BERLIN (AP) — The German government says it wants to end the mass killing of male chicks within two years, becoming the first country to do so.
Each year some 45 million male chicks in Germany are shredded shortly after hatching because they don't lay eggs.
Pressure from animal rights groups led the government to fund research that allows the chick's sex to be determined before it hatches. This means male eggs can be used for other products rather than destroyed.
Agriculture minister Christian Schmidt said the method has almost been perfected and will start to be used in hatcheries from late 2016.
He told Germany's Bild newspaper on Monday that the shredding chicks should cease by 2017, and would add no more than two cents to the cost of an egg.
Germany has identified a way to come up with a way to check if the fertile eggs of laying hens are male or female before hatching them.
When egg producers need more laying hens, they end up with a bunch of economically useless male chickens and have to dispose of them (typically by dropping them into a grinder).
I'm actually not sure what the 'other products' the article mentions are. I have to imagine anything would be better than what currently happens to them.
Depending on how early they can detect the chick's sex, "other products," could mean egg whites in a carton.
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It sounds brutal I agree but if you have ever seen an industrial grinder it would probably be an instant and painless death for such a small animal. Obviously in the egg identification is better. Its a real thing (and yes I couldn't be bothered to look past the first search result which is Wiki).
Several methods can be used to kill chicks:
Maceration, using a large high-speed grinder into which the live chicks are fed.
Gases or gas mixtures, often carbon dioxide is used to induce unconsciousness and then death.
Cervical dislocation (breaking the neck)
Electrocution, a new method that has been touted as being cheap, reliable, and humane by its developers [4][dead link]
Suffocation in plastic bags[2]
Maceration ensures the chick is killed within 1 sec if performed effectively and competently. This method is considered more humane than gassing the chicks with high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Gassing results in gasping and head shaking, and can take up to two minutes for the chick to die.[5]
Elheru Aran wrote:'shredding'? After hatching? I find this somewhat difficult to believe and am inclined to observe the date...
Believe it, I've been shown videos by some rather sick bastards in my time...
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Elheru Aran wrote:'shredding'? After hatching? I find this somewhat difficult to believe and am inclined to observe the date...
It's well known.
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Elheru Aran wrote:'shredding'? After hatching? I find this somewhat difficult to believe and am inclined to observe the date...
As has been stated, they really do chuck live hatchlings into an industrial shredder. Live male chicks are worthless, because they grow up to be roosters ... and roosters only enjoy two things in life, molesting hens and fighting other roosters.
I am a bit confused. Why do they not simply run a meat farm in parallel and make use of those chickens? Surely they could earn money by selling them to us for food. Wikipedia says they are "not suitable" for human eating. But how can that be?
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Purple: It says something like 45 million chicks. Even if you only let them grow up a few months to small pullet stage and rendered them into broth, that would cause a massive surplus. By comparison, the entire population of Germany is ~80 million people IIRC...
Rooster meat doesn't taste/feel the same as hen meat. Its not acceptable to most consumers. In fact even all hen meat isn't acceptable to consumers. The chicken you buy in the grocery store, organic, free range, factory or otherwise, is from special breeds of chicken normally called "fryer" chickens. The chickens used for laying eggs, for instance, are not used for human consumption for the most part after culled and are also processed in to industrial agriculture products.
Because we use different breeds for eggs and for meat, and the breeds for eggs are perceived as "tough" and "stringy" by westerners, who demand convenience and comfort over the maintenance of more environmentally sustainable methods of farming that are integrated into biological processes and life cycles. I've eaten chicken in Thailand and the taste was very different, but of course, though the first time I was eating entire chicken organs in the soup it was hard to finish, the second time I didn't have a problem with it. The meat itself was lean and, once you got used to the fact it was gamey and probably fed on garbage, was still quite enjoyable. So that's entirely because consumers demand chicken to be a juicy featureless substance removed from its origins.
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Purple wrote:I am a bit confused. Why do they not simply run a meat farm in parallel and make use of those chickens? Surely they could earn money by selling them to us for food.
Even if not for the difference in breeds, roosters are territorial. A rooster farm is going to be a lot larger than a hen farm (and probably less centralised) if you don't want them trying to kill each other all the time.
Purple wrote:I am a bit confused. Why do they not simply run a meat farm in parallel and make use of those chickens? Surely they could earn money by selling them to us for food.
Even if not for the difference in breeds, roosters are territorial. A rooster farm is going to be a lot larger than a hen farm (and probably less centralised) if you don't want them trying to kill each other all the time.
Well, you could just raise them in cages just big enough for them to fit into...
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If the german customer wants to pay 6 cents for an egg, then even such measures seem to be too costly. I mean, I pay about 12 cents at least for my eggs but still, the average price is kept very low.
Also, I've eaten rooster. It wasn't good meat. In fact, it was very hard meat which we could barely cut with our knives. Granted, it was an older one from the farm next door, but it is not an experience I would like to repeat. Maybe a young one would be better.
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I've eaten rooster when I was growing on a farm. While the experience of actually getting it from a live rooster to the dinner table was something I didn't much care for (the chop the head off and let him run around for a few method) the meat itself wasn't bad. Different then a hen, tougher but not bad tasting. The rooster was only like a year old though so that might have helped.
We had to kill it because it was a cock (heh) to the other chickens. It would fight other males constantly and harm the females in its "activities" so he had to go.
The classic use for roosters has generally been as broth/soup material. Boil them long enough, the meat falls apart. It'll be a slightly different flavour as it won't be as fatty as broth made from fryer chickens, but quite all right. Meat is meat; there's only so many things you can do with it. Capons are another possibility as well.
Frankly though, with that much of an excess of chickens, you'd have to repurpose a good bit of it for other purposes such as pet feed and what not. It is a source of protein, after all.
