Germany should become the first country to ban the mass slaughter of male chicks in the poultry industry, the government said after approving a bill that puts an end to the controversial practice.
The measure approved by the cabinet envisages a ban on the mass slaughter of chickens from 2022, “a significant step towards animal welfare,” Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner said in a statement on Wednesday.
In many poultry companies, male chicks are separated from females soon after hatching and ground or gassed, as they do not produce eggs and generate less meat.
Tens of millions of males are sacrificed in Germany every year.
Animal welfare activists have long campaigned to end the practice, but farmers complain that there is no practical, accessible and cruelty-free alternative.
But methods for determining the sex of chicks before hatching are available to farmers, according to the government.
One technique, developed by a German company, involves using a laser to make a small hole to extract the liquid from a fertilized egg, before testing it for the presence of a female hormone.
“We invested millions of euros in alternatives, bringing animal welfare and economic efficiency together on German soil,” said Klöckner.
Saying that Germany would be “the first in the world” to do so, Klöckner said the country wanted to “set the pace and be a model” for other nations.
Starting in 2024, the bill will also require poultry farmers to use methods that work at an earlier stage of the incubation process, avoiding the pain of embryos that have not hatched.
European advocacy group Foodwatch has criticized the move, saying it has not gone far enough in an industry that also causes suffering for animals in other ways.
“If only the cruel practice of killing chicks in Germany ends, that will not change anything about the unbearable suffering of laying hens,” said Martin Rücker, executive director of Foodwatch.
The German Poultry Association said the plans were only a “partial solution to the problem”, claiming that they would also lead to “immense competitive disadvantages” for German poultry farmers.
The association said it welcomed the phasing out of chick slaughter, but saw “serious shortcomings” in the bill, including that it would not apply anywhere else in Europe.
The legislation must be approved by the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament.
Germany and France pledged in January 2020 to work together to end the chilling practice by the end of 2021.
French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume also pledged to ban the practice in France from the end of 2021.
Switzerland banned the grinding of live chicks last year, but still allows them to be gassed.
In June 2019, a German court ruled that the massacre could continue until a method was found to determine the sex of an embryo in the egg.
A 2009 EU directive authorizes shredding, as long as it causes the “immediate” death of chicks under 72 hours of age.