(Picture: Getty Images)

Germany has just become the first country to outlaw the practice of ‘chick shredding’.

Every year millions of male chicks are ground up alive or suffocated by the commercial egg industry.

This is because male chicks don’t grow up into egg-laying chickens, and they’re not considered suitable to be slaughtered for meat.

Around half of all chicks born into the egg industry are male, and end up being ‘shredded’ right after hatching.


The practice is commonplace across both caged and free-range egg producers all over the world, and around 45million chicks are killed after birth in Germany alone.

(Picture: Getty Images)

But after pressure from animal rights activists, the German government teamed up with scientists to come up with an alternative.



From now on, new technology will be used to determine the sex of each fertilised egg before the chick inside develops.

All of the male-identified eggs will be removed from the hatchery, leaving only the female ones to hatch. The male eggs will be used for other products, instead of being destroyed.

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Activists hope the move could pave the way for other countries to enforce similar bans.

Shadow environment minister Kerry McCarthy told Metro.co.uk: ‘Many people don’t even realise chick shredding happens, but I am sure they would welcome the news that scientists in Germany have found a way to avoid it.

‘I am encouraged to hear that the German agriculture minister believes this could pave the way for the practice to end by 2017, and hope the UK government will look at whether we can follow suit.’

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And Peta director Mimi Bekhechi added: ‘The sisters of those male chicks will endure an equally hideous fate as long as people eat eggs. The way to help both male and female chicks is to make the ethical decision to stop eating their eggs and flesh altogether and to switch to plant-based foods.’

German agriculture minister Christian Schmidt said the new technology will be fully implemented in all German farms from the end of 2016.

The change will add no more than two cents to the cost of an egg.