Egg Industry Killing Male Chicks

Eggs come from hens, but where do those hens come from? If this feels like the old chicken-and-egg conundrum, it is and it isn’t… because this has a much clearer endpoint. The hens who lay the eggs we eat were hatched from eggs laid by breeder birds. And half of those hatchlings are slaughtered at birth.

You see, not every egg laid by those breeder birds is useful to the egg industry because, by the law of averages, half hatch male. And males cannot lay eggs. So, in a process known as “hatch and dispatch”, the chicks are shoved into a crate and gassed to death. The industry also has the legal options of “macerating” them – dropping them alive and conscious into a high-speed blender – or breaking their necks. What a richness of choice.