(Report from the Iowa News Service in collaboration with Sentient) – Animal rights advocates are asking large scale livestock operations in Iowa to gender test chicken eggs before the birds hatch. It’s part of an effort to reduce the practice of chick culling. Egg-laying facilities around the world cull about 6 million chickens every year – typically, male chickens that are not profitable to raise for meat. Ag operations kill those chicks after they are already born. Humane League President Vicky Bond says some European countries have banned the practice in favor of what’s known as “ovo-sexing.”

Ag operations have cited costs of adopting the technology as one reason for the delay in adopting it. Chick culling has been around since the 1920’s when livestock producers started breeding their chickens for either meat or eggs. Some 100 years later, Bond argues ag operators should be required to end it, rather than killing the male chicks that are too lean – often by grinding them up. She says it’s a fact not lost on consumers in the grocery store.

U-S egg producers had widely agree to end the practice by 2020, but so far, there’s been a lack of oversight and pressure on the industry to follow through.