Animal protection group L214 released undercover footage taken at a hatchery in France, rocking the nation and pressing 36 members of the French parliament to petition Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll to move towards more humane standards for baby chicks.





A worker pours a crate of baby birds into a shredder.





The undercover video, which shows graphic footage of male chicks being ground up alive and suffocated in plastic bags, reveals the sickening secret the egg industry desperately tries to hide: the brutal slaughter of millions of baby male chicks.





Baby birds about to be suffocated in plastic bags.





Le Foll was so moved by the footage and the outrage among French lawmakers, he promised a government-funded project to support scientific efforts already underway in Germany, which would drastically reduce or even eliminate the violent slaughter of male chicks.





Video still of a pipe that pumps out the remains of baby chicks.





Mercy For Animals has documented the same appalling practices here in the United States. Because male chicks don’t lay eggs and chicks of the egg-laying breed won’t grow large enough to be viable for meat, the egg industry treats them as mere trash, brutally killing them while they’re still fully conscious.





Remains of the baby chicks covered in flies.





Watch MFA’s undercover footage from Hy-Line Hatchery in Iowa:









Sadly, not a single federal law protects birds during their entire lives on factory farms.



