The Truth About Chick Culling: One of the Egg Industry's Hidden Secrets

For decades, and especially in the last several years, shoppers have spoken out against the atrocities of the egg industry, which condemns egg-laying hens to tiny cages as a matter of standard practice.

But the plight of hens is only one facet of the egg industry's cruelty. Every year, up to 300 million male chicks, just hours old, are killed in the United States—and as many as seven billion chicks globally. In the US, that adds up to 10 chicks shredded every second—and it's because males can't lay eggs.

In the eyes of corporations, male chicks are worth more dead than alive.

What is chick culling?

Chick culling is both a terrible secret and a brutal reality. As David Coman-Hidy, former President of The Humane League (THL), told Vox, “It’s one of the most grotesque corners of factory farming.”

Chick culling is a form of animal slaughter that targets so-called “surplus” animals—in this case, newborn chickens classified as male at birth. Professional chicken sexers, trained to distinguish the sex of hatchlings at commercial hatcheries, quickly separate the “pullets” (female chicks) from the “cockerels” (male chicks). While the pullets will go on to lay eggs, the cockerels—unwanted and expendable—are promptly sent to their deaths.

Although the culling of chicks is a widespread practice across the egg industry, it has tended to fly under the radar of popular awareness. Earlier this year, journalist Tove K. Danovich wrote for Vox: “For all its horribleness, culling has received surprisingly little public attention. When United Egg Producers (UEP) announced in 2016 they were going to stop the practice, consumers were shocked to hear that the practice existed at all.”

UEP represents companies that collectively produce 90% of all eggs laid in the US—so its decision to stop chick culling, a commitment that came on the heels of lengthy negotiations with THL, was nothing short of historic. Unfortunately, UEP has not yet made good on its promise to end chick culling by 2020. In a statement from March 2021, UEP says it would provide “up to $6 million to researchers developing technologies that can accurately and quickly determine the sex of layer chick eggs before they hatch.”

Technological solutions like “in-ovo sexing,” which identify the sexes of chicks yet to be born, could spare hundreds of millions of birds from hatching to their immediate deaths. For years, the technology just wasn’t there yet. While researchers in Europe had made significant strides with in-ovo sexing, their methods couldn’t accommodate the massive scale of industrial egg production in the US. However, as of 2024, in-ovo sexing technology is becoming available in the US. Kipster, a commercial egg producer, announced its plans to adopt a new in-ovo sexing technology as an alternative to culling male chicks in the US.

According to Giovana Vieira, Senior Animal Welfare Scientist at The Humane League, "Each year, at just one day old, billions of male chicks are killed without a second thought—deemed a 'by-product' by the egg industry. Years ago, The Humane League was instrumental in encouraging United Egg Producers to ban this practice that had become the standard in all commercial egg production. With alternative methods available, we’re eager to see male chick culling come to an end once and for all. We encourage all egg producers to adopt in-ovo sexing technologies like Kipster has to put a stop to this practice."

Why aren’t male chicks suitable for meat?

It’s a matter of breeding. Male chicks born into the egg industry belong to a specific breed of chicken that’s been selectively bred to produce abnormally high quantities of eggs. In other words, these chicks have been bred to lay as many eggs as physically possible. Unlike chickens raised for meat, also known as “broilers,” “fryers,” or “roasters,” they haven’t been bred to grow big at an explosively fast rate. These “broiler” chickens live six to seven weeks beyond hatching, and in that short time, they grow extremely large, often succumbing to the weight of their own bodies. Chickens raised for laying eggs, by contrast, are much leaner. So the male chicks can't lay eggs—and they can’t be sold for meat. Useless to the industry that hatched them, they’re slaughtered just days after they’re born.

How are chicks culled?

In order to cull hundreds of millions of baby chickens each year, the egg industry uses several methods of slaughter. These methods are considered acceptable standard practices, despite their brutality:

• Suffocation: trapped inside plastic bags, the chicks are left to gasp for air—a fate many would consider unimaginable for newborn kittens or puppies.
• Electrocution: subjected to electric currents, the tiny chicks are shocked to death.
• Cervical dislocation: in the hands of factory workers, the baby chicks are decapitated one at a time, their delicate necks stretched to breaking.
• Gassing: subjected to high quantities of carbon dioxide, a gas extremely painful to birds, the newborn chicks feel their lungs burn until they lose consciousness and die.
• Maceration: tossed onto conveyor belts, the innocent chicks fall into a grinder, which shreds the baby birds alive with sharp metal blades.

In the US, most chicks are killed by maceration, gassing, or suffocation. Older chicks, raised for the meat industry, tend to be culled using methods like cervical dislocation.

Where is chick culling illegal?

Around the world, as more and more people have learned about chick culling—countries have started taking steps to end it. France has promised to end chick culling by the end of 2021. Germany banned the practice at the start of 2022. Both France and Germany, along with the Netherlands and several other European countries, have already seen sales of no-cull eggs in grocery stores.

Other countries, including the US, are beginning to follow.

How to stop chick culling and what you can do

Produced through generations of animal suffering, eggs are hardly cruelty-free. Hens are forced to lay eggs in crowded cages until, exhausted and depleted, they can’t go on any longer. Newborn chicks face the same fate—or worse, if they’re male.

In-ovo sexing methods are promising, and these technologies are beginning to be adopted by US chick hatcheries.

We can also reduce the suffering of egg-laying hens by demanding that corporations go cage-free. Despite making promises to go cage-free by 2020, companies like Wendy’s, Wawa, and Einstein Bros. Bagels are still keeping their chickens confined and in constant distress to serve their bottom lines. Help us hold these companies to their cage-free commitments!

Together, we can create real change for these animals, who deserve so much better.