Document type : Article published on the Euractiv France website
Author: Magdalena Pistorius
Preview: 2022 will be the year when the crushing of male chicks in France comes to an end, as announced by the French Minister of Agriculture on 18 July. But is the transition to in ovo sexing wanted by Julien Denormandie feasible in the time allowed? What techniques will be used - and above all, what will it cost?
The announcement of an end to the culling of male chicks in France, a practice that has been 'strongly criticised by the public and animal protection groups for years', according to CIWF France, has been welcomed by the latter. But bringing about a change in practice is easier said than done and the French egg industry is thus faced with a major task.
By 1 January 2022, all French hatcheries will have to be equipped with or have placed an order for the equipment required to carry out in ovo sexing, a technique that detects the sex of the future chick in the egg and destroys it before it hatches.
And here is the first headache: there is no direct sexing technique. A method of in ovo sexing, the spectrophotometer method, developed by the German group AAT, makes it possible to determine the colour of the chick's feathers - which varies according to its sex - inside the egg, while the German company Seleggt has developed a hormonal process that consists of drilling a small hole in each egg, taking a droplet of fluid and testing it for the presence of hormones released by females.
On a similar basis, the German technology Plantegg determines the sex of the chick by analysing the genetic material in the liquid of each egg, and a Dutch technique involves biomarker analysis. all these processes are available for France, lacking its own in ovo sexing technology, to choose from.
The second headache is that all these technologies obviously have a cost. "Today, when you buy a laying hen chick, it costs 80 centimes, including the cost of culling male chicks," Philippe Juven, Chair of the French Comité national pour la promotion de l’œuf (CNPO), tells EURACTIV. "With the ovo-sexing service, each chick will cost about one euro more."
Not only will it be necessary to buy and install equipment in hatcheries and reorganise the latter's entire system - a move that the CNPO anticipates will cost around 15 million euros for the five hatcheries in France. Above all, it will be necessary to pay for the continuous operation of these new technologies, and, in particular, for the use by hatcheries of external in ovo sexing services, provided by those companies (currently German and Dutch) with the necessary know-how.
A spokesperson for the The Ministry of Agriculture states that it "does not advocate one technology over another". "It is up to professionals to equip themselves with the technology or sexing equipment that they feel are best suited to their activities and their customers.
"We are going to look for the most economical method," says Philippe Juven, although the industry estimates that the costs of in ovo sexing will be at least 64 million euros per year. Consumers will have to bear the extra cost: a box of six eggs will become at least 3 centimes more expensive, says the industry.
In the meantime, the Chair of the CNPO shows optimism: although the search for alternatives to the crushing of male chicks is still in its infancy, efforts will be ongoing, as the ban on chick crushing in France and Germany comes into force and interest in the topic grows in other European countries. He is hopeful that "in the long term, we will have cheaper solutions".
And, despite the difficulties that the transition will entail, the sector has announced that it will get there. "The industry is very attentive to new societal expectations, and has indeed been involved for a number of years in the search for alternatives to the culling of male chicks," says a CNPO press release. "Thus, the French egg industry is already on track to make all the necessary changes and investments and, given the tight deadlines that have been announced, will do its utmost to meet these."
