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US egg industry kills 350M chicks a year. New tech offers an alternative
- robthebrew 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- okokhacker 2y agoThis is awesome
- Qem 2y ago> New technology enables hatcheries to quickly peer into millions of fertilized eggs and spot male embryos, then grind them up before they mature into chicks. I think the title is quite misleading. They would still end killed, just earlier.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CryptoBanker 2y ago[flagged]
- mystified5016 2y agoThe proper term is "forced birth"
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoI assume from the headline with this new way a conscious creature doesn't experience immense pain.
- probably_wrong 2y agoYou would be mistaken, though, because the article mentions that the current process is virtually painless due to how fast it is. There's also the debate on whether one-day-old chicks are conscious, but I don't know the literature enough to have a strong opinion.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoMy comment said that the new process is painless and you say I am mistaken because the current process is virtually painless. Also, virtually painless doesn't sound like painless to me. It sounds like a nice thing to tell people to convince them grinding up conscious creatures has no negative aspect. "There's also the debate on whether one-day-old chicks are conscious, but I don't know the literature enough to have a strong opinion." Why comment if you admit you don't know what you're talking about? There's lots of debate over whether you are conscious. Does that meaning grinding you up is plausibly a nice thing to do?
- trallnag 2y agoSounds like abortions
- lern_too_spel 2y agoIn common usage, a chick is a young bird, especially newly hatched. An embryo isn't a young bird, and it especially isn't newly hatched. In practice, this doesn't matter to Christians, who believe that all non-human animals were put on Earth for man to do as he pleases with. https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/bible.show/sVerseID/208/eVerseID/209 https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/bible.show/s...
- Reubend 2y agoI was going to start disagreeing with you, but then I read your link, and you're pretty much right. > The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.
- cwmoore 2y agoThat number is way too low.
- aradox66 2y agoLike, it IS higher or it SHOULD be higher?
- emptiestplace 2y ago1
- akudha 2y agoDuring COVID, farmers were killing pigs with steam. Imagine being steamed alive. Animal industry is cruel beyond most people's imagination. Anything to lessen that cruelty is good, very good. We aren't gonna reduce our meat consumption, the least we could do is lessen their suffering https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/factory-farms-are-baking-pigs-alive-during-pandemic-veterinarians-call-changing-guidance https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/factory-farms-are-baking-... From the article above In an even more extreme form, referred to as VSD-plus, heat, steam and/or gas are injected into the building, baking the animals alive
- poincaredisk 2y ago>We aren't gonna reduce our meat consumption, Why? This is certainly possible if we, humans, really wanted to. So I assume you just don't believe society will ever decide to do it. This is unnecessarily negative outlook IMO - the first step to change something is to believe change is possible.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoThis is a classic is-ought situation. Seems easier to improve the process and ethics of killing animals for consumption rather than reducing meat consumption at a society level. People don’t change their ways very easily. I know I have to fight rolling my eyes whenever someone suggests the the solution is simple: eat less meat.
- poincaredisk 2y agoI agree with your statements, but why not do both? Improving the process of killing animals doesn't exclude working towards reducing the number of deaths. If the GP said we will never stop eating meat I would agree. But saying we can't even reduce it is a bit extreme - we successfully reduced many other things (without banning them, just by coercing people - for example cigarettes).
- sahila 2y agoWhen speaking of ethics, how do you measure the ethics of causing pain vs killing? I'd say even a 1% reduction in consumption (killing) is better than whatever pain reduction. I guess the point is you and others feel so strongly about ways to reduce suffering but couldn't care less about life.
