http://www.dw.de/the-hidden-facts-of...ion/a-17030868

THE HIDDEN FACTS OF EGG PRODUCTION

"Ahead of this year's parliamentary elections, the German Greens party has called for an end to factory farming. During the industrial breeding of chickens, young chicks are often treated particularly badly, say critics.

They're known as one-day chicks - baby chickens that never grow older than a day. Thousands of them are killed every day across Germany. The reason: they are male, so they won't lay any eggs, so feeding them up simply isn't economically viable.

When chicks are hatched in industrial hatcheries, workers set to work, sorting the seething fluffy masses into male and female. The hens go onto the right-hand conveyor belt, are packed into boxes and sent to breeding farms. The cocks, meanwhile, end up on the left-hand conveyor belt, where a steel slide sends them to certain death.

"There are chickens for fattening, and laying chickens, which lay a lot of eggs," explains Marius Tünte from German animal protection organization, Deutscher Tierschutzbund. "So the male chicks among the laying breeds don't have any economic value. That's why the decision was made at some point to kill all the male animals."

Over 40 million animals are destroyed in this way every year in Germany - and around 2.5 billion worldwide. It's all part of increased specialization in the industrial farming sector, says Tünte.
Shredded or gassed

The male chicks are either chopped to pieces in a kind of chaffcutter fitted with multiple sharp knives, or gassed using carbon dioxide.

"In both cases, the animals often have to suffer before finally dying," says Tünte. "In the chaffcutter, animals occasionally survive severely injured, and in the videos of the gassing you see clearly that the animals fight for air before they die."

The dead chicks are then ground into animal meal before being burned. Some of the gassed chicks end up as feed for birds of prey in zoos - but, according to Deutscher Tierschutzbund, that only amounts to a few percent.
It is only after the chicks have been sorted into male and female that the companies decide whether they are to be reared in a cage, or if they are to become "organic hens." Organic farmers buy their laying hens at the breeding farms too - so organic farms cannot opt out of the system.

"At the moment, there are no alternatives to the market," Gerald Wehde, spokesman for the farming association Bioland, told DW. "All we can do is try to alleviate the situation a little."

On top of this, farmers generally slaughter the laying hens as soon as they are a year old and begin to molt. Bioland advises its members to let their hens live a little longer, because they still lay eggs after molting, if not quite as many.

If more hens were allowed to live into their second laying period, then farmers wouldn't have to buy as many laying hens, explains Wehde. "Then we could at least reduce the number of murdered chicks, if not actually stop it."


BREAKING THE LAW?

According to Paragraph 1 of Germany's Animal Protection Law, animals may only be killed for a useful reason. Animal protectionists, and indeed some lawyers, have their doubts about whether such a reason can be said to exist in the case of one-day chicks.

And yet the practice is allowed to continue. An EU directive even regulates how the shredding and gassing of chicks is to be carried out - the chaffcutter is not allowed to be overloaded and the chicks are not allowed to be older than 72 hours old when killed.

The German Ministry for Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection said, in reply to DW's request for a statement, that "the killing of male one-day chicks should be the last resort after all other possibilities for the use of the animals have been exhausted." But, according to industry, there is no other use for the animals, except for the unprofitable fattening.


SOLUTIONS IN SIGHT?

Most parties have now grasped that the killing of billions of chicks worldwide each year is neither practical nor morally defendable, even the breeding firms themselves. They incubate vast quantities of eggs every year for no useful reason, and have to dispose of the dead chicks afterwards.

"No one, including the industry, actually wants to have to kill healthy male one-day chicks," says Maria-Elisabeth Krautwald-Junghanns, veterinarian and researcher at Leipzig University. She researches ways to potentially determine the sex of a chicken embryo even before it is hatched. She's hoping her research will mean that, in the future, only female embryos will be incubated.

For chicken breeders and animal protectionists, the best solution would be to develop chicken breeds that can do both - the females lay eggs, while the males can be fattened. This was common before 1950. Sorting chicks on the basis of sex has become normal though now because high performance breeding is more efficient.

In other countries, such as Italy or Switzerland, the concept of the dual-purpose chicken already exists as a niche product. In Germany it is about to be introduced to the market.

Until then, consumers who want to boycott the killing of chicks have only one option, says Tünte, namely "to abstain or eat fewer egg-based products.."

On Sat, 7 Mar 2015 12:32:13 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

>
> http://www.dw.de/the-hidden-facts-of...ion/a-17030868
>
> THE HIDDEN FACTS OF EGG PRODUCTION

Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
fattened up for the dinner table.

