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Biotech

How CRISPR Can Create More Ethical Eggs (cornell.edu) 91

Posted by EditorDavid from the eggs-zactly dept.
Slashdot reader wooloohoo shares a new article from Cornell's Alliance for Science, a group who gives its mission as correcting misinformation and countering conspiracy theories slowing progress on issues including synthetic biology and agricultural innovations: There are two types of chickens: the broilers that we eat and the layers that produce the eggs. The layers don't have enough meat to make them useful for human consumption and since only hens can lay eggs, that leaves the male layers useless. As a result, billions of newly hatched male layer chicks are killed each year.

Now the Israeli ag-tech startup eggXYt has found a way to humanely address this dilemma through the use of CRISPR — the gene editing technique that allows scientists to make targeted, specific genetic tweaks...

By using CRISPR, eggXYt's scientists can edit the genes of chickens to make them lay sex-detectable eggs... The global egg industry saves the costs and the ethical conundrum of killing half of its product and billions of additional eggs are added to the global market to help meet growing demand.
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How CRISPR Can Create More Ethical Eggs More

How CRISPR Can Create More Ethical Eggs

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  • This is about efficiency, not ethics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @12:37PM (#61130700)

    Seriously. The ethics-angle has been fantasized in there by the PR department.

    Not that there is anything wrong with increasing efficiency.

    • Or advertising, but you're definitely right that it's not about ethics.

      From a technical perspective I wonder why they couldn't do it the other way? It would seem to be even more efficient if they could combine both versions of the chickens into one variety, where only the males are broilers and the females are still good layers. Instead (per the linked story) they are just diverting the male eggs to egg sales. (But I thought most of the eggs we eat these days are unfertilized?) Or anther technical option co

      • Re:This is about efficiency [or ads], not ethics (Score:4, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @02:57PM (#61131068) Homepage

        Eggs we eat are unfertilized. Normally. This company plans to take fertilized eggs, but immediately subject them to a scanner causing them to glow if they have the male-sex-linked gene. If so, they don't go to the hatchery and the embryo never develops from the yolk; they can be sold for consumption, or - if there's public rejection of that - to the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry.

        According to this site [thehappychickencoop.com], the only difference in a freshly laid fertilized egg and an equivalent non-fertilized one will be a white "bulls-eye" appearance on the yolk. If the egg is kept warm for just a few days, however, it'll start developing veins in the yolk. This is not to be confused with random red spots inside an egg, which can be just from a ruptured blood vessel from the hen. If it's refrigerated, the embryo will die and not develop further.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          I imagine they'd do a different solution if they could, of course - such as the ability to turn on or off the laying of males, or to make males develop good broiler genetics, or whatnot. But I'm sure that's a much more complex task to develop.

          As a side note, I read about the background to CRISPR/Cas9 recently, and for anyone who hasn't, I strongly recommend it, because it's fascinating. TL/DR: some bacteria have their own internal immune system, based on CRISPR/Cas9. It's a form of protection against bact

        • We do not always easy infertilised eggs, though most industrial eggs likely are. You can tell from the white dot on the yolk. Eggs from small farms and such are possible or even often fertilised. If the eggs are cooled down enough and soon enough after being laid, there is no problem with that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Or advertising, but you're definitely right that it's not about ethics.

        From a technical perspective I wonder why they couldn't do it the other way? It would seem to be even more efficient if they could combine both versions of the chickens into one variety, where only the males are broilers and the females are still good layers.

        Well, maybe we will eventually be able to do that. But genetic engineering is far, far more difficult than doing software and the human race has not even mastered software these days.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Mostly concurrence, but that's why I worry so much about the potential for misuse of CRISPR. But as I already noted, I don't want to give anyone any bad ideas.

          (Or maybe I should say "Full concurrence within the scope of your small comment"?)

          (Hmm... That gives me a weird idea for partial thumbs up and down as an intermediate step between Reddiocy and a full MEPR system. (And I'm reminded of a system with a "strong thumb up" option.))

      • The efficiency differences between male and female broilers isn't that large. Commercially, half of all meat birds raised are female. Some operations will sex males/females to raise them separately, but this is rarely done, and no one does it to cull the females. If it is done, its to enable separate feeding as their nutritional requirements are subtly different, and feeding them sex specific diets can save on feed costs.

        Table eggs - whether sold intact by the dozen, or on the breaker market - are all un

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Thanks for the details, especially about the ZW thing. (Sorry I'm slow in replying, but there's more to life than Slashdot, as the old joke goes. Still nice to see the outbreaks of actual expertise around here.)

          (But I did know about some of those details, especially as regards the factory broilers versus free-range chickens. Yesterday's lunch included a good example of a bad chicken, at least for my tastes.)

          • I didn't respond until today. I'd bookmarked the post when I first saw it, but didn't have time to actually read/comment until today.

