Well here we are in mid-2020 with no practical solution to the problem of gender sorting to avoid depletion of hatched layer-strain cockerels.  Three years ago research institutes and startups were actively soliciting and obtaining funding for technology to offer a solution.  Techniques requiring breaking of shells to visualize embryonic development, extraction of fluids for hormone assay at 16 days of incubation, sophisticated spectroscopy, and other proof-of-concept experiments were offered.  On even superficial examination, none of these approaches had the potential to differentiate between fertile eggs containing male or female embryos at a rate that would be commercially and financially acceptable. 

Naturally along with the science-based contenders, there were a host of charlatans offering gee-whiz blackbox come-ons, only to disappear with funding.  One especially egregious contender was developed by an engineer who since has divested his LED light company who patented claimed technology to not only differentiate between male and female-bearing eggs during incubation, but could also influence the gender of embryos.  To his credit this was not a scam, but merely a delusion.

And now we come to the righteously indignant.  The Green Party in Germany, in many EU nations, has gained power.  Julia Klockner, Federal Minister of Agriculture, now realizes that what was promised four years ago is still half a decade in the future.  In a recent interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, an influential newspaper in a dense poultry-producing area, she opined  “as I have not been able to see that the industry is using the existing alternatives to end chick killings across the board by the end of 2021, I am proposing a law.”  Over the past two years, attempts have been made to demonstrate the feasibility of raising unwanted layer-strain cockerels using sentiment to buttress a high price due to inappropriate genetics.  Attempts to breed dual-purpose strains representing a retrograde back-to-the future compromise approach that has been financially unsuccessful.  Farmers are generally more discriminatory and capable of assessing the value of livestock than urban liberals in Birkenstocks, especially a tenth- generation Niedersachsen bauer. 

If a law banning disposal of layer-strain cockerels in Germany is enacted, hatcheries distributing pullet chicks would close.  If the law were extended to importation of pullets derived from hatcheries in other EU nations that disposed of cockerels, the layer industry in Germany would cease.  All table eggs would have to be imported, placing considerable strain on egg producers in Holland already constrained by environmental regulations.  It seems that Klockner’s intentions would do little other than enrich producers in Spain and Italy and add to food inflation in Germany.  The bottom line would be that just as many cockerels would be euthanized.

Until an accurate, rapid and practical method of gender determination and segregation is developed, the industry will have to use all appropriate technology to render unwanted cockerels insensible before disposal.

There may never be a solution that will satisfy opponents of intensive livestock production.  It was suggested that any system of differentiation should be effective before the fifth day of incubation.  Even if this were to be achieved, purists would claim that removal and destruction of fertilized eggs containing male embryos would be gender discrimination.  Germany is hypersensitive over mass killing, especially by gas, and disposal of cockerels represents an acceptable atonement for past injustices.