[HN Gopher] Tech aims to block hatching of billions of male chic...
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Tech aims to block hatching of billions of male chicks fated for
culling (2021)
Author : gdrift
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-12-13 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.huminnpoultry.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.huminnpoultry.com)
| f1shy wrote:
| For the last past years (at least 2) I've been eating eggs which
| comes from farms which do not kill the males. Don't know exactly
| how they do it, but the possibility is available. They are more
| expensive, but if you feel is not ok to kill them...
| adenozine wrote:
| Ancient technology called lying...
| william_T wrote:
| They let them grow up into meat for humans to eat before they
| kill them
| koolba wrote:
| > Their concept was to introduce the gene that halts the
| embryogenesis to the Z chromosome, in order to stop the creation
| of male chicks at the stage when they are only a microscopic
| cluster of cells.
|
| > "We're making a genetic modification that segregates only to
| the males and is perfectly validated," said Cinnamon.
|
| Framed as "gene editing to prevent male cell genesis" to make
| this happen, there's going to be plenty of people that refuse to
| eat these eggs.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Considering all the times science has made mistakes
| historically up unto now, I say it is their right to not eat
| them if they so choose. My parents still haven't forgiven "fat
| makes you fat."
| bell-cot wrote:
| Vs. the traditional solution -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capon#History
| gs17 wrote:
| That's not the "traditional solution", capons are something
| different entirely. These are egg laying breeds, they aren't
| considered worth raising for meat.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| But that has to do with the specialization via breeding more
| than it has to do with anything intrinsic. We raise dual
| purpose chickens on a hobby basis, and I understand that,
| yes, this would not be acceptable on an industrial/commercial
| scale, but that says more about that kind of market, that
| kind of farming & the way consumers are insulated from the
| affects of it than it does about the quality of the birds or
| the meat.
|
| In other words, yet again, the true externalities are not
| always exposed to the consumer.
|
| EDIT: I should mention I am also fully in favour of things
| like this genetic engineering work that could provide a
| larger scale solution assuming they can be done humanely.
| Same for male dairy cows.
| bell-cot wrote:
| THIS.
|
| Not quite a century ago, a couple of my uncles raised &
| sold capons in a small rural American town. It was a side
| business, male chicks were ~free, and they did the
| caponization themselves.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Was that actually using up all of the male chicks? More
| than half?
|
| If not then it's not really a 'solution'.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Every healthy male chick that grandma's chicken coup
| could spare. Plus the coups of several neighbors.
|
| Note that a healthy hen contributes eggs to several years
| of meals. Vs. a capon only graces the table once.
| globalise83 wrote:
| What will the pet pythons of the world eat in future?
| a_shovel wrote:
| > What Cinnamon and his team determined revolves around the
| common denominator of all male chickens, the Z chromosome from
| the mother hen.
|
| This would also be a common denominator with the female chickens.
| Birds, unlike mammals, use the ZW sex-chromosome system, where
| males have the symmetric ZZ chromosomes and females have a pair
| of asymmetric ZW chromosomes.
|
| I'd like to know more about this, such as a general description
| of what kind of change they made, as this article is really light
| on technical details.
| projektfu wrote:
| The maternal Z is not a common denominator of female chickens.
| Female chickens have a Z chromosome from the sperm and males
| have one each from the sperm and the egg. For a laying hen to
| have a female offspring, it has to pass on a W. Therefore, if
| you make the mother hen's ovary produce eggs with a lethal z,
| but a non-lethal W, normal sperm will produce viable ZW females
| and Zz males with a lethal mutation.
| alangibson wrote:
| IIRC, this is why birds can undergo parthenogenesis in rare
| cases.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't know about "why". It seems like it would be slightly
| easier with the same chromosomes. And it happens with both
| systems.
|
| If you specifically mean parthenogenesis to a male egg, then
| yes you'd generally need something like ZW.
| testfoobar wrote:
| In case some readers may not know, male chicks in the egg
| industry are literally ground and shredded alive. I won't direct
| link to videos because they are graphic, but you can easily find
| them online. Here is an indirect link:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+male+chicks+grinder&...
| taberiand wrote:
| I don't totally understand what's wrong with that. It doesn't
| seem like a particularly cruel way to kill an animal, it's an
| instant death isn't it? Is the resultant product just waste, or
| can it be put to good use? Edit: it seems it can be used as
| animal feed.
|
| It feels like a distraction from thinking about fixing the way
| the hens get treated through their miserable lives.
| RGamma wrote:
| Well, let's say when I first learnt about this, I thought
| this concept of dumping living (and cute af) animals en masse
| into rotating blades was an idea only the sick heads of
| splatter movie authors could generate.
|
| Apparently it's also economically very efficient and
| therefore real.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| It is less cruel sure, but in no ways moral or ethical
| considering the fact that humans directly influenced in the
| creation of these lives for no purpose other than instant
| killing.
