Current practices of the poultry industry have raised ethical and ecological concerns. Ethical concerns include the culling of day-old male chicks of egg-laying breeds; ecological concerns include the import of large quantities of soybeans for feed. Now, a research team at the University of Göttingen has investigated alternatives such as using a regional protein crop like broad beans (also known as faba or fava beans), and dual-purpose chicken breeds (i.e., suitable for both meat and egg-laying). They found that using broad beans as feed and dual-purpose breeds were both suitable alternatives that did not impact the quality of chicken meat. Their results were published in Foods.