            As you say, there is more to life than Slashdot

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          VERY interesting ZW stuff.

    • I disagree. Many people do believe that animal treatment and welfare is important, even for animals like chickens. See the rising popularity of, e.g., cage-free eggs.

      This particular case doesn't have to be an either/or. It can both be ethical and increase efficiency. Perhaps the majority of the decision makers in big ag care more about the efficiency angle, but that doesn't diminish the value of the ethical improvement.
       

      • Re:This is about efficiency, not ethics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @01:44PM (#61130888)

        I agree.

        I like my food on the carnivorous side of the spectrum. I enjoy pork chops, turkey, chicken, beef, all that good and juicy stuff.

        But I don't like the way many of the animals are treated so I can have a delicious dinner. Letting them have a relatively decent life until they are killed is not completely opposed to wanting to eat them.

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
          Exactly. The more vocal 'vegan' types screetch endlessly with their 'appeal to emotion' logical fallacy arguments about how horrible raising food animals are treated, but that's changing, and quite frankly, overall, they live a better life overall than they would if they had to fend for themselves in the wild: fed regularly and of better quality than if they had to forrage, treated for illness and disease, and protected from predators -- and before any vegan types screetch at me about *us* being the predato
          • the media likes to cover them, especially on slow news days.

            Also as a vegetarian I can say it's damn near impossible for people not to know, since food is so integral to living. Sooner or later somebody's gonna do a pot luck and notice there's no meat on my plate, or bring sandwiches and notice I ordered the veggie one. Or I'll get invited to a BBQ.

            It's not information I volunteer, but it's going to come up.

            • Among my friends and co-workers in the SF-Bay area, I estimate a third are veggie or vegan.

              Any potluck or BBQ around here is going to have plenty of veggie options.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, keep kidding yourself. With those standards, farming chickens is inherently unethical, and there is no remedy for that. I can respect vegetarians. I can respect meat eaters. But those on between that think they can somehow make raising and slaughtering animals for food "ethical" must be the worst of the worst, because they add fundamental dishonesty to it all.

        • Again, I disagree completely.

          I do not believe it is unethical for humans to eat meat.

          Slaughtering animals is inherent to eating meat.

          Therefore, I also do not believe slaughtering animals to eat is inherently unethical.

          If I am given the choice of of consuming the meat of:
          (1) an animal that was kept entirely caged and unable to move, force fed, treated very poorly (beaten, shocked, etc), and slaughtered with no efforts to minimize pain and suffering; or
          (2) an animal that was allowed some space to move, was tr

          • Again, I disagree completely.

            I do not believe it is unethical for humans to eat meat.

            Slaughtering animals is inherent to eating meat.

            Therefore, I also do not believe slaughtering animals to eat is inherently unethical.

            Well, we could just wait for them to die of natural causes, and eat them then.

            And there is always roadkill.

            • Hah, I suppose my tautology did leave out roadkill.

              Animals dying of natural causes--does that include the American Indian practice of driving buffalo off cliffs to their death or in to water to drown? Hmmm!

        • A chicken in a well run farm may actually be happier than in the wild. How do you think the life of a chicken is? Constantly hunted by predators, then bitten and eaten when they become weak.

          • A chicken in a well run farm may actually be happier than in the wild.

            How many domesticated chickens fly the coop when the door is left ajar?

            How many wild red jungle fowl [wikipedia.org] voluntarily enter cages?

            • A chicken in a well run farm may actually be happier than in the wild.

              How many domesticated chickens fly the coop when the door is left ajar?

              How many wild red jungle fowl [wikipedia.org] voluntarily enter cages?

              First you have to assume that a chicken leaving the coop is escaping. In our fair cities suburbs, many people keep chickens. They are out all day with no boundaries, and they apparently happily go back in their coops in the evening. Most are shut in at night as protection against any predators, then they come out again, and seem pretty content. You do have to be careful driving through neighborhoods with them.

              As for red junglefowl - they are kept around here as well by many of the same people. While I ca

    • Yep, there's nothing "humane" in industrial farming. Though I do think it is less wasteful. No point in using resources for hatching an egg if you are not going to use the chicken. It's definitely better to know its sex and sell the egg for produce (the summary didn't make it clear how they know the sex before fertilization)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
      If there can be an intersection between the two that makes everyone happier, then I can't see that as a bad thing.
    • It can be, (and in-fact is) about both. A company I used to work for was considering investing in a start up like this one (not sure if it is this one or a different one) for the animal welfare angle.

