Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds?
That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop.
Its technology exposes eggs to sound vibrations which, it says, alters the gene expression in developing male embryos, so rather than testes, an ovary forms instead (birds have only one). The company says its experiments are currently producing batches of chicks where 60% are observably female and it expects this to increase. “We are changing the sex of the chicken to dramatically decrease male chicks culled,” says Yael Alter, Soos’s CEO. Even if all male chicks aren’t converted, it could still make a difference. The company is currently piloting its technology at a commercial egg farm in Israel and has other pilots lined up with an Italian and a US egg producer.
www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jan/31/good-vibrations-sound-waves-eggs-ethical-slaughter-male-chicks
