German organic supermarket chain Alnatura has launched a scheme to stop the immediate discarding of male chicks. According to the Verbraucherzentrale NRW, around 50 million male, one-day old chicks are culled in Germany every year, serving no economic purpose.
The new Alnatura initiative aims to cover the expense of raising the discarded chicks for their meat instead, by selling its organic eggs at an extra 4 to 5 cent per egg.
Recent pilot projects in North Germany have shown a positive response from customers and the company expects to gradually extend its 'brother-chick' (Bruderküken) scheme nationwide.
"As the first nationwide organics' supermarket, we are going down this road for ethical reasons," said Robert Poschacher, responsible for Product Management at Alnatura, adding: "At the moment, there are only regional 'brother-chick' schemes. We want to offer the new Alnatura eggs in all Alnatura Supermarkets, as well as through affiliated trade partners, as soon as possible."
The German 'Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food' has estimated the egg-consumption in Germany to be around 19 billion eggs per year.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Martha Sparrius. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
