by Noga Porat
CHICK FLICK
NEW YORK
NASHVILLE • MELBOURNE • VANCOUVER
CHICK FLICK
© 2018 Noga Porat
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902781
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“Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people”
Heinrich Heine, 1821
Certainly the same should be concluded about the senseless tossing away of billions of day-old male chicks
I dedicate this book to the memory of my beloved Father.
If only every girl in this world had a father like him, if only…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank Sara Stratton for recognizing the potential of this endeavor and lighting the candle in my heart that burns for these injustices - a candle that almost blew out in the wind of life. For your experience and intelligence that allowed you this choice, I am forever grateful.
I want to thank J. from BusinessGhost, Inc for rummaging through my dresser drawer and making sense of my hidden work notes to illuminate the untold story of male chicks in the poultry industry. Your writing is impeccable, thrilling and inspiring.
I want to thank my mother for always standing by my side as I heal and walk through the journeys of pain. Life takes us by surprise, but your unwavering loyalty is not surprising, it is inherent in your character and the core strength of our bond. I love you, Mom!
You three women make all the hard work worthwhile.
For the rest of you who never invested but gave me good stories to tell, good laughs, good advice and good times…thanks for all the BS.
It took me a long time to understand the importance of details. In my mind, when something was close, it was usually close enough.
Had I figured this out sooner, I might have been an engineer today—so close was my grade to the requirement for acceptance. Ironically, that fine detail, the two points I was missing from my score, was a detail I understood well enough. Those points would haunt me for a while, but the future had something else in mind for me.
Instead of engineering, I studied biology in school. Basic science is the business of acquiring knowledge; scientific research is like uncovering Mother Nature’s secrets. I wanted more, though; I wanted to create things with the knowledge I acquired. Not content to be constrained by details, I preferred to use my imagination. It’s a misconception that scientists aren’t creative; we’re just like any other artist, in fact. Our canvas is drastically different, but the strokes of our paint can achieve the same means.
I remember working on a project in the lab at school for my master’s degree. A friend next door was working on a fascinating subject, exploring mechanisms to repair DNA. To simplify things, I liked to think of it as a DNA spell-checker. When DNA, the genetic material, is copied, errors are incorporated, just as spelling mistakes are incorporated when copying written information. The cell machinery repairs these mistakes by removing these “misspellings” and incorporating the correct “letters.”
There was one factor of the cell machinery that I especially enjoyed: an enzyme—or in biological terms, a DNA “repair machine”—that could fix a specific “spelling mistake” all on its own. For instance, if every c is required to be a k, this amazing cellular machine would edit every c that needed to be corrected back to a k.
Unlike me, my father had an incredible eye for detail. Growing up, he paid particular attention while checking for spelling mistakes in my homework assignments. Each time I wrote a composition, he would take the time to sit with me, correcting my spelling and grammar. And this is why, when I learned that cells have a machine that functions similarly to my father, my first and best editor, I thought it was wonderful! Nothing expresses our thoughts, our creative inclinations, better than words, and spelling and grammar are what help make that communication clear.
Once I learned that cells have a “spell-checker,” I felt compelled to understand it all, every last detail. This was a new feeling for me. I felt a tingle each time I found a new article on this subject. Little did I know how much this small, unique, elegant cellular machine would occupy my time and thoughts for the following ten years. I was so infatuated with this miraculous “spell-checker” enzyme that I had come up with ideas as to how to use it as a tool in biology, and even developed my own methods to use it in. In pursuit of my infatuation, I rented lab space, using my own seed money with the thought that if my research progressed, I could secure investments shortly thereafter.
Soon, I hit a wall; I needed real tissue samples to check my method of utilizing the “spell-checker” enzyme, rather than the synthetic DNA on which I’d been testing it. My friend Hayley was a biologist who rented space in the same lab complex, and I was talking to her when I discovered something that would eventually crack my world wide open.
“I’m at a dead end,” I told her. “I need tissue samples.”
“I know a company that uses chicken DNA as their study model,” Hayley shared.
Not a bad idea, I thought, and that won’t require an approval from a Helsinki committee. “What are they working on?”
I listened with rapt attention as Hayley explained that the company was working on trying to differentiate female from male chicks while the chicks were still in the egg, before they hatched. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to see this as a problem that needed to be solved, until:
“It’s horrible, you know. What happens to the newborn chicks.”
I had to admit I didn’t know.
“The poultry industry destroys newborn chicks left and right. It’s not even an industry secret; it’s just chalked up as the cost of doing business,” she said.
