Shredding day-old chicks: how Australia’s egg industry works

A video from Victoria has started making the rounds online.

It starts off innocently enough - a stream of chirping baby chicks are huddled together, moving down a conveyer belt.

CUTE.

But then the chicks tumble on to spinning blades and are shredded to death.

...Not so cute.

Specialised Breeders Australia confirmed to Hack that the video was filmed at their hatchery just outside of Melbourne.

Animal Liberation told Hack that they were anonymously sent the footage and it was shot covertly by trespassers.

Animal Liberation condemned the maceration - the practice of killing male chicks because they can’t be used by egg farmers for laying eggs.

“They’ve been hiding this from consumers for a very long time,” Emma Hurst from Animal Liberation NSW told Hack.

Specialised Breeders Australia told Hack that maceration is “endorsed accordingly by the RSPCA”.

But Emma Hurst says practicing maceration in hatcheries means that there’s cruelty attached to every kind of egg you buy in the supermarket - even free range.

“[Consumers are] funding this whenever they buy eggs. This hatchery supplies battery, free range, organic, barn raised chickens. It’s something that’s inescapable no matter what label of egg you buy.”

Animal Liberation also started a petition, calling for the industry to stop the “mass slaughter” of male chicks.

Macerating male chicks legal in Australia

While the footage is pretty disturbing to watch macerating chicks isn’t illegal in Australia.

According to John Coward from Egg Farmers Australia, maceration isn’t only common practice in the industry, it’s also considered the most humane way to “dispose” of male chicks.

“It’s regarded currently as the most welfare-appropriate destruction of these male chicks. It’s something that the industry has been very aware of,” John Coward told Hack.

“But we’re aware of the public sentiment toward this type of disposal.”

What are the other options?

If male chicks aren’t macerated as soon as they’re born, they can be gassed to death in a sealed C02 chamber instead, John says.

John says macerating chicks is the preferred method because of how instantaneous the death - and therefore how brief the suffering - is expected to be. But he admits that the industry can’t be certain of how long chicks might be in pain for.

Obviously in taking that little chick’s life, there is an instantaneous position of suffering, how much that is, the industry’s not sure. But if you look at how quick it is, you’d say, that’s the best we can do under the circumstances.

“Any well-thought human being would say if you could somehow do it better that would be more appropriate.

“For that reason the industry for the last five years has been working on science-based alternatives.”

John told Hack that he’s excited by where developments in the industry are heading; Australian scientists are working on methods to identify male chicks in eggs and “dispose” of them before they’re even born.

“Obviously that’s a more appropriate time to dispose of the male chicks in that sense rather than wait till they’re a day old. They’re basically an egg that’s been fertilised.”

It’s a process known as chicken sexing. Germany is already on board and will stop mass culling of chicks by next year. The country is developing technology where male eggs show up with green dye, Emma Hurst says.

“The male eggs can be destroyed nine days after incubation, before they develop the ability to feel pain.”

Meanwhile, the US has committed to stop chicken culling by 2020.

Australia doesn’t have the same kind of commitment, but John Coward says the industry expects to adopt the technology in the next few years.

Specialised Breeders Australia, where the video was filmed, said they’re all for adopting the technology ASAP.

“We support adopting [the technology] as soon as it is commercially available. 2020 is an arbitrary date. It is likely to happen before this. The new technology will actually save us money too. We are keen to adopt it.”

Reduce egg consumption and raise awareness, Animal Liberation says

“I understand when people say, ‘oh I didn’t really want to know that or I’m really horrified by that [video],” Emma Hurst says.

But I think in the long term, consumers realise that the only way we can change something is by exposing it and knowing that it’s happening.”

“A lot of people are looking into the alternatives. There's certainly ways you can reduce or limit your consumption of eggs.

“There’s other things you can do like contact the industry or talk about the male maceration of chicks.”