France to Outlaw Inhumane Practices for Chicks and Hogs
No more live-shredding, no more anaesthesia-free castration.
The journey to more humane practices for livestock is much more complex than it seems.
Modern agriculture, whether industrial or not, is tremendously complicated, with all sorts of little techniques and operations that the vast majority of people don’t know about. France is taking some steps to end a few of the less humane ones, a move towards better livestock practices for a country that prides itself on its food.
The French minister of agriculture, Didier Guillaume, announced this week a couple of new changes to the way chickens and hogs are produced in his country, reports the Guardian. The biggest one is a move to ban the live shredding, or grinding, of male chicks.
There is currently no way to determine the sex of a chick in a way that’s fast and economical enough for large operations to use. As a result, these large operations end up with male chicks that they don’t want: The males tend not to be big enough for broiler chicken use, and, of course, they don’t lay eggs. In the United States, as in many other countries, the unwanted male chicks are killed as soon as their sex is determined, and it’s done in what seems from the outside to be a gruesome fashion: They are ground or shredded, alive.
The European Union has required since 2009 that this shredding technique result in immediate death for the chicks, so that they don’t have to experience any pain from the grinder. It is, in fact, the method recommended in the United States, considered less cruel than, say, asphyxiation in bags. But the practice is still controversial and, frankly, unpleasant for people to think about.
Late in 2019, Switzerland became the first European country to ban outright the practice of shredding male chicks, despite the fact, as reported in SwissInfo, that it was never used much in Switzerland. But France has a much larger poultry industry than Switzerland, so this new ban is a significantly bigger deal. Guillaume announced the banning of shredding in addition to asphyxiation, electrocution, or gassing; it’s unclear what the French method will be, although Guillaume said that research is progressing on newer, better ways to tell the sex of chicks before they hatch.
Guillaume also announced that the castration of piglets—done to allow them to grow larger, and to reduce a particular odor—must be done with the aid of anaesthesia. In the United States, using anaesthesia for this procedure is extremely rare, a fact that animal rights activists have protested for years.
These two new rules will go into effect by the end of 2021.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].France to Outlaw Inhumane Practices for Chicks and Hogs
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
January 30, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
HOW DARE WE SIT IDLY BY MOMENT AFTER PRECIOUS MOMENT AFTER KNOWING WE CANNOT LEAVE THIS UP TO OTHERS TO KNOW BETTER?
Educate, educate, and continue to educate the masses, whether or not they want to know
What about force feeding geese and ducks for foie gras and caponizing cockerels without anesthesia so people can eat capons. So they decide to outlaw chick grinding and piglet castration, but ignore their most inhumane practices. France is a big disappointment in animal welfare.
Shame on France