Billions of Day-Old Chicks Are Shredded, Gassed, and Suffocated

Every year, up to 7 billion day-old male chicks are tossed into shredding machines, gassed, or suffocated in plastic bags—a process known as “chick culling.” This grim ritual is underpinned by both biology and economics: Male chicks don’t lay eggs, and they fatten up too slowly to be sold as meat. Across the globe, culling has become the default strategy for the egg industry to eliminate unwanted hatchlings.


[link:https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/chick-culling-cruel-wasteful-and-tough-stop/618348/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email|