| XorNot wrote:
| Raising them for meat doesn't make much of a difference on
| the moral scale though. They either die then or die later,
| but _all of them_ die.
|
| The output isn't wasted, it's where the chicken in cat food
| comes from.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| You can't easily raise them for meat at scale like you
| can hens. Roosters are highly territorial and noisy.
| Nobody wants a chicken farm next door, but they sure as
| hell don't want a chicken farm with 100,000 roosters
| crowing and fighting with each other all day long.
| powerset wrote:
| It might be less bad than the other things we do to animals,
| but it's still pretty horrifying. You could conclude we
| should give hens higher priority, but I'd say we should place
| more importance on reducing cruelty of all kinds.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think part of the issue is that as a society we moved too
| far away from what we are. I was raised on a farm. I saw
| chicken heads cut off and sheep slaughtered, but it was all
| done in.. what is the word I am looking for here.. in a non-
| industrial manner. You knew you were taking a life and you
| tried not to make it ( edit: unnecessarily ) painful and not
| a pointless sacrifice ( in western society anyway some ethos
| definitely developed over time ).
|
| But buying a mcnugget at mcdonalds removes that clear
| connection between life and death.
|
| << It feels like a distraction from thinking about fixing the
| way the hens get treated through their miserable lives.
|
| It is a distraction, but I believe it is a valid related
| point nonetheless.
| dheera wrote:
| Yes, so much this.
|
| Not only is it much easier to raise animals in a more
| humane manner than is done industrially, when people live
| closer to their food source they understand the sheer
| amount of resources -- land, water, deforestaton -- that
| goes into every kilogram of meat. I think people would eat
| a more reasonable (i.e. a lot less, and healthier) amount
| of meat if they saw and experienced the impacts of meat
| farming first-hand, from cutting down trees to create land,
| treating the land for farming enough food for the animals
| to grow before you can kill them for meat -- rather than
| selecting "beef" on a food delivery app without thinking
| about anything.
| kennedywm wrote:
| In general, we're protected from the true costs of our
| decisions. It's not just consumption of animal products,
| but negative externalities generally. We're willing to
| accept terrible things when divorced from the consequences
| of our actions and, even when made aware of these
| consequences, we dismiss them to protect our
| conceptualization of ourselves as "good" people.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Replace "male chicks" with any other baby (even human) and
| you may have a different reaction to masserating them while
| they're alive.
|
| This doesn't provide a distraction from other animal welfare
| issues, it fixes one of the many issues that exist while
| others are being solved. Whether or not male chicks are
| ground up, hens will still live horrible lives. The only
| option is to create lab-grown egg facilities and not involve
| any chickens at all, or eat plant-based replacements (which
| aren't all soy or Just egg, though those are both options).
|
| IMO, we can't farm animals without exploitation and should
| rethink our food system, but it would be great if in the
| meantime, we stop breeding and killing all of these sentient
| animals as part of the egg industry.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Replace "male chicks" with any other baby (even human) and
| you may have a different reaction to masserating them while
| they're alive._
|
| I guess, where I get confused is why grinding up baby male
| chicks is terrible, but letting chicks grow into adult-hood
| so we can kill them and eat their flesh is
| significantly...less bad I guess?
|
| Why not just aim for the banning of killing any animal for
| any reason? Is it a specific "scale" problem? Killing 5
| chickens or chicks is fine. But 100 is horrible? Is it
| 1000? 100,000? 1 million?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Letting them grow to adulthood while giving them an
| opportunity to experience a decent sort of "chicken
| existence" (i.e. able to indulge in natural chicken-like
| behaviours etc.) definitely seems preferable to just
| killing them at birth. But killing them at birth is
| definitely better than forcing them to stay alive in
| cruelly constrained/unnatural conditions. Better still is
| preventing their growth into baby male chickens (which
| presumably do have the capacity for pain/some sort of
| awareness of existence - as I noted in my other reply,
| can bond and interact with humans) in the first place.
| taberiand wrote:
| What I mean is, this is the sort of issue that industry,
| politicians and special interest groups like to focus on,
| because it is easy to argue about and build an emotional
| case for, and developing solutions won't change much about
| the status quo of the horrific conditions of mass poultry
| farming.
|
| I agree with you, we need to totally rethink and replace
| the food system. I also think that the result of solving
| this issue won't reduce the aggregate suffering in the
| system, if for example the total number of chickens
| produced is the half as before but all chicks are ensured
| to be hens then the chickens in aggregate will suffer
| proportionally more (in total days of suffering per chicken
| hatched) than if there was an even split of males and
| females being hatched - but it will provide something for
| the industry to point to as "improving" while nothing
| fundamentally changes. And eggs will probably become
| cheaper and people will eat more of them.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| I don't think the mass killing of billions of baby chicks
| should be justified because it's "an instant death". Just
| because there are other issues worth fixing doesn't mean it's
| a distraction, that's just a silly mindset. We should work on
| both problems.
