--- title: "Scientists Gene Edit Hens To Lay Eggs That Can Stop Developing Into Male Embryos" description: "Billions of male chicks are culled each year, so scientists have approached this grisly reality by limiting the amount of males born via gene-editing." date: "2022-12-16" modified: "2022-12-16" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-gene-edit-hens" categories: - "Gene Editing" - "Genetics" - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "Farming" - "gene-editing" - "livestock farming" --- # Scientists Gene Edit Hens To Lay Eggs That Can Stop Developing Into Male Embryos ![Billions of male chicks are culled each year, so scientists have approached this grisly reality by limiting the amount of males born via gene-editing.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* The mass culling of male chickens may eventually be a thing of the past, the [*BBC* reports](), because scientists claim they’ve gene edited hens to lay eggs which can be stopped from developing male embryos. Since male chickens don’t lay eggs and have less meat on their bones, they’re considered less valuable than their female counterparts and are often slaughtered, a grisly practice that kills billions of chicks each year. But if you can avoid male chickens being hatched more often than needed, the thinking goes, farmers could avoid killing them en masse. Leading the research is Yuval Cinnamon of the Volcani Institute, an agricultural research center in Israel. Cinnamon told the *BBC* that he thinks the gene-edited "Golda Hens" as he calls them, will be a massive boon for chicken welfare worldwide. "I am very happy that we have developed a system that I think can truly revolutionize the industry," he told the outlet, "first of all for the benefit of the chickens but also for all of us, because this is an issue that affects every person on the planet." As for how the technology works: in a nutshell — or eggshell, in this case — female chickens have one W and one Z chromosome (WZ). Males, on the other hand, just have two Z chromosomes (ZZ). Scientists can gene edit the Z chromosome of a female so that when it’s paired up with another Z chromosome from a mating rooster, farmers can then blast the egg embryo with blue light for a few hours, which stops the male embryo from developing at all. Since a female embryo takes the unedited W chromosome from its mother and the likewise unedited Z chromosome of its father, it won’t be affected. "Farmers will get the same chicks they get today and consumers will get exactly the same eggs they get today," assured Cinnamon. "The only minor difference in the production process is that the eggs will be exposed to blue light." However, Cinnamon and his team’s research remains unpublished, as they plan to license their technology. That means it hasn’t been looked at by an outside team of independent scientists, so healthy skepticism of their claims wouldn’t be unwarranted. To their credit, the scientists’ efforts have been shadowed by the British animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), whose chief policy advisor Peter Stephenson has backed the validity of the apparent breakthrough. "Normally I am very wary of using gene editing of farm animals," he said to the *BBC*. "But this is an exceptional case and I, and my colleagues at CIWF are supportive of it." "The next important step is to see whether the hen and the female chicks she produces, who will lay eggs for human consumption, can go through a commercial lifespan without any unexpected welfare issues arising," Stephenson added. If you're vegan or vegetarian, though, it probably sounds like a very roundabout way of lessening animal cruelty in farming — but it still might be a better alternative to shredding baby male chicks at birth. **More on gene-editing:** *[Doctors Gene-Edit Patient's Liver to Make Less Cholesterol]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()