US egg industry kills 350M chicks a year. New tech offers an alternative
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Where I live, the highest standard (in term of animal welfare) eggs costs around 40 cent per egg. The lowest standard cost around 10 cent, which is also generally the most sold type of egg. Getting this kind of technology widespread would either mean regulation + tariffs or getting it cheap enough that only cultivating eggs with female chicks in them becomes a cost saving technique.
This feels like a distraction from the real suffering we see in industrial farming. While the culling of male chicks gets a lot of attention because they're babies and that triggers an emotional response, there are much bigger issues in terms of actual suffering endured - like the prolonged confinement of laying hens and other factory farming practices.
The new embryo identification technology is an improvement, but I'm concerned that framing it as a 'humane solution' will just serve as moral licensing for consumers to feel better about continuing to support an inherently unethical system.
Probably the best animals are going to get are ad hoc reductions to their suffering which are aligned with decreased economic costs, or which target niche markets like vegans.
When you hybridize certain pairs of breeds (e.g. reds and barred rocks) the hybrid chicks show different feather coloring at the time they hatch. Hybridization can also produce offspring which are for instance more productive egg layers. Being hybrids, they don't breed true.
Not all hybrids have the same consistent sex-linked characteristics.
As soon as it has a formed element of biological life to it, then no. I don't eat fish neither as it was alive.
Honey, milk I'm fine with it's a byproduct if sourced ethically. Unless I know the source, I won't eat it.
The problem isn't eating meat, the problem is the inhumanity caused by producing meat. We produce so much meat that we are slaughtering animals for the sake of rather than. Meat being of quality.
Having 12 McD chicken nuggets on the drive home is whats wrong. Not cooking steak from a butcher to have with wine for dinner.
Your logic is inconsistent on multiple levels. You won't eat fish because "it was alive" but accept eggs from an industry that kills hundreds of millions of male chicks. You claim honey and milk are fine as "byproducts," but this ignores how dairy cows must be forcibly impregnated, separated from their calves, and killed when production drops, while honey is literally the bees' food that we take, often killing many in the process. These aren't benign side effects - they're fundamental to how these industries operate.
You claim to only support "ethical" animal products while acknowledging industrial meat production is inhumane, yet fail to recognize that "ethical" animal agriculture is simply not scalable to feed the global population. These distinctions you're making (McD's vs butcher, etc.) are arbitrary moral lines that serve more to make you feel better about your choices than to address the fundamental ethical issues. After sharing your perspective on these broader ethical concerns, falling back to "it works for me and my family" isn't a meaningful response to systemic issues affecting billions of beings.
Milk comes from cows that had their calves slaughtered (maybe a little bit of it comes from cows that already weaned their calves?). Unfertilized eggs come from chickens that were bred for the explicit purpose of popping them out one after the other.
There are people who don't eat meat, but drink milk (dairy industry is horrific too) or eat egg based products (cakes etc). There are people who classify honey as an animal product and there are people who disagree.
> each to their own
So while I generally agree with this, is it fair to say it when it doesn't apply equally for all sentient life—or is it just convenient?
> There are people who classify honey as an animal product and there are people who disagree.
This really isn't subjective.
In my previous job someone new asked me about my diet. I responded vegan and another colleague exclaimed : YOU’RE NOT VEGAN YOU GOT PETS!! (Two rabbits in whole garden free range with their own-dug-house). I’m not sure if he was right about the definition but fore sure that was correlated: my garden _is_ a (big) cage/prison/limit. However the way he said it triggered my defence mode[0] and it took me months to process the message.
Consider also cobalt associated with slavery. From the view of biologist and most vegans, humans are animals and then cobalt consumption problematic (it’s used in many tech, not just smartphones).
I also occasionally wash my hand in public places with probably animal sourced soap and yes it’s for convenience as for cobalt and my pets.
_Anyone_ allow themselves to slightly bend their ethics to not becoming mad. From the "only-good-meat" eater that don’t restrain for the (probably industrial) delicatessen slice during a wedding cocktail. To the vegan that use electronic devices or feed his cat with animal products.
I’m a rational guy and hate seing those irrational behaviors everywhere including myself, but pointing others wrongness is often inefficient to pass a message, if not counter productive.
