(Photo Source: goodfon.com)
France steps in the right direction for humane animal treatment
The French agriculture minister Didier Guillaume announced an end to cruel mass culling of male chicks, as well as the castration of piglets without anesthesia.
The widespread practices of live-shredding male chicks and castrating piglets have long been extremely controversial. Roughly seven million male chicks, unwanted because they do not provide meat nor eggs, are culled (the reduction of an animal population by selective slaughter). Typical culling practices include grounding up the chicks alive, gassing, electrocuting, or suffocating in plastic bags.
France is leading the way to end such cruel practices by being one of the first countries to ban such practices by any of these methods, starting next year. Guillaume is hoping that a new method will be discovered that allows farmers to determine the gender of the chicken embryo in the egg before it hatches.
Switzerland banned chick shredding last year, although it was rare that farmers would utilize such a practice. Germany also outlawed the practice too but ruled in June that the slaughter could continue until a method of determining the sex of the embryo while still in the egg was discovered.
While France prides itself on its meats and poultry industries, it has still faced a lot of backlash and growing tensions between producers and activists. A poll conducted in January found that three-quarters of French people did not believe the government was doing enough to protect animals, as reported by The Guardian.
By: Maytinee Kramer
