What you should know about this indicator
- Chick culling is the killing of newly hatched male chicks, which cannot lay eggs.
- Hens that lay eggs come from different breeds than chickens raised for meat (called "broilers"). The male chicks of egg-laying breeds grow more slowly and give less meat than broilers, so raising them is not profitable.
- Billions of male baby chicks are estimated to be killed around the world every year.
- This data shows the legal status of chick culling, not how widely it is practiced.
- Bans in Austria and France still allow the killing of baby chicks that are used as animal feed.
- Bans prohibit killing chicks within the country, but not exporting them. After Germany's ban, male chicks have reportedly been transported to other countries where culling remains legal.
- There is no EU-wide ban on chick culling. The European Commission has committed to proposing EU-wide rules to end the systematic killing of male chicks by the end of 2026.
- The main alternative to chick culling is "in-ovo sexing", a technology that determines the sex of the embryo inside the egg, so that eggs with male embryos can be discarded well before hatching.
- Ducklings are also killed soon after hatching in major duck-egg producing countries like China. No law specifically bans the culling of ducklings.
- France's ban on chick culling explicitly excludes ducklings. In foie gras production it is the female ducklings that are killed, as their livers are less profitable.
More Data on Animal Welfare
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
Countries for which we found no law on chick culling are shown as "Not banned". Chick culling bans are notable legislative events that animal advocacy organizations track closely, so a country with no known law can safely be assumed to have no ban.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Which countries have banned chick culling?”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Animal Welfare”. Data adapted from Various sources. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260902-190917/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.html [online resource] (archived on September 2, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Various sources (2026) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Various sources (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Which countries have banned chick culling?” [dataset]. Various sources, “Chick culling laws” [original data]. Retrieved September 14, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260902-190917/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.html (archived on September 2, 2026).Download
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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banning-of-chick-culling.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear