Animals
farmed Farming
World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin
Scientists
can now quickly determine a chick’s gender before it hatches,
potentially ending the need to cull billions of male chicks worldwide
Hatch: When a baby bird, insect, or other animal hatches,
or when it is hatched, it comes out of its egg by breaking the shell.
Cull: To cull animals means to kill the weaker animals in a group in order
to reduce their numbers.
Billion: A billion is a thousand million: 1.000.000.000. Note
is different to Spanish meaning: one million of millions. But, in general, if
you talk about billions of people or things, you mean that there is a very
large number of them but you do not know or do not want to say exactly how
many.
Worldwide: In all the world
Respeggt eggs are now on the shelves of certain Berlin supermarkets, with a wider rollout planned in January. Photograph: SELEGGT
Josie Le
Blond
Sat 22 Dec
2018 05.00 GMT
The world’s first ever no-kill eggs
are now on sale in Berlin after German scientists found an easy way to
determine a chick’s gender before it hatches, in a breakthrough
that could put an end to the annual live shredding of billions
of male chicks worldwide.
Breakthrough: Discovery, innovation
Shred: If you shred something such as food or paper, you cut it or tear it into
very small, narrow pieces.
The patented “Seleggt” process can
determine the sex of a chick just nine days after an egg has been fertilised.
Male eggs are processed into animal feed, leaving only female chicks to hatch
at the end of a 21-day incubation period.
“If you can determine the sex of a
hatching egg you can entirely dispense with the culling of live male chicks,”
said Seleggt managing director Dr Ludger Breloh, who spearheaded the four-year
programme by German supermarket Rewe Group to make its own-brand eggs more
sustainable.
“It’s not about winning or losing,”
he added of the worldwide race to find a marketable solution. “We all have the
same goal, which is to end the culling of chicks in the supply chain. Of
course, there’s competition, but it’s positive in that it keeps us all focused
on that goal.”
An estimated 4-6 billion male chicks
are slaughtered globally every year because they
serve no economic purpose. Some are suffocated, others are fed
alive into grinding or shredding
machines to be processed into reptile food.
Slaughter [ slɔ:təʳ ]: If large numbers of people or
animals are slaughtered, they are killed in a way that is cruel or unnecessary.
Feed: If you feed something into a container or piece of equipment, you put
it into it.
Grind: If you
grind a substance such as corn, you crush it between two hard surfaces or with
a machine until it becomes a fine powder.
Shred: If you
shred something such as food or paper, you cut it or tear it into very small,
narrow pieces.
The culling is a messy solution to a
thorny problem of modern poultry
farming. Humans have bred chickens for one of two purposes: to produce eggs, or
meat. Yet half of all the animals bred for this purpose are considered useless.
Male chicks lay no eggs and don’t grow fast enough to justify the cost of
feeding them up for meat. So, they are simply destroyed.
Thorny problem: If you describe a problem as thorny, you mean that it is very
complicated and difficult to solve, and that people are often unwilling to
discuss it.
Poultry:
You can
refer to chickens, ducks, and other birds that are kept for their eggs and meat
as poultry.
Chick culling has become
increasingly controversial. In 2015, a video went viral of an Israeli animal
rights activist shutting down a chick shredding machine and challenging a police
officer to turn it back on. Consumer kickback has prompted
a global race to develop a more humane solution.
Kickback: A strong reaction
Breloh said his first breakthrough
came when he approached scientists at the University of Leipzig where Prof
Almuth Einspanier had developed a chemical marker – similar to a pregnancy test
– that could detect a hormone present in high quantities in female eggs. Mixed
with fluid from fertilised eggs at nine days, the marker changes blue for a
male and white for a female, with a 98.5% accuracy rate.
Next Breloh had to find a way of
making the test easy for everyday use in hatcheries. He approached Dutch
technology company HatchTech and asked them to make an automated machine to
conduct Einspanier’s test from beginning to end.
It had to be easy to use, scalable,
flexible, precise, hygienic and above all, fast – the eggs couldn’t be out of
the incubator for more than two hours. The biggest problem was how to extract
test fluid quickly from the egg without damaging it. A needle would work, but
it was invasive and also brought additional hygienic problems.
Instead, a laser beam
burns a 0.3mm-wide hole in the shell. Then, air pressure is applied to the
shell exterior, pushing a drop of fluid out of the hole. The process takes one
second per egg and enables fluid to be collected from eggs without touching
them.
Laser beam: A line of laser sent in a particular direction.
“It worked absolutely faultlessly,”
said Breloh of the test phase. “Today, female hens
are laying eggs in farms in Germany that have been bred without killing any
male chicks.”
Hen: A hen is a female chicken. The female of any bird can be referred to
as a hen.
Earlier this year Seleggt hatched
the first brood of hens bred
using the method. Their eggs – the first to be sold from hens reared without
killing male chicks - hit supermarket shelves in Berlin in November, bearing
the seal “respeggt”.
Brood: A brood is a group of baby birds that were born at the same time to
the same mother.
Breed: When animals breed, they have babies.
Rewe Group plan to roll out the eggs
across German stores next year, while Seleggt plans to install the technology
in independent hatcheries from 2020. Seleggt will require supermarkets to pay a
few extra cents on every box of eggs sold with their “respeggt” seal.
Eventually, the group hopes to expand the model across Europe.
“With the market readiness of [this] process, Germany is a pioneer,” said
German minister of food and agriculture, Julia Klöckner, whose ministry funded
the project. “Once the process is made available to all and the hatcheries have
implemented [it], there will be no reason and no justification for chick
culling.”
Readiness: If someone is very willing to do something, you can talk about their
readiness to do it. The state of being ready or prepared, as for use or action
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