--
A kitchen without a cook is just a room

Are you new to the party? This is old news re US egg production.

N

On 2015-03-07 4:41 PM, sf wrote:

> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
> fattened up for the dinner table.
>


Maybe that's because that is what they do with them. A capon is
castrated rooster, and those things are delicious. The cost more per
pound than chicken but my experience is that there seems to be more meat
per pound of bird.

On 07/03/2015 2:41 PM, sf wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Mar 2015 12:32:13 -0800 (PST),
> wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.dw.de/the-hidden-facts-of...ion/a-17030868
>>
>> THE HIDDEN FACTS OF EGG PRODUCTION
>
> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
> fattened up for the dinner table.
>
Those bred for efficient egg production are not bred for putting weight!
Those bred for meat are not bred for efficient egg production!
Graham

--
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating.
It prevents moderation from acquiring
the deadening effect of habit."
W. Somerset Maugham

On 3/7/2015 9:06 PM, graham wrote:
> On 07/03/2015 2:41 PM, sf wrote:
>> On Sat, 7 Mar 2015 12:32:13 -0800 (PST),
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> http://www.dw.de/the-hidden-facts-of...ion/a-17030868
>>>
>>> THE HIDDEN FACTS OF EGG PRODUCTION
>>
>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>> fattened up for the dinner table.
>>
> Those bred for efficient egg production are not bred for putting weight!
> Those bred for meat are not bred for efficient egg production!
> Graham
>
Sounds plausible but not strictly correct; see the Univ. of NC
all-purpose chicken that can do all three: game hen, roaster and egg
machine at different stages of life.

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not." in Reply To.

On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:

>
> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
> fattened up for the dinner table.
>

Ever hear of a capon?

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
wrote:

> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>
> >
> > Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
> > fattened up for the dinner table.
> >
>
> Ever hear of a capon?

That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?

--
A kitchen without a cook is just a room

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:18:54 -0700, sf > wrote:

>On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
>wrote:
>
>> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>> > fattened up for the dinner table.
>> >
>>
>> Ever hear of a capon?
>
>That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
>them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?

I've only ever seen them a few times in my life. It would be better
than killing off chicks just because they are male. I guess they
don't fit the production lines at the chicken factory.

On 03/08/2015 10:18 AM, sf wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
> wrote:
>
>> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>>> fattened up for the dinner table.
>>>
>>
>> Ever hear of a capon?
>
> That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
> them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
>
That's a different question entirely. I have little to no expertise in
the matter but my opinion is that there's not that much of a demand. In
all my years, I think I've seen capon offered in a grocery store only
once. Its price was significantly higher than the regular fryers, which
might have something to do with the lack of demand.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 11:42:53 -0700, Whirled Peas >
wrote:

> On 03/08/2015 10:18 AM, sf wrote:
> > On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
> >>> fattened up for the dinner table.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Ever hear of a capon?
> >
> > That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
> > them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
> >
> That's a different question entirely. I have little to no expertise in
> the matter but my opinion is that there's not that much of a demand. In
> all my years, I think I've seen capon offered in a grocery store only
> once. Its price was significantly higher than the regular fryers, which
> might have something to do with the lack of demand.

Given that chickens are so huge and expensive these days, I doubt
there's a lack of demand. A chicken the size of a small turkey would
be a good thing.

--
A kitchen without a cook is just a room

On 2015-03-08, Ed Pawlowski > wrote:

> I've only ever seen them a few times in my life. It would be better
> than killing off chicks just because they are male. I guess they
> don't fit the production lines at the chicken factory.

No doubt chicken CAFOs suppliers have figured out yet another chemical
method of inducing mostly female chicks.

nb

On 2015-03-08 2:31 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:18:54 -0700, sf > wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>>>> fattened up for the dinner table.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ever hear of a capon?
>>
>> That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
>> them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
>
> I've only ever seen them a few times in my life. It would be better
> than killing off chicks just because they are male. I guess they
> don't fit the production lines at the chicken factory.
>

Here is an interesting article about capons.

I found another article that answered my question about what they do
with most of the little boy chickens. There aren't many skilled
caponizers, or farmers who are willing to provide the space or the
extra time and expense of feeding them for 4 times longer than it takes
to send a hen to market.... so they euthanize them.



http://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/capo...urbing-luxury/


In 1913, farmer George Beuoy published a pamphlet titled €œWhats a Capon
and Why.€� He believed that the castrated cockerels €” which, without
their testosterone, plump up to anywhere from 7 to 12 pounds €” could
change the face of the struggling poultry industry. He believed in the
possibility of capons so strongly that he began calling himself the
€œCapon King€� as he marketed mail-order cockerel and home castrating kits.