What followed was a crash course in one of the facets of the world of poultry called the “layer industry.” In the layer industry, the lives of male chicks had no value; only the females were needed to lay eggs. After hatching, male chicks are segregated and tossed into the garbage, completely without ceremony, usually in a dumpster behind the hatchery. All to the tune of two billion newborn chicks executed annually.
I had to know more. That night, I picked through the mess of my apartment and uncovered my computer. (My fastidiousness in the lab did not extend to my home! One of the perks of living alone, of course, is that it doesn’t matter). I sat down and searched for more information, first making the unfortunate mistake of trying to Google “Chick Sexing” (don’t do it!). After a few searches that were more finely tuned, I saw that the facts from Hayley’s introductory lesson indeed bore out. It was amazing to me, in the most horrible sense, that in a world where we’ve put a man on the moon and you can have a morning meeting in Japan and an evening Skype with South Dakota, we are c
hecking every single hatched chick by hand and destroying every male.
To help with the sexing process, the male and female laying chickens are genetically engineered to have different wing shapes. In the broiler industry—which produces chickens that we eat—separation isn’t an issue. Thankfully, we eat both sexes of the broilers.
As horrified as I was by this new information, I was excited by the challenge too. The art of science is in solving problems, making things better. I had to research it further. I had so many questions. Why were they still separating them manually? Why not automatically, earlier, while still in the egg? What was the holdup? Was it scientifically challenging, or was it cheaper to preserve the status quo? I was sure it was scientifically possible, so maybe the poultry industry was way behind. Or maybe they just didn’t care about the pain inflicted on these newborn chicks. Either way, I needed answers.
A farmer friend helped me obtain samples of blood from under the wing of both male and female chickens. Once I had real DNA to work on, I hurried back to the lab. I wanted to see if I could use the novel “spell-checker” method I had been developing to differentiate male and female DNA extracted from the chickens’ blood. All of the sudden, I felt I had found the killer application for my method—though I don’t mean that in the literal sense!
I had entered a zone; nourished by my work, I didn’t feel the need to eat or sleep. I knew that if I could solve this problem, I’d be on my way to accomplishing an honorable and important goal, one that I could be proud of. Scientists set out to change the world not just because we can, but because we can make life better. I wanted to prevent pain inflicted on any life, fellow or fowl—no matter how small.
Business wasn’t my forte, but I knew enough to know that if I wanted my idea to change the world, or at least the layer industry, I would need to find some backers. Suddenly, I wasn’t just talking about a scientific application; I was talking about a start-up. Reaching into my network for contacts, I found the name of a biotech guru, Dr. Eric Walters, who headed up Splice Incubator, a promising outfit that gave scientists a space to incubate start-ups and help them grow. I smiled to myself as I tapped out an e-mail to Dr. Walters; I’d need two kinds of incubators now, one for my research project and another for chicken eggs.
Incubators are essential to scientists and entrepreneurs who are working by themselves or with a small team. It’s not often you’ll have the resources to purchase a lab, not to mention all the administrative minutia you need to run an office. If you rent space in an incubator, you’ve got all kinds of resources at your fingertips, including advisors for financing, intellectual property, and on and on—all the things that one doesn’t want to be bothered with when working on the bench in the lab. The downside? Someone has to pay for this stuff, obviously; that was part of the reason I needed investors.
First, though, I needed a partner. Todd Johnson was a good friend of mine who was just out of a start-up that had sold for a pretty penny. He was a numbers guy, mainly in the tech sector, with a background in computer science. He didn’t know much about biotech, but I knew what I needed most was someone who could work magic at meetings with potential investors. He believed in the mission, and that was the first and most important point. Before I knew it, he’d crafted an incredibly persuasive business proposal just based on the little background I was able to help him absorb.
“It’s not my first time at the rodeo, Scarlet,” he’d said with a wink.
Clearly not.
Dr. Walters was impressed with the proposal, but we wanted to do our due diligence before we committed to signing on the dotted line with Splice. Todd was looking into meeting with a potential investor from the poultry industry. The investor, John Stanley, owned several hatcheries around the world, and was well aware of the problem we were aiming to fix. He seemed courteous and curious in his manner toward us, but I couldn’t help but feel like he felt a head above us, as if he were there to give us an education rather than give us a chance to pitch him our business idea.
“I’m sure you’re aware of the sheer size and financial clout of the poultry industry,” he said, emphasizing the billions of dollars that changed hands around the layers and broilers each year.
This was accurate, and we certainly were well aware. Despite the gross financial product of the industry, it was still relatively small in scope; only four major corporations controlled the industry in the United States. Of these, the largest company, Avian Industrial, made $26 billion in the last year from egg-to-plate processing.
