Good news for Easter: The new law for the protection of male chicks is apparently showing initial success.
"The new law will save around 40 million male chicks from death in Germany this year," said the President of the Central Association of the German Poultry Industry, Friedrich-Otto Ripke, to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Saturday).
Killing male chicks of laying hens has been banned in Germany since the beginning of the year.
Since January, the hatched chicks have been raised in Germany either as so-called brother cocks.
Otherwise they are sorted out by sex determination methods before they hatch, reports Ripke.
The association president, meanwhile, called for uniform European rules.
"We need a Europe-wide regulation, otherwise we will not get the desired broad ethical success," Ripke told the Funke newspapers.
In addition, the German law allows "too many circumstances of circumvention".
"For example, male chicks could be driven across the borders and killed there," reported Ripke.
Because in Poland, Holland, Italy or France, killing chicks is still allowed.
"It is also legal to buy and import pullets from abroad whose male siblings are still killed there after hatching." German breeders would have a competitive disadvantage in a European comparison.