Are eggs cruel? What happens to hens and male chicks

The objection

“Eggs are the guilt-free option. You take what the hen produces anyway, nobody has to die for an omelette.”

The answer

Eggs carry deaths the carton never mentions. Supermarket eggs are unfertilised because commercial laying flocks are all hens: their brothers were sorted out at the hatchery and killed [1], and the hen herself is killed once her laying slows. She is a hybrid shaped by 50 years of breeding for output [2], expected to lay about 350 eggs in her life by the reckoning of Britain’s Animal Welfare Committee, which advises the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments (2023) [1]. Part of the calcium for those shells comes out of her bones, and a 2016 review in British Poultry Science calls osteoporosis one of the egg industry’s major welfare challenges [2].

What happens to male chicks?

Male chicks of laying breeds are killed soon after they hatch, with gas or by maceration, which means feeding them alive into a machine with rapidly rotating blades [3]. Laying breeds grow slowly and carry little breast or thigh meat, so rearing the males for meat doesn’t pay [1], and RSPCA Australia, an animal-welfare charity, cites a 2026 review estimating that around 6.5 billion are killed worldwide each year [3].

In Great Britain the government puts the toll at 40 to 45 million a year, killed within 12 to 36 hours of hatching (2025) [4]. In the British laying industry all newly hatched chicks identified as male are killed with argon gas, the Animal Welfare Committee said in 2023, while EU hatcheries use carbon dioxide, which chicks find more aversive [1]. Poultry scientists at Texas A&M University, writing in 2021 about male layer chicks in the US egg industry, said maceration is the predominant method in hatcheries and is approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association, which also approves carbon dioxide [5]. Canada’s national codes of practice don’t cover layer hatcheries: the code for laying hens (2017) says it does not apply to hatcheries, which it expects to include at its next revision [6], and the hatchery code (2016) covers hatcheries whose eggs go to meat production [7]. Australia’s national poultry welfare guidelines list maceration and gassing among acceptable ways to kill day-old chicks (2021) [8].

Germany and France have banned routine chick culling. German law forbids killing chicks of domestic hens, and killing an embryo after sexing it from the 13th day of incubation [9]. France required its hatcheries to have in-ovo sexing or another alternative working by 31 December 2022, under a decree its agriculture ministry said that year would end the grinding of 50 million male chicks a year [10]. Exceptions remain: when a member of parliament said in 2026 that the ban appeared not to cover strains bred for liquid and powdered egg, mostly white hens, the ministry’s answer confirmed exemptions, notably for chicks destined for animal feed, and pointed to a research project meant to extend in-ovo sexing to all strains [11]. In-ovo sexing moves the cull into the egg, destroying male embryos before they hatch, and RSPCA Australia says it should happen before the embryo is likely to feel pain, ideally by day 12 [3]. Where hatched males can no longer be killed, they must be reared to the usual slaughter age for meat chickens, sometimes in other countries [1].

Are laying hens still kept in cages?

Many still are: about a third of the EU’s laying-hen places, 135 million, are in enriched cages by the latest figures member states report to the European Commission, mostly for 2025 [12], and in the US about 167 million hens, just over half of those laying table eggs, were caged in September 2026 (USDA figures, our calculation) [13][14]. The barest is the battery cage, like those filmed in Australian egg facilities in 2007. Enriched or “colony” cages are larger and must have nest boxes, litter and perches, but the UK government says they still limit a hen’s ability to run, flap her wings, dustbathe and forage (2025) [4].

In Ireland a quarter of laying-hen places were in enriched cages in 2025 [12]. In the UK colony cages supplied just over a fifth of shell eggs in 2024, by industry figures the government cites, and the major retailers pledged to stop selling those eggs by the end of 2025 [4]. The government consulted on phasing the cages out from January to March 2026 [15]. Canada’s egg industry put 39.5% of the country’s hens in conventional cages in 2025 [16], and the national code (2017) lets a white hen in one of those cages be given 432 cm², less than three-quarters of a sheet of A4, until July 2031; it requires every hen to be in an enriched cage or a cage-free system by July 2036 and sets no end date for enriched cages [6]. New Zealand banned battery cages from 1 January 2023, but the SPCA, an animal-welfare charity, citing industry figures from December 2022, says a third of its hens are still caged [17], in colony cages that the egg producers’ federation says typically hold 20 to 80 hens with at least 750 cm² each [18].

How old are hens when they are slaughtered?

Laying hens are killed once their laying slows, which a 2016 review in British Poultry Science put at around 72 weeks old, about 17 months, naming falling egg numbers and weaker shells as the main reasons flocks were replaced at that age [2]. Breeding companies have been stretching the laying cycle: a 2026 paper in Poultry Science says production used to end at around 70 to 75 weeks on average in past decades, and that the breeders’ targets are now 90 to 100 weeks and 500 eggs a hen [19]. At the British average of 200 eggs per adult a year, the Animal Welfare Committee calculated that one male chick and one end-of-lay hen are killed about every 21 months to supply an average person’s eggs (2023) [1].

How are hens killed when bird flu reaches a US farm?

When bird flu reaches a US egg farm the whole flock is killed, and in the 2022–23 outbreak most infected egg farms did it at least partly by shutting off the barn’s ventilation and adding heat until the birds died of overheating [20]. The USDA counted it, alone or with other methods, on 85% of infected commercial egg farms with records, where it replaced carbon dioxide as the main method [20]. The USDA’s July 2026 policy still allows it where other methods can’t be used in time to meet the aim of killing the flock within 24 to 48 hours, bringing the barn to 53°C (128°F) within 15 minutes and holding it there for at least three hours [21].