH, a company headquartered in Germany and the Netherlands, uses in-ovo gender identification by using a laser to make a small hole in the egg, extract the liquid, and then test specific hormones for the sex identification of the chicks. Christine Holler explained that development and public affairs are respeggt. This technology, called Seleggt, is based on the research of scientists from the University of Leipzig and is further developed in cooperation with the German supermarket chain REWE and the Dutch technology company HatchTech, which specializes in incubation and incubation equipment.

David Mellor, Professor Emeritus of Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics at Massey University in New Zealand, wrote in an email that this method can classify chicks on the 9th day of development, when the embryos of the chicks are It is "extremely impossible" to experience any sensations. This is a key detail because the chicken embryo has the ability to experience pain in the later stages of development. Peter Singer, an animal rights advocate and professor of bioethics at Princeton University, said a procedure that can cause harm, such as using male eggs for food or vaccine development, may just shift the cruel practice to an earlier stage.

Using this method, respeggt has eliminated eggs in more than 6,000 supermarkets in France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and hopes to expand it further. They also designed a ready-to-implement business strategy for the production of commercial non-eliminated eggs. Holler said that the hatchery does not need to invest in anything. Instead, the cost will be passed on to the center, where the eggs are packed in cartons for commercial distribution. These packing stations must pay a licensing fee of approximately 2 Euro cents for each egg, which is roughly the same in U.S. dollars. Although respeggt has no effect on the price of supermarket eggs, the cost to consumers is 2 to 5 cents higher than ordinary eggs.

However, many American experts worry that opening a hole in the egg may pose a serious food safety risk because it will increase the chance of contamination from external sources. "I don't think the industry is willing to take this risk," Turpen said. Kurt agrees, saying that all finalists explicitly use non-invasive techniques to avoid this possibility. He added that focusing on non-invasive technologies also means that they can be more easily reused for other scientific work, such as vaccine development.

Holler disputed the claim that their technology is at risk of infection. "Putting a hole in an eggshell with a laser has no negative results at all," she said, adding that the hole is so small that it actually closes naturally within 30 minutes.

To be sure, some animal rights organizations believe that the debate over technological solutions will distract them from the real problem at hand: the egg industry itself. "Instead of putting band-aids on band-aids and trying to use more technology and more technology to solve all these problems, there is another idea: why don't we make plant-based eggs?" Gasses said. She and other animal rights activists point out that food waste, animal suffering, and health-related costs are reasons for withdrawing funds from the egg industry to support companies that produce plant-based alternatives.

However, in addition to this, Europe has also developed other non-invasive egg sex identification techniques. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Carrefour Supermarket plans to launch the first round of culling-free eggs on May 1, 2020, under the pressure of the French government to ban culling before the end of 2021. However, experts pointed out that this technology performed sex identification of chicks on the 13th day of development, which is a period when the chick fetus may feel pain. Anticipating these criticisms, Agri Advanced Technologies GmbH, a subsidiary of the German company EW Group behind this technology, is currently developing another technology aimed at determining the sex of chicks on the fourth day of development.

Although not perfect, Hoopes believes that there are viable and working technologies in Europe, which raises the question of why the United States is taking a slower and more ambitious approach. But other experts speculate that, in the long run, the technology pursued by the United States may eventually prove to be cheaper and more flexible. "You would think that the simplest method is the best," Singh said. "But maybe for very large manufacturers, the investment is worth it. Maybe it can save labor costs or other costs."

Singer said that it is not yet clear what is the best strategy to eliminate culling, but he believes that at least it is morally necessary to try to eliminate this practice in global hatcheries. He said that it is also important to continue to pressure the industry to change, but change requires not only perseverance, but also patience. "These things," he said, "it will take some time."

Jonathan Moens is a freelance journalist based in Rome. His work has appeared on Yale Environment 360, Inside Climate News and Spectrum.

This article was originally published in Undark. Read the original text.

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