by then, these were still not ready for the market yet. In September 2019, in Switzerland, the parliament voted to outlaw the shredding of chickens. This is despite this practice not being used in Switzerland. It was further commented that: "This tendency to rear species only for the production of eggs or for meat turns animals into mere objects. It has led to absurd practices such as the shredding of living male chicks". However, the practice of gassing chicks, which kills about three million male baby chicks in Switzerland per year, remained legal. In late October 2019, French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume told France Inter: "We announced last week with my colleague, German Minister for Agriculture [Julia Klöckner], that we were going to stop the shredding of chicks, which is no longer bearable today. We said end of the year 2021." He further argued that the practice needed to be phased out and not immediately discontinued: "If we do it right away, what will happen? There won't be eggs anymore." On 13 January 2020, during an official visit of Guillaume to Klöckner, the Ministers said in a joint statement that France and Germany wanted to end the mass shredding of male chicks at the EU level by the end of 2021. Guillaume stated that "France and Germany should be the European motor to advance on this issue", with Klöckner adding that Germany's EU presidency in the second half of 2020 was a good opportunity to do so. The countries planned to bring together various groups to share scientific knowledge and implement alternative methods. On 28 January 2020, Guillaume repeated at a press conference that the culling of unwanted male chicks (by shredding) would be outlawed in France by the end of 2021. While some animal rights activists welcomed the move, others said that the decision did not go far enough. The minister's entourage told Agence France-Presse that it was unclear whether his announced ban also included asphyxiation by CO2 (which was excluded from the Swiss ban), pressing him to explicitly prohibit that chick culling method as well. In early February 2020, four Dutch animal rights organisations sent letters to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the Parliamentary Commission on Agriculture urging them to follow the examples given by Switzerland and France, and phase out all chick culling including gassing in the Netherlands by the end of 2021. The Dutch Ministry of