Could a New Technology Change How We Manage Egg-Layers?

In the United States, billions of day-old male chicks are culled every year because they can't lay eggs and they aren't the fast-growing breed that are typically raised for meat. There is a cost to this that is both economic and political. On the economic side there is the cost of incubating those billions of eggs that will not turn into egg-layers. On the political side are the Animal-rights activists whose protests have been effective enough that the largest egg producers on the planet have agreed that they will stop the practice of macerating male chicks by 2020 or sooner if a new technology provides an alternative. That day may be coming soon. Vital Farms has announced a new technology that can sex eggs the day they are laid. The Texas-based company that sells eggs from pasture-raised chickens in 5,000 stores nationwide partnered with an Israeli firm, Novatrans, to make this technology commercially available within a year. "TeraEgg" is a machine the size of a boardroom table that determines the