[0] Here’s a masterpiece if you don’t know it yet: https://reagle.org/joseph/2010/conflict/media/gibb-defensive...
All those assertions said lol, I’m quite bad at communicating and the best behavior I found is to never ever engage myself a conversation about veganism or ethics, I just wait for questions and respond with neutral and concise terms. Often the interlocutor gets curious and ask more details and I believe there’s more chance he update his opinion by himself than me teaching him.
> but I draw the line at tolerating vegetarian ethics
Which reads for my as not accepting the existence of it, which sounds a bit absurd. Flat earth theory exist even if it’s silly. You may have used tolerate in the sense of approve or consent I guess.
> it's not merely a personal choice when it affects others' wellbeing.
I agree this is problematic for the victims which usually doesn’t get to participate in that choice. It’s not fair. But I believe it is a personal choice, constrained by societal statu quo (or you get trouble) even if irrational, silly or awful. Some countries prefer maximizing freedom or tradition over fairness or minimizing victims.
You should work on that, I guess?
As someone who has actively tried to minimize my contribution for more than 25 years, I feel quite strongly that vegetarianism is a net negative in terms of progress on this cause.
> kill
This is the part everyone seems to get incensed over, but for me this is actually the highlight. I guess it's difficult for people to accept that their grocery shopping habits contribute to what is essentially billions of individual lives not worth living.
We aren't gonna reduce our meat consumption, the least we could do is lessen their suffering
https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/factory-farms-are-baking-...
From the article above
In an even more extreme form, referred to as VSD-plus, heat, steam and/or gas are injected into the building, baking the animals alive
Why?
This is certainly possible if we, humans, really wanted to. So I assume you just don't believe society will ever decide to do it. This is unnecessarily negative outlook IMO - the first step to change something is to believe change is possible.
People don’t change their ways very easily. I know I have to fight rolling my eyes whenever someone suggests the the solution is simple: eat less meat.
If the GP said we will never stop eating meat I would agree. But saying we can't even reduce it is a bit extreme - we successfully reduced many other things (without banning them, just by coercing people - for example cigarettes).
I guess the point is you and others feel so strongly about ways to reduce suffering but couldn't care less about life.
This is the point I am also trying to make. At least short term, I do not see meat consumption going down. Maybe younger folks growing up today might understand climate change and the meat industry's contribution to it more than their parents/grandparents and be willing to make changes to their diet, but changes like this take a lot of time, if they happen at all.
In the meantime, anything we can do to lessen the cruelty to factory farmed animals (for ethical reasons) and anything we can do to reduce harm caused by meat industry on the environment, however small, is worth pursuing
I have never eaten meat in my life. But I am surrounded by meat eaters. Even polite, rational, calm discussion about reducing meat consumption doesn't last more than a minute. It is as though people are more addicted to meat than alcohol and somehow it is drilled into their heads that humans need meat for protein and strength, though there are tons of vegetarians who lead healthy lives.
You don't need to take my word for it - try talking to someone about reducing their meat consumption and see how the conversation goes.
Saying "we aren't gonna reduce our meat consumption" is negativity. Saying "we aren't gonna stop eating meat" would be realistic. But there are plenty of ways we could reduce it. For example, there is a growing trend (in larger cities at least) to reduce one's meat consumption (sometimes completely - there are more vegetarians year by year). Another thing would be reducing subsidies that go towards producing meat - they skew the market in a way that promotes meat. That would be a unpopular change, which is why nobody does it, but it would make sense considering just environmental impact (carbon credits are an even different but related topic).
I'm not going to convince anyone to stop eating meat, who am I to tell them how to live (and I understand why that would be annoying). But changing my personal habits is absolutely within my power, and that may even convince someone to do the same (just like my decision to stop eating meat was because I learned my friend does it.
On the question of reducing subsidies for the meat industry - are you aware how powerful the meat industry is? Even the almighty Oprah at the height of her fame and reach couldn't do anything, got sued by the beef industry. There are a few states that have ag-gag laws, do you really think there is political will to repeal these?
In my town, a single mango costs $3.49. Sure it would be nice to subsidize fruits and veggies, but animal industry lobbying is way more powerful than mango/watermelon lobbying.
I appreciate your positivity, I suppose our experience on this issue has just been polar opposite.