- emptiestplace 2y agoI am fundamentally opposed to all of this nonsense, but I don't think maceration would cause any pain - it's pretty fast. This feels like a distraction from the real suffering we see in industrial farming. While the culling of male chicks gets a lot of attention because they're babies and that triggers an emotional response, there are much bigger issues in terms of actual suffering endured - like the prolonged confinement of laying hens and other factory farming practices. The new embryo identification technology is an improvement, but I'm concerned that framing it as a 'humane solution' will just serve as moral licensing for consumers to feel better about continuing to support an inherently unethical system.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoIs there any reason not to believe that humans are so stupid and amoral that they would never support a complete overhaul of the food system which eliminates suffering in one go? Even the moral leader Noam Chomsky has publicly stated that he just doesn't care enough about animal suffering to think about it. Probably the best animals are going to get are ad hoc reductions to their suffering which are aligned with decreased economic costs, or which target niche markets like vegans.
- m3047 2y agoI don't know for a fact how the machine does it based on feather shading, but I do know for a fact that there is a thing about chickens: sex linking in hybrids. When you hybridize certain pairs of breeds (e.g. reds and barred rocks) the hybrid chicks show different feather coloring at the time they hatch. Hybridization can also produce offspring which are for instance more productive egg layers. Being hybrids, they don't breed true. Not all hybrids have the same consistent sex-linked characteristics.
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoThere goes jobs for the graduates of the Zen Nippon School of Chick Sexing https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/chicken-sexers-in-japan-lament-the-decline-of-an-industry-idUSTRE67U0S5/ https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/chicken-sexers-in-...
- AznHisoka 2y agoIf they kill this much chicks, why are people who choose to be vegetarian for moral/religious reasons OK with eating eggs?
- poincaredisk 2y agoThis is a false assumption - many vegetarians aren't. In particular vegans are a subgroup of vegetarians that is not ok with anything animal-based precisely for the reasons you mention.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoNot a vege myself but I don’t know many vegetarians that consume eggs. In my head I think vegan+dairy, but that’s probably because I’m a young person and veganism has popular ~most of my life.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- doublerabbit 2y agoVegetarian. I consume eggs however I ensure they are ethnically sourced from organic, free range and roam freely farms; like my local. As soon as it has a formed element of biological life to it, then no. I don't eat fish neither as it was alive. Honey, milk I'm fine with it's a byproduct if sourced ethically. Unless I know the source, I won't eat it. The problem isn't eating meat, the problem is the inhumanity caused by producing meat. We produce so much meat that we are slaughtering animals for the sake of rather than. Meat being of quality. Having 12 McD chicken nuggets on the drive home is whats wrong. Not cooking steak from a butcher to have with wine for dinner.
- emptiestplace 2y agoNone of this matters because it is not even remotely feasible for 8 billion people to ethically source animal products.
- neom 2y agoThis article lead me down a rabbit hole, and I got into reading about Hy-Line - the way they describe their product lines are frankly hilarious: https://www.hyline.com/varieties https://www.hyline.com/varieties "Hy-Line Brown Prolific Producer, Rich Brown Eggs, Hardy Layer"
- belorn 2y agoThis technology has existed for quite a while now, I think well over 10 years. Talking to farmers, they are also well aware of it, but like tangential technology within dairy farming, the main reason they aren't using it is costs. Any added costs would have to be added to the price. Where I live, the highest standard (in term of animal welfare) eggs costs around 40 cent per egg. The lowest standard cost around 10 cent, which is also generally the most sold type of egg. Getting this kind of technology widespread would either mean regulation + tariffs or getting it cheap enough that only cultivating eggs with female chicks in them becomes a cost saving technique.
- cbau 2y agoFor anyone who hasn't been to the grocery store recently, a rotisserie chicken can be had for about $8. That was wild to me when I stopped to think about it for a second: a chicken born and raised to adulthood, slaughtered, and brought to my local market all for under $8.
- hollerith 2y agoOpens up the intriguing possibility of chickens' buying their own freedom
- theoreticalmal 2y agoThey literally work for chicken feed, but with enough time I guess it’d be possible!
- jjeaff 2y agoOr still $4.99 at Costco, nationwide.
- isubkhankulov 2y agoThe rotisserie chicken is a loss leader. Costco has publicly said they are happy to “lose” $30-40M a year on them because it drives people to the store and they make the rest up in higher margin products.