Commission to propose EU-wide phaseout of male chick killing

The European Commission will table a proposal to phase out the systematic killing of male chicks, food safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told a meeting of national ministers, during which several member states called for an EU-wide ban of the practice. “I want to propose to phase out this practice,” Kyriakides said during the meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Luxembourg on Monday (17 October), while calling on EU countries to support the effort. Each year, millions of male chicks across the EU are killed shortly after hatching due to the fact that they are unsuitable for meat production and therefore considered commercially useless by the industry. The practice has been criticised by animal rights campaigners as unethical, who warn of the suffering that the chicks – who are most often killed either by grinding or gassing – have to go through in the process. For her part, Kyriakides called the killing of day-old chicks a “disturbing phenomenon,” hinting that such a ...