LIFE ON FAST LANE
The egg industry brings a large number of victims, in addition to the suffering of laying hens, about 7 billion of newly hatched male chicks are killed each year. Are you wondering why? The poultry industry considers these animals as unprofitable, for two reasons: they cannot lay eggs and they are not suitable for chicken-meat production. This is because layer hens — and therefore their chicks — are a different breed of poultry to chickens that are bred and raised for meat production. Layer hens are bred to produce eggs whereas meat chickens are bred to grow large breast muscle and legs.
In the egg industry, the sex of day-old chicks is determined at the hatchery. Sexing chicks (determining whether they are a hen or a rooster) requires considerable skill and is done at this very early stage to determine their fate. If strong and healthy, the female chicks are transferred to a site where they are grown to a suitable size and then moved to a laying facility — which could be a cage, free-range or barn set up. Male chicks are considered an unwanted byproduct of egg production and are killed and disposed of shortly after chick sexing at just one day old.
In the world, but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, several methods of killing male chickens are used. They are considered as an acceptable practice, despite its brutality: suffocation, killing with CO2, maceration, electrocution and breaking the neck of chicks. More and more countries are starting to take steps to end this inhumane practice. France has pledged to end the killing of chickens by the end of 2021 while Germany has announced plans to ban the practice in 2022.
