All animals should be treated with kindness and respect, including those in our food system, but that is often not the case, especially when the food industry views certain animals as a byproduct. We are shining a light on — and working to end — the routine and inhumane killing of male chicks in the egg industry.
The Problem: Routine Discarding of Baby Chicks
To provide the eggs Americans eat each year, the egg industry must continuously hatch and raise new chicks. Over 600 million chicks are hatched every year in the U.S. egg industry: half are female and half are male. The female chicks become the egg-laying hens destined for supermarket shelves. But this is only half the story; the other 300 million newly hatched chicks are male and will never lay eggs. As a result, they are killed either by being ground up alive or gassed at hatcheries.
Author Sy Montgomery wrote about this practice in The New York Times in April 2025: “Unlike many baby mammals and songbirds, which are born blind, naked and helpless, newborn chicks are capable little creatures. Within hours of hatching, they are standing, running and successfully finding food. When they are thrown into the grinder or gasser at 1-day old, these male chicks are alert and aware.”
This practice is usually referred to by the industry as male chick culling, even though culling is usually a term reserved for injured or sick animals, and these are perfectly healthy young chickens.
The Solution: Hatching Only Female Chicks
The practice of killing male chicks, or male chick culling, is largely unknown to the general public. We’re working to change this and share a solution that allows the egg industry to avoid this practice by adopting new, more humane hatching technology.
This technology is called in-ovo sexing, and it identifies which chicken embryos are male and which are female while they are still in the egg during the incubation process. Once the sex is identified in the early stages of the embryo’s development, the hatchery can then choose to only continue incubating the females.
The ASPCA has been working with egg companies to bring these more humanely hatched eggs to market, and we expect them to reach U.S. supermarket shelves in the summer of 2025.
Our Work
In addition to raising public awareness about the problem of male chick culling, we also work collaboratively with key stakeholders in the egg industry. These include:
- Egg farmers and brands interested in supplying their customers with these better-hatched eggs by using early-stage chick identification to eliminate the needless suffering of male chicks. Learn more about the egg brands that have already committed to this important work.
- Supermarkets interested in offering shoppers eggs from more humane supply chains, whether for their own store-branded eggs or by stocking brands that ban this practice.
- Hatcheries keen to connect with in-ovo sexing technology companies that are accurate, effective and market ready.
- Certification programs developing new standards to verify the use of this technology.
What You Can Do
- Join our Factory Farming Task Force! You’ll receive updates on how you can find these more humane eggs once they’re in stores, plus other ways you can help us build a kinder and more sustainable food system.
- Eat plant-based eggs and use plant-based ingredients as a substitute for eggs in your recipes as another way to help minimize harm to animals.
- If you work in the egg industry and would like to learn more about the ASPCA’s work and resources on in-ovo sexing, please reach out to [email protected].
Frequently Asked Questions
As chicken farming has become more industrialized over the past five decades, two separate industries have emerged: one raising chickens for meat and the other raising chickens for eggs. Chickens raised for meat, also called broiler chickens, have been bred for traits like rapid weight gain and disproportionately large breast size, which are scientifically proven to contribute to poor health and welfare outcomes in the most commonly used broiler chicken breeds. Chickens raised for eggs, also called layers, have been bred for a female trait only — to lay a lot of eggs — and tend to be very lean in comparison. Thus, male chicks in the egg industry cannot gain enough weight fast enough to be deemed profitable for the broiler chicken industry, so they have been viewed as a valueless byproduct and are destroyed after they hatch.
Certified Humane® has developed new, optional Approved Hatchery standards [PDF] to verify that egg producers are ordering from compliant hatcheries, and we will continue to provide updates as certification programs recognized by our Shop With Your Heart program incorporate this new practice.
Since these eggs are not yet on the market, their prices are not yet set. In Europe, where this technology is common, the price increase is approximately 1 cent per egg or 12 cents per dozen. Research published by the think tank Innovate Animal Ag in 2024 found that 71% of American egg buyers were willing to pay more for more humanely hatched eggs, eliminating the cruel practice of killing day-old chicks. In fact, more than half of American egg shoppers were willing to spend 60 cents or more per dozen eggs if they knew they were produced without the mass killing of male chicks. As more — and hopefully all — hatcheries and egg companies implement this technology, we expect any price difference will become negligible.
The current bird flu crisis worsens the issue of male chick culling. As bird flu hits egg-laying flocks and hundreds of millions of birds are killed as a result, there will need to be an effort to repopulate flocks, which will require more baby chicks. So, it's more urgent than ever that the industry adopts this technology to spare millions of male chicks from suffering.
Both white and brown eggs can be sexed depending on the technology used. Brown eggs will be available first in the U.S. beginning in the summer 2025.
Currently, only two large hatcheries in the U.S. have purchased in-ovo sexing technology. The ASPCA is working to engage small- to mid-size hatcheries to adopt in-ovo sexing as well so that all egg farmers have access.
