IN-OVO-SEXING TECHNOLOGY & GENE-EDITED HEN : A New Technology that could prevent the mass cull of Billions of male chicks
Amid the recent, growing opposition to tightly caged hens, another practice in the poultry industry has drawn less notice: All male chicks born at egg farm hatcheries are slaughtered the day they hatch. This is typically done by shredding them alive, in what amounts to a blender.
This mass culling of billions of newborn chicks each year has upset not only animal welfare groups, but the egg industry itself has recognized a need to end the process. And that has fueled a quiet international race to develop technology to determine the gender of a chicken egg before it hatches, known as in-ovo sexing.
Male chicks are “macerated,” as the egg industry calls the slaughter, because according to the hard math of modern-day poultry farming, the males are useless: They cannot grow up to lay eggs, and they’re not the fast-growing breeds that are sold as meat.
A staggering 6.5 billion chicks are killed worldwide every year. These are generally male chicks that are of no economic value. In Ovo has developed technology that can quickly determine the sex of a chick, to ensure that only female chicks are hatched. The first 150,000 chicks have now hatched in this animal-friendly process.
For years, the egg industry has sought a holy grail solution to a vexing problem: what to do with male chicks. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) estimates there are more than 6 billion commercial laying hens worldwide, all of which (of course) are female. But roughly as many males are born as hens—and they’re considered useless, since they can’t lay eggs.
What to do with several billion baby roosters?
The standard industry solution, at least for now, has been to cull them en masse. If you’ve never heard of “chick culling,” it’s exactly what it sounds like: new male chicks are typically euthanized within hours of their birth. Some hatcheries suffocate their day-old males with carbon dioxide, a process that takes so long most consider it impractical and inhumane. But more commonly, chicks are carried by conveyor belt into an industrial grinder–a process called “maceration.” It’s not pretty, but animal welfare experts approve. Death, supposedly, is instantaneous.
The industry knows it’s bad optics.
Everyone hates chick culling. For the hatcheries that supply farmers with new hens, it’s a dirty, troubling job that’s also wasteful and inefficient. Ethics aside, it means destroying creatures they’ve spent resources to fertilize, incubate, and hatch. It means hiring “sexers,” who typically check gender by hand, squeezing feces from new chick’s anal cavity to check for a bump-shaped gland. (A professional sexer sorts an estimated 800 to 1200 chicks an hour.) And it means generating tons of fluffy waste, which is typically hauled off to the landfill on the hatchery’s dime. The industry knows it’s bad optics, too. Animal welfare experts have railed against chick culling for years, and though the public hasn’t really caught on, egg producers know it’s a serious vulnerability. At a time when consumer concern about the welfare of animals raised for food is higher than ever, their next PR disaster is only a viral video away.
Here’s where things could get interesting: in May, Dutch biotech startup In Ovo announced a new method of determining a chick’s gender before it hatches. Researchers bore a hole in the top of the shell with a tiny needle, then use mass spectrometry to test for a gender-linked chemical marker that, according to co-founder Wouter Bruins, helps determine sex with 95% accuracy. This method allows producers to abort the male embryos on day nine of incubation (which, according to one 2013 study, is before pain perception develops), making the culling of live chicks unnecessary.
No one of any scale at all has a solution to male chicks other than in-ovo sexing.
Determining a chick’s sex in-shell, a process known as “in-ovo sexing,” is not a brand new idea. Others have tried before, and others are trying now. What is new is the speed and effectiveness of In Ovo’s process. In 2010, The Economist reported on an American company that had achieved results within two hours. It was a promising start, but took far too long to be commercially viable. Bruins says In Ovo gets results in about four seconds, and he thinks his researchers can shave it down to one.
But In Ovo has a ways to go before hatcheries are actually using its technology. Right now, it’s still testing eggs by hand in the lab. For the past two years, the company has been working with Sanovo Technology Group, a Danish machine manufacturer, to develop equipment that can integrate with existing hatchery assembly lines.
“In total we need about a year to interface it all, to actually get the first sorting device ready to put in a hatchery,” Bruins says. “But then it will take about a half year longer to get all the problems out, because we’ll probably run into a lot of problems.”