| 4ad wrote:
| What is the problem with killing billions of baby chicks?
| If killing billions of baby chicks means cheaper food for
| billions of people it's not only not a problem, it would be
| unethical to do otherwise.
| [deleted]
| oregano wrote:
| It seems like you're justifying the status quo when I
| think a much more practical answer would be to simply
| swap out the chickens for chickpeas or soy or any number
| of other high protein and cruelty free alternatives which
| would also almost positively be _way_ cheaper and less
| wasteful.
| 4ad wrote:
| If people want to eat chickpeas or soy, they are free to
| do so. Similarly, if people want to eat cheap chicken,
| people who don't eat chicken shouldn't have any say into
| it.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I love the mentality of a lot of people. I feel like free
| market extremists would literally buy and sell anything
| from anyone in the world and be like 'listen, all I did
| was SELL nerve gas to the general, I never intended for
| him to use it on that ethnic minority group.'
| 4ad wrote:
| Nerve gas kills _people_. If the distinction between
| humans and non-human animals is not recognized, I am
| afraid all arguments will fall onto deaf ears.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Yes, there's a distinction, but we obviously see non-
| human animals as being more similar to humans in terms
| our moral obligations than we do non-living matter, and
| generally the closer to being a human-like, the more we
| care about how we treat it. A baby chicken can literally
| _bond_ to humans, follow us around, and interact with us
| in various ways. If that isn 't enough to grant it as
| being deserving of ethical/humane treatment, I don't know
| what is.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| As much as I dislike this practice, I can at least partially
| defend it by being as close to instant as possible. It does not
| make it any less upsetting, but, sadly, some animals suffer
| worse fates.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Also worth remembering that nature is a cruel mistress to
| animals herself. Heck, animals can be pretty cruel to other
| animals even if they don't kill them. Heck, animals can be
| cruel to their own species (see adult male bears happily
| devouring their young if possible).
| prteja11 wrote:
| We are bringing millions and billions of these animals to
| life. Stating that they face similar or worse fate in
| nature is not realistic as they wouldn't exist in the first
| place.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I need you to explain how that doesn't make it less
| upsetting.
|
| Or, to word it the other way around, how it _wouldn 't be
| more upsetting_ if it was slow.
|
| Is that line hyperbole so you don't sound callous?
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| There is a limit to the amount of upset one can feel before
| it either becomes debilitating or certain sub-conscious
| self-preservation mechanisms kick in and dial down the
| empathy.
|
| Unbelievable cruelties are happening all over the world at
| this very second. All of them are bad, and trying to grade
| them is a grotesque affair with no good outcome. If I tried
| to subject myself to upset over all of them, I'd do nothing
| but sink into non-stop depression.
|
| I propose a charitable reading of parent: they are upset
| about the practice and don't condone or support it in any
| way, but when it comes to some ladder of priorities in
| solving the most dire issues of the world, there are sadly
| bigger cruelties committed on animals than this. All of it
| needs solving, but given limited resources we still need to
| (sadly) pick the bigger evil?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > There is a limit to the amount of upset one can feel
| before it either becomes debilitating or certain sub-
| conscious self-preservation mechanisms kick in and dial
| down the empathy.
|
| I wouldn't personally say the chicken grinder gets
| anywhere near the level of debilitating upset. I'm easily
| more upset by very poor housing for farm animals, for
| example.
|
| > Unbelievable cruelties are happening all over the world
|
| > some ladder of priorities
|
| But the comparison wasn't to other issues in the world by
| my reading. It was specifically about how this machine
| works versus what someone's initial impression might be.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm. I think you may have misread my comment, but lets go
| over it just in case.
|
| << It does not make it any less upsetting, but, sadly, some
| animals suffer worse fates.
|
| My interpretation: It is upsetting. Some things are more
| upsetting ( for example, your example of it being more
| upsetting if it was slow ).
|
| I am not sure if your characterization of my comment is
| fair or accurate.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| My interpretation was that "It" referred to the previous
| sentence about it being close to instant. If "It" was
| talking about other animals, then I retract my comment.
| ars wrote:
| The grinding is extremely fast - too fast for the chick to
| experience pain before it's dead.
|
| There are far far far more important animal welfare issues to
| worry about.
| paulcole wrote:
| > There are far far far more important animal welfare issues
| to worry about.
|
| But it doesn't seem like we're worrying about those all that
| much...
| 988747 wrote:
| Wait, I always thought that they would let them grow up to full
| size, and then kill them for meat? Why kill them immediately?
