Nearly 8 Billion Male Chicks Culled Per Year: A Transparent Global Estimate (Faunalytics)

Published on August 19, 2026 10:50 PM GMTFaunalytics has published a new report estimating global male chick culling — the killing of male chicks in the egg industry, usually within hours of hatching — at 7.83 billion in 2024, up about 11% from 7.08 billion in 2019. Here's why it may interest this community.Scale. At nearly 8 billion individuals a year, chick culling is one of the largest-scale animal welfare problems in the world. If male chicks were counted in global land-animal slaughter stat...