You Can Now Buy Eggs From In-Ovo Sexed Hens!
Consumers can vote with their wallets to support this new tech.
In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for meat, and another 10% even think that male chickens can lay eggs. Most people are surprised, and often disturbed, to learn the truth: in the United States alone, approximately 350 million male chicks are routinely culled each year, typically by methods such as maceration (being ground up alive).
However, when introduced to in-ovo sexing technology, an alternative which allows producers to identify and remove male eggs so that only females hatch, consumer interest is overwhelming. 73% of Americans describe themselves as “extremely” or “very” interested in eggs produced using this more ethical method.
This question is now no longer a hypothetical: consumers now have the opportunity to vote with their wallets to support this new practice. NestFresh is debuting eggs from in-ovo sexed hens under the "Humanely Hatched" label, now available at select Whole Foods locations in the Southwest and soon expanding nationwide. Another brand, Kipster, will follow later this fall with its own line. Keep an eye out for these brands next time you shop—your purchase can help accelerate a critical shift toward more humane egg production.
These launches mark an important turning point for the US egg industry. After many years of scaling up in Europe, where in-ovo sexing is now 28% of the market, the technology has finally arrived in the US. The first in-ovo sexed chicks were hatched last December, and their eggs are just now hitting shelves. NestFresh and Kipster are the pioneers of this technology, and NestFresh in particular deserves credit for actively driving progress in the US. As early adopters, they are taking on some business risk since in-ovo sexed chicks are currently more expensive. This means that these companies had to invest significantly more in their flocks, and their bet is that they’ll be able to sell more of their eggs to recoup their investment. In other words, they’re hoping that the self-reported survey data about consumer interest in in-ovo sexing holds in practice.
Hopefully, many other brands will quickly follow the lead of these two companies. However, it takes six months from hatching for chicks to reach laying age, meaning that these might be the only two brands available in the US for a while.
How male chick culling started, and how it will stop
Like many welfare challenges, male chick culling was a side-effect of industrialization in poultry farming. Historically, chickens served dual purposes: first providing eggs and then eventually being slaughtered for meat. However, in the push towards economic efficiency, the poultry industry split into two distinct markets, one for eggs and one for meat, each using intensive genetic selection to optimize for their distinct economic goals. In egg production, efficiency meant selecting hens that laid as frequently and consistently as possible. In meat production, it meant selecting chickens that grew rapidly, converted feed efficiently into muscle, and produced larger, more desirable cuts like the breast.
This specialization is why chicken meat and eggs are some of the cheapest and most abundant sources of animal protein we have today. But another consequence was that male chickens in the egg industry stopped serving any economic purpose. Since these males neither lay eggs nor efficiently produce meat, hatcheries found it economically necessary to cull them shortly after hatching.
Clearly, there’s some amount of waste inherent in doing things this way—we incubate and hatch hundreds of millions of eggs only to discard half of them. But this practice persisted because the economic benefits of using genetically specialized breeds outweighed the cost of that waste. The power of technology in this case is to allow us to optimize in both directions at once. In-ovo sexing lets us preserve the efficiency of genetic specialization while eliminating the need for chick culling, offering both ethical progress and, eventually, economic efficiency.
There are multiple approaches to in-ovo sexing. One of the most prominent approaches uses advanced imaging to detect subtle optical differences between male and female embryos. NestFresh’s Humanely Hatched eggs use a technology of this type called Cheggy, developed by Agri-Advanced Technologies, which uses hyperspectral imaging to detect subtle differences in feather color between male and female embryos.
Another widely adopted technique involves taking a small fluid sample from inside the egg to test for sex-specific hormones or genetic markers. Kipster’s eggs, launching later this year, will use a technology of this class employing PCR analysis to detect the sex chromosome, developed by the company Respeggt.
The path to common practice
In the long term, in-ovo sexing is likely to become economically advantageous compared to traditional manual sexing methods, and scale is the key to making this happen. As in-ovo sexing becomes more widely available, economies of scale and technological refinements will help bring its cost down. Fundamentally, in-ovo sexing is an automation technology, replacing highly skilled human laborers with precise and optimizable machines.
There are also co-benefits working in in-ovo sexing’s favor: removing male eggs early frees up incubator space for other productive uses. Additionally, once male eggs can be removed, other beneficial practices such as on-farm hatching and in-ovo vaccination could yield further productivity increases (as well as additional welfare benefits) that help defray the cost of in-ovo sexing.
However, we’re not there yet. In-ovo sexing is still at the beginning stages of its rollout, and while it has become substantially cheaper since it became available 7 years ago, it still adds a few cent per dozen to the production cost of eggs. This is why initial adoption has been limited to premium brands like NestFresh and Kipster, which supply higher-value categories such as free-range and pasture-raised. Customers of these brands have already demonstrated their willingness to pay a substantial premium for eggs produced in a better way.
One of the more underrated challenges of technological development in the physical world is that it’s not sufficient for a technology to be economically advantageous in the abstract. It also needs a path to scale. If we suppose that widespread adoption would, in theory, create the economies of scale needed to make the technology cost-effective, this doesn’t guarantee this adoption happens. There needs to be a clear economic rationale for the first hatchery to install a machine, then the second, and so forth. Each level of scale requires its own economic calculus.
In the case of in-ovo sexing, this pathway to scale exists because there are consumers willing to pay slightly more for ethically-produced eggs. The egg market already has a clearly defined premium structure ranging from conventional to cage-free, free-range, and pasture-raised, with each category reflecting increased prices and higher welfare standards. A new technology like in-ovo sexing can start in the most premium parts of the market, then move downmarket as adoption expands, the technology matures, and costs decline.1
This is why it’s so important that the initial entrants into this new egg category succeed. Forward-thinking companies like NestFresh and Kipster are betting that consumers will reward their investments by buying more of their eggs. But not every company in the egg industry is prepared to take such risks. Many are waiting until there’s clear market evidence before following suit. If the first wave of Humanely Hatched eggs succeeds commercially, other producers will jump in to capture a piece of this premium market, broadening adoption and helping bring costs down.
So next time you find yourself in the egg section, consider purchasing eggs from NestFresh or Kipster. You'll not only have the comfort of knowing that no male chicks were harmed to produce your eggs, you'll also be sending a powerful market signal: ethical egg production matters to consumers. Your purchase will help in-ovo sexing technology scale and make it more likely that it eventually becomes standard practice across the entire industry.
The path to scalability doesn’t always have to rely on consumers paying more for ethical reasons. Another common path is to start in smaller markets with more favorable economics. Even if these markets alone can’t justify the full investment needed for commercialization, they can serve as valuable stepping stones. For example, it can be extremely difficult to commercialize new technologies in the chicken meat market, because of the low economic value per bird. However, often birds that are more valuable per-head such as turkeys or breeders (the parents of the chickens we eat) can provide an easier entry point to start the scaling process. To make an analogy in the climate space, Tesla’s path to scalability went through premium cars with higher willingness-to-pay consumers, while solar panels first gained traction in off-grid markets like satellites.
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What happens to the eggs that have been in-ovo identified as male?