Capons fetched four times the price per pound of a typical chicken, he
wrote. They had value before slaughter, too: Capons would mother chicks
better than hens while still retaining enough of a roosters fierceness
to fight off hawks. If only farmers had the patience to learn
€œcaponizing,€� this particular form of castration, and let the birds grow
long enough to develop their tender, distinctive flavor, capons would
become €œthe life-giving, brain-forming, strength-producing food that is
required by the high strung workingman of modern times,€� Beuoy wrote.

Obviously, he was wrong.

Today, the capon has nearly disappeared from view. When capons pop up in
stores or on restaurant menus, most modern diners assume that theyre
game birds or perhaps akin to Cornish hens. But because hormonal changes
caused by caponization allow more fat to build up both below the skin
and within muscle, capons come with the promise of a substantial amount
of buttery, tender meat. So why are they gone?

It comes down to fact that the method to make a capon a capon is still
the same as it was when Beuoys wrote €“ a process that may be an unfairly
forgotten piece of agriculture, or simply a means to a somewhat
disturbing luxury good.

The caponizer searches for the testes, each about the size of a grain of
rice, and rips them free of their connective tissue with a small slotted
spoon €“ or, in some cases, a tool made out of a loop of horse hair.

Bill Keough spent 20 years caponizing cockerels for Iowas Wapsie
Produce, which dominated capon production before ceasing operations in
2010. To make a cockerel a capon, he explains, a caponizer must restrain
the 3 to 6 week old bird by tying weights to its wings and feet to
prevent movement and expose the rib cage. Then the caponizer cuts
between the lowest two ribs of the bird and spreads them apart with a
special tool to open up access to the body cavity. Last, the caponizer
searches for the testes, each about the size of a grain of rice, and
rips them free of their connective tissue with a small slotted spoon €“
or, in some cases, a tool made out of a loop of horse hair.

This is the most difficult part: The testes are delicate, and its easy
to only partially remove them, allowing some production of the male
hormones that will result in a useless animal known as a €œsplit€� €” not a
rooster, not yet a capon. The testes are also next to a crucial artery
and the kidneys, and damaging either could kill the bird. The incision
is not sutured, and the entire process is done without anesthetics or
antibiotics (though it should be said that neither anesthetics or
antibiotics are used the more routine castration of cattle or pigs).

When asked, Keough shrugs off concerns that the process could be done
more safely or humanely. €œTheres not any other way to do it, and I
dont think there should be,€� he says. €œIf you do it right, it only
takes a few seconds and the bird doesnt know what hit him.€�

By the time Keough mastered the process as a teenager, he could caponize
300 birds an hour. But to get it right? It took him two or three
thousand attempts, he says. €œThere were plenty of dead chickens laying
around,€� he remembers. In other words, farming capons depends upon a
highly-trained, well-paid specialists €” not the sort of assembly-line
labor and mechanization on which the modern poultry industry runs. When
Keough graduated from high school in the 1960s, he could charge $75 an
hour for his services, he says. €œIf I did it now, I might get rich,€� he
adds, wistfully. €œBut I spent it all. Girls€¦€�

Even once the flocks have been caponized, they still present challenges
to the contemporary farmer. Jim Schiltz, who owns specialty poultry
processor Schiltz Foods, struggles to get his suppliers to meet even the
modest demand for capons. FDA inspectors maintain extremely strict
standards for what can be sold as a capon, and for flocks to make the
grade, €œyou need to give them a little TLC. You need to give them a
space. You need to feed them slow,€� says Schiltz. If a bird isnt
certified as a true capon, it can only be sold as one of those mammoth
roasters that dont fetch a high enough price to justify raising the
bird for 17 weeks (conventional chickens are often slaughtered after as
few as four weeks).

€œYou need to give them a little TLC. You need to give them a space. You
need to feed them slow.€�

Schiltz says hes often at loggerheads with farmers €“ many dont bother
to fill his orders, exasperated with the level of care required, while
others cut corners, raising flocks where only half the birds can be sold
as capons. €œTheyre crap, yknow. I dont even want them, hardly,€� he
says, sighing. €œTheres an art to doing this.€�

Schiltz could take the time to whip his farmers into shape, train more
caponizers (he says he knows only six people up to that task) and
modernize the process if there was stronger demand for the birds. But
its always been a niche product, and the market has only shrunk. Wapsie
at its peak processed 500,000 capons per year, and Schiltz estimates his
annual capon production is a tenth of that. In contrast, American farms
routinely produce more than 8 billion chickens each year.

