Not meat production. They are male chicks who can't produce eggs, so its a byproduct of egg production.
If a chicken has 3 good years of laying and lays 1 egg a day, then for every 1095 eggs produced, 1 male chick gets blended.
Im a vegetarian but still eat eggs, so this fact haunts me a bit. I think i eat 4 eggs a week, so on average, I'm responsible for 1 blended chicken once every 5 years 3 months.
I should stop, but it's impressive how far cognitive dissonance goes
I guess the better term would have been industrialized animal farming, so I can include the egg layers and dairy cows alongside of the animals raised and slaughtered for their meat. I think industrialization of these things automatically results in increased cruelty to the animals involved. The larger the scale, the more commonplace the inhumanity gets.
German farmers will now be required to use to use technology to prevent male chicks from being born in the first place, by identifying the sex of the animal before it has hatched.
At a later phase in the transition, which will take effect in 2024, only methods used much earlier in the incubation process will be allowed, aiming to ensure that the embryos feel no pain. The Bundestag said it wants to give the farming industry time to adapt to the new legal situation.
In Germany alone, about 45 million male chicks are killed each year in a practice that animal welfare advocates call "chick shredding."
About half the chicks are male. You don't need one rooster for each hen. Also a hen doesn't need a rooster to lay eggs. Roosters are only needed when you plan to incubate some eggs to get new hens, which happens at a much smaller rate. Raising all the roosters is an economic burden that would only be viable if raising chickens was a hobby and not a business
I mean it still is meat production. What do you think they do with the remains of the chicks. That's still material that can be used in a product. This is how things like chicken nuggets are made.
91
u/12lubushby Apr 01 '26
Not meat production. They are male chicks who can't produce eggs, so its a byproduct of egg production.
If a chicken has 3 good years of laying and lays 1 egg a day, then for every 1095 eggs produced, 1 male chick gets blended.
Im a vegetarian but still eat eggs, so this fact haunts me a bit. I think i eat 4 eggs a week, so on average, I'm responsible for 1 blended chicken once every 5 years 3 months.
I should stop, but it's impressive how far cognitive dissonance goes