WILTON, Iowa (AP) — Each year, the U.S. egg industry kills about 350 million male chicks because, although these fluffy little animals are incredibly cute, they will never lay eggs and therefore have little monetary value.

This long-standing practice is changingthanks to new technology that allows hatcheries to quickly examine millions of fertilized eggs and spot male embryos, then grind them up for other uses before they become chicks. The system began operating this month in Iowa, at the nation’s largest chick hatchery, which processes about 387,000 eggs each day.

The slaughter of chicks is the result of a poultry industry which, for decades, has bred a kind of chicken for eggs and another for meat. Laying hens are too thin to be sold profitably as meat, so male chicks are ground and used as additives for other products.

We had to wait until European governments began to pass laws which banned maceration, companies began to wonder how to determine the sex of chickens before the chicks could hatch. Several companies can now do this, but unlike most competitors, AAT’s machine does not need to pierce the shell and instead uses bright light and sensitive cameras to detect the sex of an embryo by noting the shading of feathers. Males are white and females are dark.

The machine, called Cheggy, can process up to 25,000 eggs per hour, a rate that can accommodate the massive volume seen in hatcheries across the United States. In addition to the Cheggy machine in the small eastern Iowa town of Wilton, an identical system has been installed in Texas. , both in hatcheries owned by Hy-Line North America.

This isn’t a big obstacle in Europe, where most eggs sold in grocery stores are brown. But in the United States, white-shelled eggs account for about 81 percent of sales, according to the American Egg Board. Brown-shelled eggs are particularly sought after by people who buy without cage, free-range and organic varieties.

Hurlin said he believes his company will develop a system to determine the sex of embryos in white eggs within five years, and that other companies are also working to meet what is expected to be growing demand .

Eggs from chickens screened through the new system will supply NestFresh Eggs, a Southern California-based company that distributes organic eggs produced by small farms across the country. The eggs will begin appearing on store shelves in mid-July, and NestFresh Executive Vice President Jasen Urena said his company will begin touting the new chick-friendly process on cartons and with a more marketing effort. important.

“This is a huge step forward in animal welfare,” Urena said. “We have done so much work over the years on the farms. How can we improve the lives of these chickens? We can now step back and enter the hatching phase.

Urena said the new system was more expensive, but any price increases on store shelves would be minimal.

Animal welfare group Mercy for Animals has been trying to draw attention to chick slaughter for more than a decade in hopes of ending the practice.

Walter Sanchez-Suarez, the group’s animal behavior and welfare specialist, said European laws banning chick slaughter and new efforts to change the practice in the United States are wonderful developments. However, Sanchez-Suarez sees them as a small step toward a larger goal of ending large-scale animal agriculture and providing alternatives to meat, eggs and dairy.

“Mercy for Animals believes this is an important step, but poultry producers should not stop there and should try to see any additional problems associated with this type of practice in egg production ” he said. “Look for alternatives that are better for the animals themselves and human consumers.”