Carrefour distributor and the Loué brand announced on Monday a partnership to produce and sell chicken eggs while avoiding the slaughter of male chicks. The two partners would be based on a new technique for determining the sex in the bud.
This technique uses spectrophotometry, where a camera differentiates the sex inside the egg by detecting the color of the first feathers of the embryos. This makes it possible to select laying hens before they hatch and to avoid the elimination of male chicks.
Carrefour, the first distributor to implement a technology to end the elimination of male chicks.https: //t.co/Zh1EzKDgrc
- Carrefour (@GroupeCarrefour) February 10, 2020A (very) slightly rising price
By May 1, 30,000 hens will have benefited from this technology, ultimately producing an annual production of 7 million eggs, Carrefour said in a press release. A box of six “Carrefour Quality Line” eggs (label from which Loué eggs benefit) is currently sold for 1.78 euros. On May 1, the price will drop to 1.89 euros, or less than two additional cents per egg, according to Carrefour.
German technology was used for the first time in France in early December 2019 in a hatchery of the German group AAT. At the beginning of January, the Ministers of Agriculture of the two countries affirmed their will to put an end "by the end of 2021" to the crushing of male chicks thanks to the sharing of scientific knowledge and to the "implementation of alternative methods".
In many laying hen farms, the chicks hatch in hatcheries, whose owners then sell the future laying hens to breeders. But the male chicks are immediately killed, the industry judging that it is not profitable to feed them. Each year, nearly 50 million chicks are shredded at birth in France.
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