Animal rights group Gaia staged a protest in Brussels on Tuesday, urging residents to oppose the gassing and grinding of chicks by signing on to an ‘audio-petition.’
According to Gaia, male chicks are often deemed unnecessary by the egg industry since they do not lay eggs. They are frequently gassed or thrown alive into grinders hours after their birth. In Belgium, this results in about 65,000 chicks being killed daily, which adds up to 24 million yearly.
In Flanders – home to most of the egg producers – it is still legal to gas and grind live chicks. The same goes for Brussels, although there is no hatchery there. In Wallonia, gassing is allowed, even without a hatchery in the region.
Gaia stresses that alternatives to these practices exist. The ‘ovosexing’ technique, for example, can determine the chick’s gender while it is still in the egg, prior to hatching. This technique allows male and female sorting to occur at an early stage, well before the embryo becomes sensitive.
The animal rights organisation is calling on all three regions of the country to ban the grinding and gassing of chicks, as Germany and France have already done. Gaia is also urging Belgian supermarket chains to stop selling eggs from suppliers who use these methods.
As part of its summer tour through major cities such as Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Liège, Bruges, and Charleroi, Gaia is inviting citizens to contribute to its audio-petition by recording a shout in a specially designed studio. The audio-petition is also available online via the Lancezuncri.be platform.
