That’s actually illegal in Germany since 2019 or so. We now have egg scanners that can determine the embryo’s sex early on and destroy the rooster eggs.
Unfortunately, it does not scale rather well to the high demand in other countries like the US
They have not yet tried to sell the technology to the US egg industry but, even if they did, the volume it can handle is currently too low for this technology to be used to get rid of chick culling across the board.
There’s also evidence to suggest it might not be early enough and that they might still be able to feel pain at that point
One issue that complicates these efforts is the difficult-to-answer question of when an embryo becomes a chick. Some researchers say day seven is when chick embryos can begin to experience pain. If that’s right, sexing the eggs eight to 10 days after incubation as Respeggt does, and 14 days as Agri-AT does, may still end up inflicting pain on the embryo, which could be trading one animal welfare problem — culling — for another
No, in practice we send the chickens to get shredded in other countries. Large scale egg production without shredding (and hens held in terrible conditions which is way worse imo) is pretty much impossible and you will never find ethically produced eggs in a supermarket.
That’s actually illegal in Germany since 2019 or so. We now have egg scanners that can determine the embryo’s sex early on and destroy the rooster eggs.
Unfortunately, it does not scale rather well to the high demand in other countries like the US
There’s also evidence to suggest it might not be early enough and that they might still be able to feel pain at that point
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22374193/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling
No, in practice we send the chickens to get shredded in other countries. Large scale egg production without shredding (and hens held in terrible conditions which is way worse imo) is pretty much impossible and you will never find ethically produced eggs in a supermarket.