This is a linkpost for https://optimistsbarn.substack.com/p/you-can-now-buy-eggs-from-in-ovo
The brand NestFresh eggs has just started selling eggs from in-ovo sexed hens in the US. Right now, they are only available at some Whole Foods locations in the Southwest, soon to be expanded to other locations. Supporting those eggs now is particularly valuable, as their market performance will influence other companies' decisions to adopt the technology. See the blog post linked above for details!
Wow this seems huge. I wonder if buying these eggs is actually good from an animal welfare perspective?
Firstly, as you say, it might help make others adopt this technology.
But even putting that aside, I wonder if supporting these eggs could be directly good for welfare. The main problems with eggs from a welfare perspective is the culling of male chicks and the often terrible conditions egg-laying hens are kept in (e.g. battery cages). If neither of these things apply, as is the case with NestFresh Humanely Hatched Pasture-raised eggs, you could just be supporting happy lives by buying these eggs.
Unfortunately, eggs cause an incredible amount of suffering beyond the killing of male chicks and the environmental conditions of farmed hens, including in pasture-based farms. Laying ~30x more eggs than you naturally should is physically exhausting, is psychologically harmful (amped up hormones that create an experience akin to PMS), and results in extremely high rates of ovarian cancer, impacted egg material and consequent slow death by sepsis, and reproductive prolapses -- all left untreated. This is not to mention the experience of the parents ("breeder flocks"), the forced orphaning of social animals, the stress of transport, the prevalence of disease and parasites, osteoporosis, broken bones, predation, barn fires, ventilation shutdowns, extreme temps, being killed, watching you know get killed, or any other endemic harm of the egg industry.
All of that said, I'm thrilled for a future in which so many male chicks are spared. But the egg industry is fundamentally an atrocity.
Thanks for sharing!
One small mistake in the article: with all (current) in ovo sexing methods there is still a human that checks whether any males were not detected by the machine.