You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens
optimistsbarn.substack.com
optimistsbarn.substack.com
All the logic in the world can't ease my stomach after watching a conveyer belt of chicks get dumped directly into a meat grinder. It's simply not right. And while there are still many issues remaining in the meat industry (arguably its existence at all), this is one less.
Eggs take 21 days to hatch, in-ovo techniques work at 9 - 15 day post laying, depending on the technique used. Couldn't find any details on how developed the embryo is at 15 days, but 2/3's done feels pretty far along.
Where on the evolutionary scale do you draw the line and why, though?
Remember that the feeling you experience is a very messy heuristic that exists to perform a basic evolutionary function. People have similar feelings when Boston Dynamics robots (or similar things) are kicked/'abused', even though they would never attribute any awareness or even the experience of pain to them.
A feeling should always be the starting point of a rational appreciation of the situation; things are rarely "simply not right" and feelings are often wrong.
I haven't seen it, and correct me if this is not the case, but it doesn't strike me as a bad way to go. Getting macerated beats most of the ways humans and wild animals die. Do these chicks have any idea "what hit them"?
[1] https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and...
The bigger problem is chicks getting crushed to death by other chicks during processing.
Like a lot less happens to those chicks then say, when a flock of chickens is processed.
I reckon the chicken industry also generates way more male chickens than what a park can reasonably handle. People eat lots of chickens.
To many advocates, it’s self-evident that the hen’s life is better than immediate death. This is not obvious to me. It depends on the hen’s quality of life.
It's like saying a torture victim that gets water boarded daily at least gets 10 minutes of exercise every day.
But ultimately I can get behind the idea that the immediate death is the better outcome in the big picture..
They are thus choosing between ceasing to exist before they are aware of their own existence and living approximately one day and then being ground up alive.
I don't see how you can support this in-ovo thing, and also eat meat. They seem to be in opposition.
The easier it is to project one's own pain onto something, the easier it is to assume that it is a universal problem.
The change from barely differentiate lump to chick happens rapidly in the last few days: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-72004-y/figures/2
Her broody her choice.
the question on where life begins is rather irrelevant until we answer the question of where the life of a chicken is supposed to end.
if the possibility that life may begin at conception is going to be a consideration when destroying eggs because they are male, then the same consideration must be made when we chose to eat eggs in the first place.
we can't argue that eating eggs is ok, but destroying them is not.
consequently, as long as we eat eggs the question of when life begins is not really relevant.
the relevant questions are: can we avoid destroying/wasting those eggs at all (can we eat them?) and if ee have to destroy them, what is the most humane way to go about it? my intuition suggests that destroying the eggs is more humane than letting them hatch
The eggs we eat, at least the factory farmed variety, and most / all from commercial egg farms are not fertilized. Hens lay whether they've known the touch of a rooster or not. [0].
[0] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/can_you_hatch_an_egg_bought_fr...
People are worried about seemingly extraordinary cruelty perpetrated against a cute animal (maceration of young chicks) but basically accept regular, banal cruelty against typical farm animals (the practice of eating farming and eating meat and eggs).
I personally think the cause is at least on balance positive morally for any given male chick, but it’s not so clear to me that it’s moral if this scales to the point that the industry may raise more female chickens to lay eggs with less resources/comfort/etc.
I'm normally resistant to claims that a new technology is going to make an unpleasant situation better, but in this case, I'm sympathetic. I'd rather get rid of the egg factories and have eggs raised the way my grandma did (and I still do). But that's not going to happen as long as people live in large cities. So if there's a way to identify the male eggs so they can be used as food before the chicks start to develop, rather than letting them hatch and then grinding up living, breathing birds, I'd have to say that's an improvement.
This tech is able to select the female eggs only for hatching and redirect the male eggs for egging. The result is we have more eggs for people. And less waste of resources. Win win. Also a win for PETA. Something like this should be adopted en masse for market value reasons.
Not much of a moral victory for anyone, especially considering that the hens that get to live don't have good lives.
Apparently, many of the eggs sold in stores are infertile. But fertile eggs can still be eaten. The process of storing them away is a little bit more cumbersome because they go bad if they are not eaten fresh.
https://www.rspcaassured.org.uk/farmed-animal-welfare/egg-la...
Just go vegan.
"In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for meat, and another 10% even think that male chickens can lay eggs. Most people are surprised, and often disturbed, to learn the truth: in the United States alone, approximately 350 million male chicks are routinely culled each year, typically by methods such as maceration (being ground up alive)."
I really didn't see that one coming.
> in the United States alone, approximately 350 million male chicks are routinely culled each year, typically by methods such as maceration (being ground up alive).
I’m sure we’ll get there but for now it costs more.
Feels like the volume should mean we're not experimentally limited in the technology, and the savings are obvious.
Like a CRISPR system which turns off the male chromosomes in roosters or something.
"There are multiple approaches to in-ovo sexing. One of the most prominent approaches uses advanced imaging to detect subtle optical differences between male and female embryos."
"Another widely adopted technique involves taking a small fluid sample from inside the egg to test for sex-specific hormones or genetic markers. Kipster’s eggs, launching later this year, will use a technology of this class employing PCR analysis to detect the sex chromosome, developed by the company Respeggt."
Egg should be absolutely fine, but there will be a chick in there, so if you wanted to eat it like an egg, you might end up closer to balut than you want / expect.
Edit: Wikipedia does indeed cite several different figures, including a "billions" number which does not seem plausible. Thanks monster_truck for pointing this out, and apologies for my misunderstanding!
It might get to 2 billion if you count 375 million layers and some untold number of personal chickens.
Ethical eggs are a luxury good that I can afford and am willing to pay for, but the blatant 'will trade cash for feeling ethical' is tough.
The French do.