Still, if Bruins is right, that means we’re less than two years away from a technology with the power to upend the egg industry. Last month, in a sign that a paradigm shift is imminent, United Egg Producers—a farmer cooperative that produces 95% of the eggs in the United States—promised to eliminate chick culling from its supply chain by 2020, or “as soon as is commercially available and economically feasible.”
“There has essentially been a proof of concept for the past two years but never been able to be scaled up for millions and millions of eggs,” says David Coman-Hindy, executive director of the Humane League, an animal welfare group which helped broker the UEP agreement. “But in the last few months, especially, we’ve really seen the development of this tech accelerate. It’s clear that it will be commercially viable and these massive hatcheries will be able to roll it out.”
By now you might be wondering if all this is really necessary. Do we really need cutting-edge technology to do this? Surely there’s some way to find a market for these male chicks. Could these birds really be so worthless that it’s better they not be born?
In Ovo has developed a machine—Ella—that quickly determines the sex of an egg. This gives hatcheries the option to only hatch females, which is a considerable improvement in terms of both animal welfare and sustainability. It is In Ovo’s mission to roll this technology out worldwide and thus end the cull of male chicks. The company signed a covenant in 2014 with the Central Organization for Hatching Eggs and Chicks, Leiden University, Animal Protection and the government, and on this basis received funding to further develop its technology. The successful hatching of the first 150,000 chicks is the result of years of research and a crucial milestone in solving the problem.
Ella, where bio and tech meet
Ella tests eggs early in the incubation process, works on brown and white eggs, and is quick and accurate. The technology was only possible thanks to a combination of technological breakthroughs. In Ovo found a new biomarker for sex in collaboration with Leiden University. And with the company Demcon it developed an automatic sampling method that can extract a minuscule sample from an egg, and was the first to use the world’s fastest mass-spectrometer, the Sciex Echo MS, outside the lab. The result is the rapid, automated sexing of eggs on day nine of the incubation process, which means Ella can seamlessly be added to the existing process at commercial hatcheries.
The culling of male chicks is a problem that affects the poultry sector, consumers, policymakers, NGOs and retailers. In Ovo received vital input and help from various stakeholders. It is pleased that Het Anker hatchery has implemented the technology, and that egg suppliers Kwetters, Interovo Egg Group en Gebr. Van Beek committed at an early stage to using the chicks. This group of partners is unique and makes it possible to scale up the technology.
In Ovo is growing fast and is ready to make more of an impact. To speed up the adoption of the technology, shareholders VisVires New Protein and Evonik Venture Capital have made a new investment of several million euros. One hundred and fifty thousand chicks is just the beginning. With the current Ella system, a hatchery will be able to hatch a million female chicks per year without culling day-old male chicks. To meet the high demand, the technology is constantly being improved. Within a few months a new Ella machine will be introduced with a capacity of five million hens per year, and the international roll out of this technology will begin.
By the end of 2026, the culling of male chicks will also be stopped in Italy. The news, already in force in France and Germany, it was definitively approved in the Chamber of Deputies on 2.8.22, in the 2021 European delegation law.
Consumers attentive to animal welfare can also choose to buy eggs right now cruelty free, that is, obtained without resorting to this practice. And thus stimulate the poultry sector to do sooner than what is prescribed by the Italian legislator.
Culling of male chicks, a practice to be abandoned
The breeders of laying hens select the breed in view of the maximum productivity of the eggs. They regard male chicks as a waste, as the costs of their breeding would barely cover the poor yield of poultry meat of that breed.
Consequently, in the poultry chains that practice this genetic selection, the male chicks are slaughtered (so-called sexation) immediately after the eggs hatch. A practice that the long-awaited EU Animal Welfare Regulation should ban.
The culling of male chicks just born has impressive numbers. 25-40 million in Italy and 260-330 million in the EU each year, according to the association’s estimates animal equality.
The petition against the sexation launched in 2020 by animal equality – active in Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and India – has thus collected, in the Bel Paese alone, over 100 signatures.
Ovoseessage
The alternatives to sexation there are essentially two, use laying hens of breeds that are also compatible with the breeding of broilers (broilers) or rely on ovosexage.
