ALDE Party Congress, Athens 2019 - "Chick culling – A European concern"

Sometimes, you end up with resolutions that don't appear to be terribly important, and this one is one of those. Yes, animal cruelty should be challenged, but at a time of stress, you do wonder if this is worth debating time...

Chick culling – A European concern

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Party convening in Athens, Greece, on 24-26 October 2019:

Having regard to:

• the resolution “The Link between Animal Welfare, Public Health and Resistance to Antibiotics” adopted at the ALDE Party Congress in Helsinki, Finland (October 2010).

Notes that:

• as of 2018 around 7 billion day-old male chicks were culled per year in the egg industry worldwide;
• not all culled chicks can be used as animal feed (e.g. for snakes);
• the practice of chick culling produces millions of unnecessary deaths of chicks and is therefore unethical;
• the EU needs to have equal livestock husbandry standards to ensure fair competition;
• unilateral measures at national level cannot stop the practice of chick culling in the EU as a unilateral approach leads to millions of day-old chicks to be transported to those countries that still allow chick culling.

Calls for:

• all EU Member States to introduce an alternative procedure to timely identify masculine chicks before they are able to feel pain;
• all EU Member States to ban the practice of chick culling;
• all EU Member States to decide which alternative procedure to timely identify male chicks they want to implement. Currently, countries can choose for example the ovo-gender determination or the magnetic resonance imaging;
• the EU to invest in research projects about alternatives to culling chicks;
• the EU to install a system that ensures the enforcement of the ban on chick culling.

I have to be honest and admit that I know nothing about this, but would expect it to be passed without much comment.