“These guys own this business,” Stanley said. “From the farmer’s hardworking hands all the way to the food on your breakfast plate. If you are going to sell this chick-sexing application, they are the people to impress. You really only have four customers.”
Stanley was right, of course, but I hadn’t thought about it in this way. Making four people happy didn’t sound like it would be too hard; on the other hand, if those four hands shook against you, you were shut out for good.
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” I asked.
He smiled.
“Imagine the downside to dealing with a cartel,” he said. I tried to hide my look of concern, but he was an experienced businessperson; he read me like an open book. “But, if you get their attention, you’re off to a good start.”
I felt hopeful, convinced that my idea was a great one, bound to capture the attention of the industry.
“I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that,” I said confidently. “I’m an idealist. I believe that if we can produce a more humane solution to the problem, the industry will be all ears. It’s a universal law that everyone prefers the moral high ground.”
He chuckled.
“Listen. I know these guys. I’ve been at the table with them. They aren’t easily impressed,” he said. “I think what would really get their attention was if you could differentiate female from male eggs in ovo after only three days of incubation. What are your margins now?”
“Three days?” This was the first time Todd had piped up since the meeting had started. “We’re nowhere near three days.”
“It takes twenty-one days for an egg to hatch,” I offered. “There’s a larger window than just three days.”
Again, Stanley cut me off. I couldn’t tell if he really knew something we didn’t, or if it was just his arrogance coming through. I thought that maybe he was underestimating me because I was a young woman. I sat up straighter, steeling myself for the patronizing lecture that might come.
“Scarlet, the moral issue may be important to you. But to the big four?” He made a motion like he was swatting away a fly. “You need more to get to them. If you can sex the chicks after three days of incubation, we can still sell them as eating eggs. We can make a profit on those male eggs.”
“So this is about money?” I asked.
I didn’t have the courage to look at Todd. I knew where he might come down on the issue; I’d convinced him of the moral importance of my project, but Todd was a businessperson first and foremost. I worried that he might be too easily swayed by talk of financial gain.
“Of course it is!” Stanley said, incredulous. “We are talking about peoples’ livelihood, Scarlet, and if you try and mess with it, those industry people will get upset. They are used to their set ways. What am I going to do with the eggs if you sex them after three days? I can’t sell those to moms to make breakfast with.”
I shook my head. On this issue, I felt I could not budge.
“It’s simply not possible to sex them before three days,” I said. “The embryos don’t even develop blood vessels until the fourth day. I need the blood vessels to draw the blood that I’ll use to test the DNA.”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, gathering his briefcase and standing up before Todd had another chance to open his mouth. “If I can’t make a profit, sweetness, I can’t do business.”
As Todd and I walked through the city streets away from the meeting, my emotions ran
the gamut from disappointment to anger to hope to disappointment again. It was summer in the city, and the steam rising from the asphalt seemed to mix with the steam coming from my ears.
Todd knew me well enough to know what was spinning through my mind.
“That guy’s a jerk, Scarlet,” he said. “He had no right to speak to you like that.”
I looked to the sidewalk and watched tall, powerful men coming in and out of high buildings. I made a promise that I’d never let myself get so discouraged again that I would consider giving up on my dream; I don’t want to prove the jerks of the world right. I gave him a quick pat on the shoulder to thank him and started walking faster. Surprised, he scrambled to catch up.
“Where are you off to now?”
I pulled out my phone and started thumbing through the contact list.
“I have an idea.”
Todd loosened his tie, the sweat starting to soak through his collar as I walked faster and faster, nearly bowling into a food cart as I moved along the sidewalk.
“You seem to have a lot of those these days,” he said.
I knew that we were down, but not out. If anything, the meeting with the potential investor had given me another puzzle to solve. In order to make our product attractive to outside capital, we had to figure out how to make a profit. We needed to make this about money after all—not because I believed in my moral cause any less, but because money was the key to attracting investors to help us realize the dream.
Hayley had given me a contact of an old friend of hers who had long ago made the leap from scientist to profiteer. Dean Albert worked for one of the processing plants that contracted to Avian Industrial, and he’d be the perfect person to help us do our homework on the ground level.
“It costs us one cent to separate each egg manually,” Dean said as he offered us each a bottle of water and we split our attentions between the man behind the desk and the organized mayhem of the processing floor below. You could see it through large, spotless glass windows that overlooked the floor. “And we don’t do the separation here. We buy them from the hatcheries already separated.”