Apparently at the embryonic stage they don't qualify as conscious "chickens".
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...vent-that/
EXCERPT: The world’s first no-kill eggs are now on sale in Germany thanks to a new technology capable of determining the gender of a chick before it hatches, potentially putting an end to the global practice of shredding billions of living male chicks per year. [...] male chicks are killed ... because they don’t lay eggs, making it uneconomical to grow them.
[...] That’s where the noninvasive SELEGGT method comes in. The now-patented early screening uses endocrinological gender identification to determine the sex of a chick between 7 and 10 days after an egg has been fertilized. The automated process takes an egg that has been in the incubator for nine days and uses a sensor to check whether the egg is fertilized. If so, a laser cuts a small hole in the eggshell to extract a “minimal amount” of allantois fluid (fetal membrane) from within, leaving the chicks “untouched" and “safe and sound”.
[...] With an accuracy rate of about 98 percent, the test allows fertilized male eggs and unfertilized eggs to be turned into high-quality feed, while fertilized female eggs are put back into the incubation to hatch on the 21st day....
MORE: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...vent-that/
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...vent-that/
EXCERPT: The world’s first no-kill eggs are now on sale in Germany thanks to a new technology capable of determining the gender of a chick before it hatches, potentially putting an end to the global practice of shredding billions of living male chicks per year. [...] male chicks are killed ... because they don’t lay eggs, making it uneconomical to grow them.
[...] That’s where the noninvasive SELEGGT method comes in. The now-patented early screening uses endocrinological gender identification to determine the sex of a chick between 7 and 10 days after an egg has been fertilized. The automated process takes an egg that has been in the incubator for nine days and uses a sensor to check whether the egg is fertilized. If so, a laser cuts a small hole in the eggshell to extract a “minimal amount” of allantois fluid (fetal membrane) from within, leaving the chicks “untouched" and “safe and sound”.
[...] With an accuracy rate of about 98 percent, the test allows fertilized male eggs and unfertilized eggs to be turned into high-quality feed, while fertilized female eggs are put back into the incubation to hatch on the 21st day....
MORE: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an...vent-that/