      We'd done a market search for the next "right to operate" topic. Basically, the next issue in food production where something that was distasteful, but currently accepted, would be rendered no longer acceptable by consumers (antibiotics in livestock being the classic example). The slaughtering of the male ha

  • What a wastefully western POV (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jmc23 ( 2353706 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @12:38PM (#61130712) Journal
    Plenty of countries eat capon and spent hens. The problem isnt with the chickens, it's with the consumers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by havana9 ( 101033 )
      This is still true for small scale hen houses. I've eaten old hens and their meat is quite tasty, compared to the ones one finds in a supermarket, but the meat is harder.

    • Don't forget balut, if you know it's male in the egg you can make balut (chick cooked in its own egg) which is a staple food across indonesia and quite tasty. Which again is a problem with the consumer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jmc23 ( 2353706 )
        I think that's one I personally cant wrap my head,er, my lips?, around.

        • No different from eating chicken or egg, if the idea of bones bother you undeveloped bones are like firm crunchy pasta.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jmc23 ( 2353706 )
            The idea of crunchy pasta disturbs me. Now preserved eggs, totally different story. yum
    • True, but you cannot ignore that the culture is the way it is. I guess it's a chicken and the egg problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jmc23 ( 2353706 )
        I wouldnt say you cannot ignore the culture is that way. it is a relatively new development as far as culture goes.
        • Uhm, I just posted because I wanted to say, "chicken and the egg problem." But now that you responded, I agree it is a new development. I also agree that it isn't a good one. I also agree that we are super high maintenance. But for better and worse, it is us. It is easier to genetically manipulate the chickens (a technological problem), than it is to convince the masses that they should just eat smaller chickens (a social/cultural problem).

  • You drag a few nutters through thown so you can call everybody who disagrees with you one of them

    Always deliberately staying quiet about the dirty secret that the vast majority of people is not against genetics, but just against handing those tools to completely conscous-free greedy psychopaths like you, that neither have the slightest bit of foresight what the consequences of their actions are, and that do not care either.
    Because everybody who criticites you is just "dar eebil conspiracy theorists". How co

  • But wouldn't they still be useful for making stock?

    Regardless, what this group is really doing is drawing a distinction without a difference.

    • This method is to prevent males from being born. Chicks are sexed within days of hatching. Males are largely useless to laying operations. They are killed while still fuzzy. This would not make good stock. If you can sex them right after candling, it will save space and energy, and you kill the embryonic fetus, rather than something that is clearly an animal. An even better idea would be to make a non-animal method of producing "egg whites". GMO yeast should be able to produce all the proteins in the w

    • The demand for wings and boneless, skinless breasts means there's plenty of carcasses available for stock.

      This is really a step forward. Male chicks currently get shoveled into a shredder. Even just composting the eggs would be more efficient and humane. If they can get used, even better.

  • This happened with dairy cows some time ago (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @01:47PM (#61130898)
    it's resulted in more milk than we can ever sell (and it's kinda frustrating, because rather than powder it and give it to starving countries we're pouring it down the drain, but I digress).

    We're nowhere's near the capacity of the planet to make food, and birth rates continue to decline below replacement in any place that modernizes and educates. It's funny to think that our problems are already just distribution [youtube.com] and that the sci-fi trope of overpopulation from the 70s and 80s was completely wrong. Heck, if anything we're going to have underpopulation in 100 years (assuming we don't regress).
    • Just because we can produce enough food doesn't mean we aren't overpopulated. There are lots of other resources, including living space and "sustainable" energy, which are limited enough to be causing obvious problems for humanity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The subsidies in the US are certainly based on the past. Milk consumption has fall 30% over the past 70 years though has steadied lately. Large parts of the world, China, India, drink less than a third per capita as the US.

      Most other stuff is the same, especially as our standard of living improves. Elsewhere, over the past decade, as the middle class grows, I have seen more battery farm eggs. The demand for cheaper fresher product.

      It costs money to raise a chickens, a fixed to process. If there is no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SETY ( 46845 )

      Dairy has sexed semen available. This is sorted by a machine and gets you 90% female or male, depending on what you want. This semen costs more, is not used by all farmers, and has nothing to do with CRISPr. So not really the same at all, but the outcome is similar.

  • Make every newborn the same, that way no one can get their feelings hurt for being different!
  • The article title itself, by talking about "more ethical eggs" admits that they are not ethical right now, but the fact is, they will never be, with this "improvement" or without. Hens have been modified by artificial selection to lay almost one egg a day, while their ancestors would lay no more than 15 a year. Laying so many eggs commonly leads to osteoporosis and bone fractures, painful prolapses in their cloacas and infections, among other things. So if you're concerned about ethics, the best way to be

    • And BTW, the next pandemic may very well come in the form of avian flu right out of a chicken farm.

      In the US, there are a lot of controls and regulations to make sure that doesn't happen.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rafadev ( 980736 )

        And BTW, the next pandemic may very well come in the form of avian flu right out of a chicken farm.

        In the US, there are a lot of controls and regulations to make sure that doesn't happen.

