Approximately 7 billion male chicks are killed globally each year in the egg industry because they cannot lay eggs, representing one of the largest-scale welfare problems with commercially viable alternatives now emerging.
Male chick culling is a welfare problem of extraordinary scale - billions of day-old animals killed because they are the wrong sex for the production system. The immediacy of death means individual suffering duration is short compared to other farming welfare problems, but the number of individuals affected is unmatched in any other context. In-ovo sexing eliminates the killing entirely by determining sex before chicks develop pain sensitivity. The technology is commercially viable, increasingly affordable, and already mandated in the most progressive regulatory environments. Consumer demand for in-ovo sexed eggs creates the market signal for adoption.