World's first no-kill eggsby Sumit Chowdhury | 25-12-2018 00:54 |
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 Scientists can now quickly determine a chick¡¯s gender before it hatches, potentially ending the need to cull billions of male chicks worldwide. The world¡¯s first ever no-kill eggs are now on sale in Berlin after German scientists found an easy way to determine a chick¡¯s gender before it hatches, in a breakthrough that could put an end to the annual live shredding of billions of male chicks worldwide. The patented ¡°Seleggt¡± process can determine the sex of a chick just nine days after an egg has been fertilised. Male eggs are processed into animal feed, leaving only female chicks to hatch at the end of a 21-day incubation period. An estimated 4-6 billion male chicks are slaughtered globally every year because they serve no economic purpose. Some are suffocated, others are fed alive into grinding or shredding machines to be processed into reptile food. The culling is a messy solution to a thorny problem of modern poultry farming. Humans have bred chickens for one of two purposes: to produce eggs, or meat. Yet half of all the animals bred for this purpose are considered useless. Male chicks lay no eggs and don¡¯t grow fast enough to justify the cost of feeding them up for meat. So, they are simply destroyed. Rewe Group plan to roll out the eggs across German stores next year, while Seleggt plans to install the technology in independent hatcheries from 2020. Seleggt will require supermarkets to pay a few extra cents on every box of eggs sold with their ¡°respeggt¡± seal. Eventually, the group hopes to expand the model across Europe.
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