France to ban mass shredding of live chicks

Billions of male chicks are culled around the world by industrial farmers as they are considered redundant by both egg and poultry producers.

Egg producers use cockerels only for insemination while poultry producers favor hens for meat, as they grow faster.

As a result, male chicks are routinely culled by being thrown, live, into shredders -- though some farmers suffocate them in bags or gas them to death.

Announcing the ban, Guillaume said "nothing will be like it was before" in poultry farming after the end of 2021.

"We want to move forward, there's no going back. The government is committed to it," he said at a press conference.

"The aim is to oblige firms to do this by the end of 2021. We need to find a method that works on a large scale."

He also said France would ban the practice of castrating young, male pigs without anesthetic.

"The ministry is going to publish regulatory texts in the next few weeks to move towards the banning of painful practices in farming husbandry," he added.

In 2015, Germany was the first country to announce a ban on the mass killing of chicks, but last year a German court ruled the controversial practice would remain legal until farmers could access technology to determine the sex of a chick while still an embryo, which would enable them to destroy unwanted eggs before hatching.

The German government told CNN it had invested €5 million ($5.5 million) in ovo sex determination technology -- also called "Seleggt technology" -- to enable farmers to do this.

It said the technology would be available this year, at which point the mass killing of chicks would become illegal.

British animal rights organization The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has previously said that while the idea of maceration and killing of chicks by gas can be "distressing," both methods "can offer humane methods of euthanasia, as long as they are carried out correctly by trained, competent staff."