| bacon_waffle wrote:
| Chicken breeds used by commercial operations are highly
| optimised for either meat or egg production. Hobby or
| specialist farmers might do as you describe, often with more
| general-purpose breeds, but it usually isn't worth raising a
| layer breed bird for meat.
| danofsteel32 wrote:
| Egg laying chickens (layers) are very different from meat
| chickens (broilers). Layers have been bred to be lean and put
| their calorie surplus into producing eggs. Broilers have been
| bred to pack on weight as quickly and efficiently as
| possible. No one eats layer chickens they are usually turned
| into compost or pet food.
|
| Source: My wife manages +100K birds on one of the largest egg
| farms in the US
| william_T wrote:
| the article says it costs more to raise a male chicken to be
| slaughtered than they can sell the meat for
| patcon wrote:
| as I understand, male chickens are aggressive and really hard
| to raise. they fight and destroy one another when kept at the
| density that industrial processes would like to keep them at.
| And I don't think the meat is very good or desirable.
|
| Not defending any of this, just saying there's a rationale
| and twisted incentives to do this twisted things we do
| f1shy wrote:
| Males provide just too little meat.
| d23 wrote:
| Watch the movie Dominion if you're interested in having your
| eyes opened as to just how cruel and gruesome factory farming
| is. Whatever you think is going on, it's almost certainly
| orders of magnitude worse than you can imagine. The sheer scale
| of it boggles the mind.
| verdenti wrote:
| RGamma wrote:
| Also, since just this year it's forbidden in Germany (https://w
| ww.bgbl.de/xaver/bgbl/start.xav?startbk=Bundesanzei...)
|
| And apparently in the EU the chicks have to be anesthesized
| before being sent to the grinder.
| william_T wrote:
| I really believed what this guy was saying until I got here:
|
| said Cinnamon. "Chickens are the most important organism in
| world,
|
| And I just do not agree with that statement.
| linuxftw wrote:
| IMO, genetic modification is less humane than grinding the male
| chicks. In any case, the breeders for the egg layers likely
| already have logistics in place for the ground baby chicks (pet
| food, fertilizer, etc) which is likely easier to process than
| aborted eggs. Since the eggs will presumably be incubated, they
| won't be human consumable, and how you have an additional waste
| stream to work with.
|
| Every single laying chicken also dies or gets killed in
| industrialized farms (indeed, all living things on Earth die
| eventually), and it's likely a less-instantaneous process than
| the rooster grinder.
| progman32 wrote:
| First I hear someone express the opinion in your first
| sentence. I'm curious to hear more. Why do you hold this view?
| d23 wrote:
| It seems there's sometimes an arms race in the comments
| section here to see who can produce the edgiest, most
| contrarian point the fastest. I'm waiting for the one that
| says extended, lifelong torture is actually healthy for the
| animals.
| sschueller wrote:
| There is already an alternative method to determine sex before
| the eggs hatch by analyzing hormones in the egg liquid. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.seleggt.com/
|
| [2] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/eier-produktion-sinnloses-
| ku... (German)
| f1shy wrote:
| For the last past years (at least 2) I've been eating eggs
| which comes from farms which do not kill the males.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's a bit spooky to see Israel of all countries looking into
| anything birth-related. I would prefer to see this come out of
| literally any other country. Furthermore, doesn't this raise the
| same concerns as we had with the genetically-altered dud
| mosquitos released to slow the mosquito population (and disease
| proliferation)? The mosquitos that ended up having unforeseen
| consequences?
| progman32 wrote:
| I am disturbed by your first two sentences. Please explain your
| reasoning.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Israel cares more about birth counts than virtually any other
| country in the world by virtue of their relationship with the
| Palestinians. The Palestinians are rapidly approaching the
| tipping point where they will outnumber Israelis. At that
| time, it's possible that Israel would have to renegotiate
| which country controls which regions.
| progman32 wrote:
| I see no connection between this agricultural tech and the
| territorial dispute you mention. I'm bowing out, thanks for
| your time.
| culanuchachamim wrote:
| ?!
|
| A big chunk of Israel startups and tech is focused on
| agriculture, this is one more on the list.
| crote wrote:
| Wait, I thought this was already a solved problem? We've been
| able to determine the sex of chicken eggs from the outside using
| lasers for quite a few years now. [0]
|
| [0]: https://physicsworld.com/a/laser-spectroscopy-determines-
| sex...
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Unfortunately lasers aren't cheaper than tossing living male
| chicks into grinders.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Just like better batteries and non-lithium batteries, this
| seems to be an issue that has been solved numerous times in the
| last decade without broad application of the solution.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Too slow, the article says 95% accuracy with about one a
| minute.
|
| Graduates of the Zen Nippon Chick Sexing School is about 99.7%
| accurate @ every 3-4 seconds.
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jobs-chickens-idUSTRE67U0...
| sergiotapia wrote:
| License and registration, "Chicken sexers"!
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