Paris (AFP)
The distributor Carrefour and the brand Loué, owned by the poultry group LDC, announced Monday their partnership to produce and sell chicken eggs from a new technique for determining the sex in the egg, and thus avoid the slaughter of chicks. males.
This technique uses spectrophotometry, i.e. a camera differentiates sex in the bud, by detecting the color of the first feathers of the embryos. This makes it possible to select laying hens before hatching and thus avoid having to resort to the elimination of male chicks.
"This project was carried out in partnership with Les Fermiers de Loué, long-standing partners of the Carrefour Quality Line, and the German group AAT, a global hatching specialist," said the distributor in a press release.
By May 1, 30,000 hens will have benefited from this technology, ultimately leading to an annual production of 7 million eggs, says Carrefour, without specifying when.
While a box of six "Carrefour Quality Line" eggs is currently sold for 1.78 euros, the price of the box having benefited from this technology will be 1.94 euros from May 1, or less than three additional cents per egg, according to figures provided by the distributor.
The technology from Germany was used for the first time in France in early December 2019 in a hatchery subsidiary of the AAT group, according to Carrefour.
At the beginning of January, the French Ministers of Agriculture, Didier Guillaume, and German, Julia Klöckner, had affirmed their will to put an end "by the end of 2021" to the grinding of male chicks by promising to "share scientific knowledge" and 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.
© 2020 AFP