Male chicks:torture risks continuing

The decree that prohibits the slaughter of male chicks in the egg industry by December 2026 has been approved and will allow the implementation of the law that Parliament voted for, taking a historic step for animal rights in Italy.

After a year of waiting the decree has finally arrived:the chicks are safe, or almost.The same decree, however, also includes some exceptions that risk compromising the ban and to facilitate the industry in continuing to kill chicks for a purely economic return.

Considered real production waste by the egg industry, every year in Italy about 40 million male chicks they are killed by shredding or suffocation, painful practices that these animals undergo within the first 24 hours of life.To better understand what fate could now befall the chicks, we need to unpack the decree.

On the one hand, the Meloni government he prohibited killing of male chicks through shredding, on the other hand the decree for the adaptation of national legislation to the provisions of EC Regulation n.1099/2009 "On the protection of animals during slaughter" still admits conditions in which the killing of newborn chicks it can happen completely legal.

In particular, the decree allows for broad exceptions to the ban on felling selective in the case of sexing errors, blockage or malfunction of the egg sexing machines, due to the need for depopulation, for the need to Health public and in case of culling of chicks for scientific purposes.As regards the male chicks born, the decree establishes the possibility that they be entrusted to associations that have the necessary requirements, but also the alternative of using them for animal feed.

To ensure that the important ban on culling established by the Government is effective, the decree then provides for the implementation and promotion of egg testing technologies, capable of detecting the sex of the embryo and avoid their killing by maceration.

However, it is foreseen that egg testing can take place up to the fourteenth day of incubation of the egg, double what is indicated by Animal Equality and other animal protection organizations on the basis of the most authoritative research shared by the scientific community, which indicate 14 days as an excessive period of time for recognizing the sex of the chick, which could therefore feel pain.

What does it take to save male chicks

Faced with these conditions, how Animal Equality we can only take the animals' defense and ask politics once again not to take shortcuts, but to dedicate onself really to stop the suffering that these puppies are forced to endure every day.With CIWF Italia, Being Animals, Animal Law Italy And WORK we ask deputies and senators of the competent commissions to intervene in support of animals including among the opinions that will provide the draft decree proposed by the Government are the following conditions:

• that they are eliminate additional exemptions compared to those already foreseen by the European provisions, which could have a negative effect on the effects originally intended by Parliament by still providing for the cruel killing of the chicks in the event that it was not possible to detect the sex in good time;
• whatever it is sexing obligation extended for all types of eggs through the choice of adequate technologies, given that at the moment it would in fact only be applied to eggs coming from brown hens, a further exception that limits the scope of the law;
• whatever it is the maximum limit of the seventh day for sexing is now foreseen, so that it can be implemented as soon as the technologies on the market are adequate and available on a large scale.Sexing, in fact, is considered completely safe and painless on a scientific level until the seventh day of incubation of the egg, but the government has indicated that this must take place by the fourteenth day for simple economic reasons.

With these conditions the application of the law to stop the carnage of male chicks will be more complete and fair.Only in this way can chicks be protected by the industry that exploits the animals for food purposes and treats them as goods.In the meantime, each of us can do our part by stopping consuming egg and therefore to feed the industry that exploits hens and chicks.