France will ban the killing of male chicks by the end of next year, according to the country's agriculture minister Didier Guillaume. 

He told BFMTV that the poultry industry could move towards practices that would determine the sex of chickens while they are in the egg instead of killing male chicks at birth. "The aim is to oblige firms... to do this by the end of 2021," he said. 

Adult roosters develop less meat than their female counterparts and do not produce eggs. Because of this, producers say that they are not worth the effort to raise - and tens of millions are killed every year by either gassing or grinding.

Guillaume added that France will ban the castration of piglets without anesthetic. Both practices have been criticized by animal rights activists.

This comes several weeks after Guillaume and Germany's agriculture minister Julia Kloeckner said that they wanted their two countries to join forces to ban chick-culling in the EU.

"It's time to end the shredding of chicks. France and Germany should be the European motor to advance on this issue," Guillaume said. 

However, in June an administrative court in Germany rejected an attempt to ban the practice until an alternative method of sexing chicks is discovered. There is currently no way to determine the sex of a chicken embryo. ZRF, a German farmer's group, said that a banning of this practice without an "apparent solution" would harm domestic egg production and increase imports.