Eggs without male chick culling
Producing eggs means hatching female hens, but fertilized eggs are about half female and half male. The breeds used for egg-laying hens don’t lend themselves to raising the males for meat (with exceptions such as Kipster). That leads to hundreds of millions of day-old male chicks being gassed or ground up alive every year.
The good news is that there’s a new technology called in-ovo sexing that can detect male embryos during incubation and avoids hatching & killing them.
The first company in the United States to use in-ovo sexing is NestFresh with their Humanely Hatched® Pasture Raised line. This process is certified with Certified Humane’s new Approved Hatcheries™ standard. Look for the phrase “Approved hatcheries” around the Certified Humane logo to verify:
These egg lines are first rolling out in the United States to various Whole Foods locations. Find Humane has added a new Certified Humane Approved Hatcheries filter to find these products:
