That's actually illegal in Germany since 2019 or so. We now have egg scanners that can determine the embryo's sex early on and destroy the rooster eggs.
Unfortunately, it does not scale rather well to the high demand in other countries like the US
They have not yet tried to sell the technology to the US egg industry but, even if they did, the volume it can handle is currently too low for this technology to be used to get rid of chick culling across the board.
There's also evidence to suggest it might not be early enough and that they might still be able to feel pain at that point
One issue that complicates these efforts is the difficult-to-answer question of when an embryo becomes a chick. Some researchers say day seven is when chick embryos can begin to experience pain. If that’s right, sexing the eggs eight to 10 days after incubation as Respeggt does, and 14 days as Agri-AT does, may still end up inflicting pain on the embryo, which could be trading one animal welfare problem — culling — for another
The reasoning for it is that male chickens are near worthless. They fight and injure themselves and others. They don't taste very good and most people won't eat them therefore they aren't worth the feed to fatten them up for slaughter.
The solution is to kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. The shredder looks bad but they die instantly, no pain, no suffering. Their bodies are then used in products such as dog and cat food.
No, PETA is a horrible organization. I would go as far as to say they very well might be the definition of virtue signalling. They literally do everything they supposedly claim to stand against.
I don't like the word (in-)humane. Etymologically human and humane have the same origin (big surprise). But, humane got purportedly human characteristics attached to it and now means something different. Though, for example, they translate to the same word in German (menschlich). I'd like to suggest a little thought experiment:
Whenever somebody says "X is humane.", ask yourself: Would it exist, if humans did not exist? If the answer is yes, humane is not the right word.
Whenever somebody says "X is inhumane.", ask yourself: Would it exist if humans didn't exist? If the answer is no, inhumane is a very poor and misleading choice of word.
And the opposite is the case: Evedently, X is very human; Hence humane is a poor fit too, because there is obviously a conflict in meaning.
Example: Building machines to shred millions of chicks is inhumane. Well, without humans such machines wouldn't exist, hence inhumane is a poor choice of word. Humane can't be a good choice either, because of the conflicting meaning.
Bonus: Here, have some synonyms for in-/humane, that almost always are a better fit, whatever the context:
What you are describing is precisely why the animal agriculture industry uses the word humane and why we should point out the hypocrisy. Very few people would agree if they said that what they were doing is "benevolent", "kind", or "compassionate". It would be pretty obvious that that's not the case. But by using a word like humane which our culture has muddied they can get away with it. That's why we have to call them out when they talk about "humane" methods of slaughter or that the way they treat the animals is "humane".
I mean, they wouldn't even be wrong if they said it was human. And by extention, one could argue that it was humane, when applying the origional meaning of the word. In my opinion people would be just as incorrect by saying what they were doing was inhumane. My beef here really is with the words humane and inhumane. The way people use these words, is perpetuating a lie about human character. Both words shouldn't be used at all. Genocide is (in)human(e), slavery is (in)human(e), *ism is (in)human(e), ..., pretty much every form of cruelty present on planet Earth is (in)human(e)*.
*) to be read as human, humane, inhumane (excluding inhuman)