Technology developed by the German-Dutch company Respeggt, for example, it allows you to:
– take a trace of liquid from the egg, with a thin probe,
– distinguish the gender in the embryonic stage,
– plug the tiny hole with beeswax
– use the egg that could generate a male chick for animal feed.
Coop Italy – always at the forefront in the protection of animal welfare, from the ban on eggs from caged hens to the elimination of antibiotics – has also led the way in ovosexage. As early as 2019, it has agreed with its egg suppliers to avoid culling male chicks.
Other operators they then landed on the respectful eggs of the male chicks (chick cull free), such as Le Naturelle (unfortunately only in non-organic eggs) and from June 2022 the organic eggs of The consumer’s brand.
Animal welfare, nothing better than organic eggs. Without sexation
Organic eggs, it is useful to remember, it is the products of animal origin that offer the best conditions animal welfare. The second breeding organic method it is in fact the only one to guarantee more space available to each animal, as well as organic feed therefore free of pesticide and GMO residues.
Israeli researchers say they have developed gene-edited hens that lay eggs from which only female chicks hatch.
The breakthrough could prevent the slaughter of billions of male chickens each year, which are culled because they don’t lay eggs.
The female chicks, and the eggs they lay when they mature, have no trace of the original genetic alteration
Animal welfare group, Compassion in World Farming, has backed the research.
Dr Yuval Cinnamon from the Volcani institute near Tel Aviv, who is the project’s chief scientist, told BBC News that the development of what he calls the ”Golda hen” will have a huge impact on animal welfare in the poultry industry.
“I am very happy that we have developed a system that I think can truly revolutionise the industry, first of all for the benefit of the chickens but also for all of us, because this is an issue that affects every person on the planet,” he said.
The scientists have gene edited DNA into the Golda hens that can stop the development of any male embryos in eggs that they lay. The DNA is activated when the eggs are exposed to blue light for several hours.
Female chick embryos are unaffected by the blue light and develop normally. The chicks have no additional genetic material inside them nor do the eggs they lay, according to Dr Cinnamon.
“Farmers will get the same chicks they get today and consumers will get exactly the same eggs they get today,” he said. “The only minor difference in the production process is that the eggs will be exposed to blue light.”
Dr Cinnamon’s team has not published their research because it is planning to license the technology through its spin out company, Huminn Poultry, so scientists independent of the research group have not been able to assess the claims.
But the Israeli team has worked in conjunction with the UK-based animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) whose staff have visited the firm and followed the research for three years. Its chief policy advisor Peter Stephenson said that the breakthrough could be a “really important development” for animal welfare.
“Normally I am very wary of using gene editing of farm animals. But this is an exceptional case and I, and my colleagues at CIWF are supportive of it,” he said.
”The next important step is to see whether the hen and the female chicks she produces, who will lay eggs for human consumption, can go through a commercial lifespan without any unexpected welfare issues arising.”
Male embryos inside the eggs have a genetic kill switch which activates when exposed to blue light
Legislation is currently passing through the UK Parliament that would allow limited gene editing for commercial farming in England. It’s thought once the bill is passed early next year, that regulations would be eased gradually, allowing the technology to be used only for plants to begin with.
Gene editing (GE) is perceived by the government as more publicly acceptable than the older technique of genetic modification (GM). GE normally involves controlling genes by removing DNA , whereas GM usually adds DNA, sometimes from another species.
CIWF estimates that around seven billion male chicks are slaughtered by the egg-producing industry each year shortly after they are born because they are of no commercial value. The process is also time consuming for firms, which have to sort males from females shortly after they hatch by hand.
The German government banned the mass killing of male chicks at the start of this year. And the French have similar proposals to start at the beginning of next year. Most other EU nations have expressed their concerns about the practice and many have called for EU-wide legislation. The UK government has yet to comment on its stance on the practice.
Compassion in World Farming says millions of male chicks are killed in the UK each year
Dr Enbal Ben-Tal Cohen, who led the research, told BBC News that the system is at an advanced stage of development and the team is working with breeders to refine the process.
“Through many years of research, there were numerous difficult challenges that we successfully overcame, and finally now when we have a viable solution, I hope that the industry will adopt it very soon,” he said.
Compiled & Shared by- Team, LITD (Livestock Institute of Training & Development)
Image-Courtesy-Google
Reference-On Request.
