At the Agriculture Council on 19 July, the French and German delegations will ask the European Commission to start work on “prohibition on the systematic killing of male chicks in the European Union”.
These new provisions would be included in the forthcoming revision of EU animal welfare legislation, the delegations explain in a note (https://bit.ly/3AKYoAL ) on the dossier.
In the European Union, around 260 million male chicks from laying hen hatcheries are disposed of after hatching each year due to a lack of economic value, say France and Germany. Germany has already banned these practices starting in 2022.
In order to meet the high consumer demand for eggs and to reduce production costs, laying hens have been bred worldwide to produce more eggs.
“The breeding of males is currently not or hardly carried out due to a lack of outlets for the meat of these animals”, according to the note.
This practice of killing newly born animals, although authorised by current European legislation, “is ethically unacceptable”, say France and Germany.
Several alternatives exist, in particular the sexing of embryos in ovo in order to select only female embryos before hatching. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)