How is it that the capon has been left behind even as consumers demand a
greater range of choice? Founder of specialty food brand Dartagnan
Ariane Daguin believes its a question of demographics. A hundred years
ago, when Beuoy prophesied a capon in every pot, American families
averaged around five members, and so a seven to twelve pound bird was a
reasonable size for a family meal. Now the average family has fewer than
three members. So, says Daguin, €œthe capon is becoming obsolete.€�

She, like Schiltz, simply tries to service a lingering demand:
Dartagnan sells fewer than 2,000 of its $89 French-style capons, fed
milk and bread instead of grain, to the small number of European
expatriates who dont traditionally eat turkey at holidays.

I brined and roasted one of Jim Schiltzs 7.5 pound capons according to
a simple recipe by Gabrielle Hamilton of New York Citys Prune
restaurant, and the first taste was a revelation. The flavor was
unusually rich and complex, distinct from any chicken or turkey Id had
before, and the texture both moist and firm. After years of bland
chickens and dried-out holiday turkeys, a taste of capon made me wish
George Beuoys vision of the Capon of Tomorrow had come to pass.

But developing a mass market for capons would require a Herculean
marketing effort the producers currently show no inclination to
undertake. And without that public awareness, its unlikely the same
level of feel-good publicity that makes humanely raised chicken a
supermarket staple will come to bear on the caponization process.

With the limited prospects for their products, many capon producers
dont bother touting the jaw-dropping taste of their birds. In the words
of Jim Schiltz: €œIts just a chicken with its nuts cut off.€�

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 15:21:37 -0400, Dave Smith
> wrote:



>>>> Ever hear of a capon?
>>>
>>> That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
>>> them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
>>
>> I've only ever seen them a few times in my life. It would be better
>> than killing off chicks just because they are male. I guess they
>> don't fit the production lines at the chicken factory.
>>
>
>Here is an interesting article about capons.
>
>I found another article that answered my question about what they do
>with most of the little boy chickens. There aren't many skilled
>caponizers, or farmers who are willing to provide the space or the
>extra time and expense of feeding them for 4 times longer than it takes
>to send a hen to market.... so they euthanize them.
>
>
>
>http://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/capo...urbing-luxury/
>
>
>In 1913, farmer George Beuoy published a pamphlet titled “What’s a Capon
>and Why.”

Thanks for posting that, Dave. Seems to be a lot more involved than I
thought. Explains the higher cost too.


Reality is, when the store has chicken on sale for 79¢ a pound, the
capon for $2.79 is not going to sell well. Most people don't
appreciate the difference and will not pay for it.

On 2015-03-08 3:12 PM, sf wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 11:42:53 -0700, Whirled Peas >
> wrote:
>
>> On 03/08/2015 10:18 AM, sf wrote:
>>> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>>>>> fattened up for the dinner table.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ever hear of a capon?
>>>
>>> That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
>>> them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
>>>
>> That's a different question entirely. I have little to no expertise in
>> the matter but my opinion is that there's not that much of a demand. In
>> all my years, I think I've seen capon offered in a grocery store only
>> once. Its price was significantly higher than the regular fryers, which
>> might have something to do with the lack of demand.
>
> Given that chickens are so huge and expensive these days, I doubt
> there's a lack of demand. A chicken the size of a small turkey would
> be a good thing.
>

Capon costs 2-3times as much per pound as chicken. Some of us realize
that there is more meat per pound and that it is much tastier. Most
shoppers care only about price and they sure aren't as cheap as turkeys.

On 2015-03-08 3:33 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

>> In 1913, farmer George Beuoy published a pamphlet titled €œWhats a Capon
>> and Why.€�
>
> Thanks for posting that, Dave. Seems to be a lot more involved than I
> thought. Explains the higher cost too.
>
>
> Reality is, when the store has chicken on sale for 79¢ a pound, the
> capon for $2.79 is not going to sell well. Most people don't
> appreciate the difference and will not pay for it.
>


Yep. It is a big price difference and most people won't pay that much
extra for what they thing is just a chicken. Well... it is a chicken but
it is a much better chicken than one of those little hens. I will buy
them if I find them because I know they are a superior product.

On Sun, 8 Mar 2015 20:29:52 -0500, Sqwertz >
wrote:



>The Chinese certainly don't throw away the roosters. Here's a Chinese
>street vendor holding a 60-second drive-in castration clinic right
>there on the sidewalk.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYkZlfmIgLw
>
>-sw

He does vasectomy for only 20 yen more.