France To Ban Systematic Culling Of Male Chicks: Minister
France is to ban from the end of 2021 the hugely controversial but widespread poultry industry practice of systematically slaughtering male chicks, Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume said Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
Paris (AFP): France is to ban from the end of 2021 the hugely controversial but widespread poultry industry practice of systematically slaughtering male chicks, Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume said Tuesday.
"The aim is to oblige firms... to do this by the end of 2021," he told BFM television, expressing hope that a method could be found that works on a large scale to determine the sex of an embryo in the egg rather than as now, after hatching.
Guillaume also announced that within a similar time frame, France would ban the castration of piglets without anaesthetic, another measure long urged by animal rights activists.
Egg production requires the hatching of millions of chicks every year, with the females sold to be raised and exploited by either individual farmers or commercial poultry farms.
Adult roosters, however, produce no eggs and develop far less meat than the so-called "broilers" bred especially for eating.
As a result, producers say the male chicks are not worth the cost of raising to adults and are usually killed, either by grinding up or gassing.
Researchers have yet to come up with a way to effectively determine the sex of a chick still in the egg that works on an industrial scale.
The top administrative court in Germany, where 45 million male chicks are slaughtered every year, ruled in June that the slaughtering of male chicks could continue in the poultry industry until a method is found to determine the sex of an embryo in the egg.
-
What do scientists hope to learn from total solar eclipse in US?
2024-03-28 -
Song lyrics are getting simpler, more repetitive: study
2024-03-28 -
German court rules against Mercedes in emissions case
2024-03-28 -
UK greenhouse gas emissions fell 5.4 percent in 2023: data
2024-03-28 -
French film grooming claims puts focus on child coaches
2024-03-28 -
George Washington University faces $10mn disinformation lawsuit
2024-03-28 -
Climate change is messing with how we measure time: study
2024-03-28 -
Struggling for a can of food: starving Gazans scramble for aid drops
2024-03-26 -
Pandemic accord talks at loggerheads as time ticks away
2024-03-26 -
Racism reducing my desire to play football: Brazil's Vinicius
2024-03-25