        I'm not talking just about the US, as it is not the only country in the world. And even if I did, you can't say that the US handled this pandemic even remotely well, what would guarantee that a future outbreak of an animal-born disease will be handled properly? Also, isn't just not using hens for our benefit, and not reproducing them an even more effective way than taking risks and hoping that those controls work correctly?

        • Also, isn't just not using hens for our benefit, and not reproducing them an even more effective way than taking risks and hoping that those controls work correctly?

          You mean you want everyone to become vegetarian? Not realistic.

    • Plenty of eggs are perfectly ethical.

      My mom's flock of chickens roam the yard and gardens, eating bugs and whatever else they find interesting. They drop an egg every couple of days. Sure, hundreds of years ago those breeds were selected for being good layers, but if doing that is unethical, all of our food is unethical.

      Those unfertilized eggs are coming out of them unless there's a rooster to fertilize them. Is it unethical to not have a rooster there? Given how rough they are on the hens sometimes, that's

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rafadev ( 980736 )

        Plenty of eggs are perfectly ethical.

        My mom's flock of chickens roam the yard and gardens, eating bugs and whatever else they find interesting. They drop an egg every couple of days. Sure, hundreds of years ago those breeds were selected for being good layers, but if doing that is unethical, all of our food is unethical.

        Those unfertilized eggs are coming out of them unless there's a rooster to fertilize them. Is it unethical to not have a rooster there? Given how rough they are on the hens sometimes, that's a questionable view to hold.

        So happy chickens doing chicken stuff in a big yard, dropping unfertilized eggs when they feel like it because they're happy and well fed. Doesn't get much more ethical than that. Those chickens live a great life. Safety, security, ample food and water, a warm coop at night. Hell, if someone made me a similar offer, I'd definitely consider it.

        Even backyard chickes are not completely ethical. Here's a very good and short video that will explain it in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        To summarize, laying that many eggs, even if it's on your backyard, will inevitably take a huge toll on their bodies, and the reason for that is that they have been selected to lay 30 times more eggs than their ancestors used to.

        The unethical part of course it's not "not having a rooster there". The hens, naturally, will eat and enjoy their own unfertiliz

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Hens have been modified by artificial selection

      So are we to understand that you're against agricultural breeding of organisms? Unless you're a member of a hunter/gatherer group (which seems unlikely if you're posting on SlashDot) you literally do not eat anything that wasn't artificially bred to improve its food producing capabilities.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rafadev ( 980736 )

        Hens have been modified by artificial selection

        So are we to understand that you're against agricultural breeding of organisms? Unless you're a member of a hunter/gatherer group (which seems unlikely if you're posting on SlashDot) you literally do not eat anything that wasn't artificially bred to improve its food producing capabilities.

        No, what I'm against is the breeding of sentient beings for our benefit. Sentient beings are those with a nervous system that live a subjective life experience and can feel pain.

        The reason is, whether you like animals or not, it's undeniable that, even though their perceptions are different than ours, they are aware, they are "someone", so it's unethical to use them because we're not giving them a choice, they cannot decide whether they want that or not, and they only exist because we will obtain something

  • "There are two types of chickens: the broilers that we eat and the layers that produce the eggs."

    The capon is the 3rd one and taste the best.

  • Alternately you could sex select the chicken semen with sperm sorting. It's not normally done at large scale, but the basic underlying technology exists now.

  • It amuses me how they were happy to use the gender-specific term for female chickens, but avoided using one for males. I'm guessing it's so they could get social media sharing to help spread the story etc.

    Even so though, what's wrong with *rooster*? :)

    • Re:"hens" and "males" - why is that? (Score:4, Informative)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @11:32PM (#61131998)

      "Rooster" is an adult male chicken (or at least chicken-adjacent, there's other fowl that have roosters). Just as a newborn boy is not a man, an egg or male chick is not a rooster.

      The term you are looking for is cockerel; the answer you are looking for is "because news stories have to be written for the lowest common denominator".

  • "There are two types of chickens: the broilers that we eat and the layers that produce the eggs."

    Except for (classic) Rhode Island Reds, a chicken that was bred to be both

  • A colleague I knew a long time ago told me a story. His friend was in automation and had to go do a contract at a hatchery, specifically where they sex the chicks. The chicks come along a little conveyor belt, workers pick them up and check them, and throw the males into the center. It looks like one of those funnel things you used to see at the mall, where you drop a coin in and it keeps spinning around faster and faster. At the bottom is the hole, and underneath is just a fast spinning blade. He call

  • Bollocks. The bottom line is that it will make (more) money. There is zero considering of the consequences. That much is apparent from the articles on this.

  • If you care about ethical eggs, just don't eat eggs fer crissakes!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Just get the male chickens to identify as female so they can lay eggs too LOL.
    Sound absurd? Why do we allow this shit in our society then? Two sexes, male and female.

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