The societal acceptance of the Combination chicken and sexing un-incubated eggs through genetic modification

In the Netherlands over 45 million male chicks annually are killed immediately after hatching, This mass killing raises discussions. The public would prefer an alternative that would sex un-incubated eggs or less-specialised chicken. DLO will start research into alternatives to the culling of male chicks: the GM chicken and the Combination chicken. Both alternatives have societal consequences and also may be problematic from an ethical perspective. The general research question of our project is how to integrate the technical- , social- and ethical aspects of the two alternatives to the killing of male chicks through a joint, interdisciplinary and integrated approach to achieve best animal welfare. The overall aim of the project is to provide researchers and stakeholders with a conceptual framework and strategies that will help them to understand, evaluate and monitor the integration of the technical-, social- and ethical aspects of the two alternatives to the killing of male chicks (think of insight in success and failure factors and boundary conditions to certain strategies) as well as recommendations for policy makers on how to facilitate research initiatives on alternatives in their attempt to gain public support. The project comprises an interdisciplinary effort through a post-doc project addressing the fundamental knowledge gaps, and one (part-time) DLO project to ensure integrated knowledge development with stakeholder participation at the applied level. As part of the project a series of workshops with all project participants and the valorisation panel will be organized to integrate the new scientific knowledge, emerging from the PostDoc-project.