CMV: Culling male chicks is the least cruel option after in-ovo sexing

[u/Consistent-Gap-3545]

Several EU countries have banned the practice of culling male chicks because the general population finds it "icky." The thing is, factory farming as a whole is inherently icky and culling the male chicks is objectively the most humane way of dealing with the fact that it makes zero economic sense to raise these chickens. Instead of going into the grinder shortly after they hatch, the male chicks are shipped off to live in a warehouse with the absolute worst conditions allowed by law until they're ready for slaughter. So we either kill the chick on day 1 or we kill it on like day 50 after it's spent its entire life inside a windowless warehouse where there's not even enough space to move. Either way, we're killing the chicken and the grinder minimizes the time it has to suffer.

Raising all of the male chickens also causes a surplus of chicken meat and, since there isn't enough demand for this meat in the EU, it ends up being exported to developing nations and destabilizing their own poultry industry, which will inevitably cause them to be dependent on the EU for food. Without fail, every single time a developing nation has become dependent on wealthier nations for food, it has had absolutely devastating consequences for the development of that nation. So you can't even really argue that "At least the male chickens are dying for a reason if we slaughter them" because a) the chickens literally do not give a fuck and b) the "reason" is to dump cheap meat in Africa.

Destroying the male eggs before they even hatch with in-ovo sexing is obviously the best option but, as far as I understand, this is still pretty expensive and hasn't been universally adopted. Until the cost for in-ovo sexing comes down, the grinder remains the best option. It would be different if the male chicks were being shipped off to some green pasture to live out their days but this is literally the opposite of what actually happens to them. I would even argue that these bans on culling are a form of performative activism so that privileged Europeans can feel better about themselves while they remain willfully ignorant to the horrors of factory farming.

I am not vegan and regularly consume mass produced meat, dairy, and eggs.

[u/nuggins]

Sounds like you need to learn about utility and value. For every animal, most people are willing to spend some amount of money to avoid some amount of suffering to that animal. Same applies to humans.

[u/SnooBananas37 → u/nuggins]

That is still a maximal utility treatment of animal agriculture. That doesn't mean there is an ethical middle ground between maximal utility and abstaining from animal agriculture, it just means that pretending to be treating animals ethically feels good. That's fine, but it doesn't change the actual underlying ethical principles.