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Comment by GraffitiTim | Hacker News Reader

Very much agreed, but still happy to see people trying to take a step in the right direction. They do mention ending the practice of killing male chicks, which is currently universal among egg-producing farms.

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> They do mention ending the practice of killing male chicks

Why?

I mean if you want to make sure animals are not in pain, and treated well, no problem.

But what's the reason for not killing the male chicks? What do they plan to do with them? Release them back into the wild?

It's either an outlandish demand they can let go of during negotiation in order to appear reasonable, Trump-style, or a genuine demand in order to make the price of eggs increase 10x, because they honestly believe the state should eventually be enforcing veganism.

IDK if that price is well calculated, but here in Austria we can buy 6 organic eggs for which no male chicks died vs 10 organic eggs where they do die. Same price. Doesn't look like x10.

What do they do with the males?

They live on a farm, somewhere, you really wouldn't want to visit.

Place your wagers.

Only produce female chicks in the first place. The tech is already available, only introduces a small increase in cost, and I believe Germany is mandating its use in a few years already.

> The tech is already available

There is no such tech. If you think there is post a link to it.

At best there is current research (not actually a product yet) to identify the chicks while still in the egg, and I see absolutely no difference between killing them in the egg or out of it.

Just kill them painlessly (i.e. extremely quickly) and move on.

I believe the GP comment wasn't too far off. This article from last year says the Germans have done promising research and intend to have a working prototype this year, which sexes (technical term) chicks at just three days after inoculation.

http://m.thepoultrysite.com/news/34741

I also understand there is no tech used to identify the sex of chicks at a young enough age. It's a highly specialized skill (chicken sexing) that takes lots of training. I think it's even specialized between different types of poultry.

> I believe the GP comment wasn't too far off.

"The tech is already available, only introduces a small increase in cost"

vs:

"have done promising research and intend to have a working prototype this year"

I consider that quite far off. They don't even have a prototype to show that it even works, let alone cost information for "a small increase in cost".

CSIRO in Australia is all over this.

Article

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-12/marking-male-embroys-a...

Short Doco / News Report

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2016/s4427149.htm

So, again, some research, that doesn't work yet, and is very far from being in production, let alone testing.

Hardly "The tech is already available, only introduces a small increase in cost".

You are clearly not interested, as you were presented with the information and still dismiss it because being wrong upsets you. I did not say it was in production use yet, I said it was available. It is. And as I said, it only introduces a minor cost increase, and is already set to be required by law within 2 years.

> I did not say it was in production use yet, I said it was available.

It is not available.

Two people posted links about research, neither research has even reached the prototype stage yet, never mind "available".

> as you were presented with the information and still dismiss it because being wrong upsets you

I dismissed it because it is not available. I don't understand how even in the face of evidence you still think it's available.

Do you want it so badly that you will misread things on purpose?

> and is already set to be required by law within 2 years.

Uh hu. They can require whatever they like, but if the technology doesn't exist a whole lot of good it'll do them.

What they should do (and probably are in fact doing) is fund research.

When it's available we can come back and talk, right now it's not.

Simply repeating a lie won't make it true. You've been shown repeatedly that it is available. The fact that you do not like this is irrelevant. It is already being used in hatcheries in Germany. It is on track to be fully implemented on all farms in the entire country by the end of the year. There's no way to pretend that is not available.

You are too funny. Post a link to it being used then, and how it works, if you are so sure of yourself.

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