Germany aims to phase out the practice of shredding male baby chicks in factory farms by 2017

1_the practice of shredding male baby chicks

BY: KASSANDRA DZIKEWICZ

The egg industry follows the idea of “ignorance is bliss,” but in reality what goes on behind the doors of factory farms is far from blissful. In Germany 45 million baby chicks per year are thrown into a giant shredding machine or else into a gas chamber. In the United States, this number is 200 million per year.

Every year hundreds of millions of tiny male chicks are tossed into a shredding machine.

Since males are unable to lay eggs, they are not seen as a useful commodity to justify the expense of keeping them alive.

However, hope is on the rise as German scientists have recently unveiled a solution. A new technology has been created that allows the industry to identify the sex of the chick before it hatches. This new method allows the male eggs to be removed from the hatchery before they begin to develop, which will save the the after-birth killings of 45 million male chicks born into Germany’s egg industry each year. Germany is the first country in the world to implement this technology in an attempt to downsize inhumanity.

Germany’ s Agricultural Minister Christian Schmidt aims to have chick shredding entirely phased out by 2017 using this new X-ray technology.

The idea is that this technology will expand into other countries ending this practice world wide. So long as the majority of the world is not vegan, the horrors of factory farming will continue. This new innovation aims to minimize the brutality that accompanies the mass production of livestock products.