Just saying you are vegan is unheardable and makes turns people on defence mode.
It's a silly story: I recently wrote a program to create my diet from the week based on local grocery store nutrition labels and prices for a couple hundred items, subject to constraints for calories, macronutrients (supporting my goals in the gym) and micronutrients (hit all RDIs for vitamins and minerals plus some speculative stuff). Meat is never included in the generated output because it's too expensive relative to what it offers from a nutrient perspective. All of my daily needs can be met for cheap and with minimal prep on a diet consisting basically of rice, beans, eggs, soy milk, oat milk, pea protein, Brussel sprouts, carrots, and apple juice, which works out to <$15/day for ~3000 calories; <$10/day if I remove some personalized constraints which adds lentils and substitutes cow milk in place of plant milks. Prior to my program, I was spending $20+/day buying groceries mindlessly or on takeout.
I've basically become a vegetarian out of sheer frugality and laziness (I don't like cooking and I don't like solving a puzzle to hit my macros each day). I imagine many people could be convinced to be weekday vegetarians from this angle, but it did take me several months to work through nutrition science books/videos to arrive at this point. (Shout out RP Strength.)
The other issue with my diet is that it is not optimized for taste or variety. I don't mind this (condiments go a long way and I'm pretty focused on my fitness goals), but I think I'm an outlier in this respect.
Anyway, all this to say I see an economic angle for hope, except that all messaging to the public on nutrition science is awful and confusing which leads to consumption decisions not based in any logical framework, and I doubt that behavior will change anytime soon unless we go through another economic shock.
None of this is rocket science, it is fairly straightforward to understand. Reducing meat consumption makes sense economically, ethically, environmentally etc. But, people like their hamburgers and their sea food and their KFC...
I don't mind the killing, but it should be quick, efficient, and as painless as possible for the animal involved.
> Ventilator shutdown involves locking a flock or herd of animals in a building and turning off the ventilation systems. As the temperature rises and gases inside the building accumulate, the animals suffocate to death, usually over a period of many hours.
Rising "gases" is CO2. Suffocation by co2 is one of the worse death because that’s how the body knows he needs to inhale. Most of the other gases will kill you without you noticing. but forcing a subject to breath co2 is absolute torture.
Images talk by themselfs I guess, here’s 4 hour of the process which is legal in most of the world beware, not a fun video : https://www.farmtransparency.org/videos?id=2d2a5ec62b
UK replaced CO2 with other gaz[0] and the pigs dies as a sleep. The price difference is a needle.
0: butane or nitrogen IIRC but someone more knowledgeable may correct me.
> The principle of gas stunning or Controlled Atmosphere Stunning (CAS) is that animals are exposed to a high concentration of CO2, CO2 mixed with inert gases, or inert gases only
> Carbon dioxide especially at high concentrations (above 40%) is pungent and painful to inhale and leads to a highly aversive response involving very loud and high-pitched vocalisations and vigorous attempts to escape from the gondola and the exposure to the gas, including scratching other pigs vigorously with the claws of the front legs and trampling of pigs that have become recumbent. Furthermore, during the induction phase animals will show increased breathing and gasping associated with signs of breathlessness (“air hunger”). Induction of unconsciousness with CO2 stunning does not immediately induce unconsciousness and the process is associated with fear, pain and respiratory distress (Verhoeven et al., 2016; Beausoleil and Mellor, 2015), lasting from the start of exposure to CO2 until loss of consciousness
"Hy-Line Brown Prolific Producer, Rich Brown Eggs, Hardy Layer"
I think the title is quite misleading. They would still end killed, just earlier.
There's also the debate on whether one-day-old chicks are conscious, but I don't know the literature enough to have a strong opinion.
Also, virtually painless doesn't sound like painless to me. It sounds like a nice thing to tell people to convince them grinding up conscious creatures has no negative aspect.
"There's also the debate on whether one-day-old chicks are conscious, but I don't know the literature enough to have a strong opinion."
Why comment if you admit you don't know what you're talking about? There's lots of debate over whether you are conscious. Does that meaning grinding you up is plausibly a nice thing to do?
In practice, this doesn't matter to Christians, who believe that all non-human animals were put on Earth for man to do as he pleases with.
https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/bible.show/s...
> The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.