“UEP and our farmer-members commend FFAR for coordinating this valuable incentive to encourage researchers to move swiftly to identify meaningful, scalable solutions to this issue,” said Chad Gregory, UEP president and CEO. “Assuring the health and well-being of animals simply is the right thing to do. As such, we have an obligation to support practices and technologies that improve animal welfare across egg production and this extends to finding an economically feasible, commercially viable alternative to the practice of male chick culling at hatcheries.”
Current approaches to solving this challenge range from gene-editing to measuring an egg’s hormone levels to determine its sex. FFAR is confident that the industry can build on recent advancements in sensor technologies, engineering and biological sciences to develop a technology that both successfully determines an egg’s sex before it hatches and can be integrated into existing production systems.
If new technologies allow egg producers to determine the chick’s sex early in incubation, over 6 billion male eggs could be directed into the food supply or vaccine production. Furthermore, if an appropriate technology is developed, the industry stands to save between $1.5 -$2.5 billion each year.
FFAR plans to begin accepting Egg-Tech Prize applications in early 2019.