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Male chicks have been dealt a bad hand. They don’t lay eggs and typically have less meat on their bones than hens, meaning they’re not only useless but a to farmers. As such, these undesirable byproducts of egg production may be killed through gassing, but oftentimes they are culled through maceration, which involves literally grinding up the male chicks alive. In the U.S., maceration is the standard practice. But a groundbreaking development could have major implications for animal welfare in the poultry industry, perhaps finally putting an end to the of an estimated seven billion male chicks each year shortly after they hatch due to their lack of commercial value. Israeli researchers at the Volcani Institute near Tel Aviv have created gene-edited hens that lay eggs from which only female chicks hatch. The team, led by Dr. Enbal Ben-Tal Cohen, used gene-editing tools to hens that produce eggs with unviable male embryos when exposed to blue light for several hours. Female chick embryos are unaffected by the light and continue to develop normally.