Chickens are one of the most widely consumed meats worldwide. In fact, in the United States alone, chicken is the most popular meat, with Americans eating more chicken than beef or pork. But with this huge demand for chicken meat comes a sobering reality – the massive scale of chickens being raised and slaughtered daily to meet this appetite. So just how many chickens are killed per day? Let’s take a look at the numbers behind the poultry industry.
Millions of Chickens Killed Daily in the U.S.
About 9 billion broiler chickens are killed every year in the United States, according to the National Chicken Council. That’s an average of 246 million chickens killed every day! To give you an idea, if you lined up 24 6 million chickens, the line would be 89,600 miles long, which is long enough to go around the Earth three times. 6 times.
This staggering number is driven by America’s voracious appetite for chicken. According to the NCC, the average American consumes 97 pounds of chicken meat annually translating to demand for a lot of chickens. Industrialized farming practices also enable chickens to be raised and processed efficiently in huge numbers. Modern slaughterhouses utilize technology to kill up to 140,000 birds per hour.
Billions of Chickens Killed Globally Each Year
Worldwide the numbers are even more shocking. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) over 77 billion chickens are slaughtered globally per year. That equates to about 211 million chickens killed daily around the world.
The countries with the highest number of chickens killed annually include the U.S., China, Brazil, Russia and India. However, on a per capita basis, Americans lead chicken consumption, eating more chicken meat per person than any other country.
Why Are So Many Chickens Being Killed?
A few key factors drive the massive scale of chickens being raised and slaughtered:
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Growing Population – As the global population increases, so does demand for meat, including chicken. More mouths to feed means more chickens being grown and harvested.
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Dietary Shifts – In many countries, consumers are choosing chicken more often over other meats perceived as less healthy like beef or pork. Chicken is seen as a lean, low-fat protein option.
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Industrial Farming—To increase production, modern industrial chicken farming uses technologies that make it more efficient, such as mechanized slaughter, crowded housing, and chicken breeds that grow quickly.
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Consumer Demand – Quite simply, we love our chicken! Features like low cost, versatility and widespread availability make chicken a consumer favorite.
The True Costs Behind Cheap Chicken
With America’s seeming insatiable hunger for chicken, it’s easy to take for granted the true costs of delivering cheap, abundant poultry. Behind the staggering numbers of daily chicken casualties lie concerns over:
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Animal Welfare—Many people wonder if chickens in industrial farms can live good lives because of the stress of living in crowded, overcrowded spaces.
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Worker Safety – Processing plants rely on low-wage, often immigrant labor working in hazardous conditions.
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Environmental Impacts – From air and water pollution to deforestation for feed crops, large-scale chicken farming taxes natural resources.
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Food safety: Food safety problems can happen when chicken is handled incorrectly, putting people at risk of getting food-borne illnesses.
As consumers, we have power through our choices to demand ethically raised chicken. Seeking out humanely-raised, organic and free-range chicken supports alternative production models. Reducing our overall chicken intake also helps cut back on daily chicken deaths.
Big Numbers Prompt Big Questions
Learning that over 24 million chickens are killed daily in America and 211 million globally is startling. It prompts us to ask tough questions like:
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Should we be more mindful of the chickens behind our chicken dishes?
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Is it ethical to raise chickens solely for human consumption?
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How do we balance our nutritional needs with compassion for animals?
This massive scale of chicken slaughter for meat points to the intricate, multi-faceted relationships between human beings, the animals we eat, and the environment we ultimately all share. The staggering numbers serve as a reminder to think deeply about the true impacts of our food choices.
What would be the benefits of reducing our meat consumption?
Meat production has a number of large negative impacts on the environment, wildlife, and our health.
Viewed from the other side, this means that the benefits of reducing meat consumption are large. What would some of these benefits be?.
Less land use for agriculture and more biodiversity: The use of land for agriculture is the main driver of biodiversity loss. 3 Today, almost half of the world’s ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture, and most of this land is used by livestock. 37 million square kilometers of land are used for meat and dairy production around the world. That’s as much land as is in all of North and South America, from Alaska in the north to Cape Horn in the south.
As my colleague Hannah Ritchie showed, if we didn’t eat meat, it would be possible to reduce agricultural land from 4 to 1 billion hectares. Less meat consumption would be great for animals all over the world because wild areas could grow back and provide homes for wildlife. 4.
Benefits for the world’s climate: Cutting down on meat consumption would also help fight climate change. It would lower emissions from cows poop and manure, as well as emissions from cutting down trees and changing how land is used.
Less antibiotic resistance: Reducing the worlds meat consumption would decrease the use of antibiotics in livestock farming, a practice that contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This reduction could preserve the efficacy of existing antibiotics and the health of people around the world.
Lower risk of pandemics: Many infectious diseases originate in other animals. The high-density conditions in many meat production facilities create ideal environments for the mutation and spread of pathogens. Reducing global meat consumption would reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases and the risks of suffering another pandemic.
Less animal suffering: Coming back to the starting point of this short text, less meat consumption would mean less suffering for animals.
I think this future is possible. I can imagine a future in which our grandchildren look back at our time and find it hard to believe that we today are living in a world in which we kill hundreds of millions of fish, 900,000 cows, 1.4 million goats, 1.7 million sheep, 3.8 million pigs, 11.8 million ducks, and more than 200 million chicken every day.
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, Fiona Spooner, Bastian Herre, and Edouard Mathieu for their helpful comments on this essay and visualization.
Explore more research and data on Our World in Data:
- Check out our Food Data Explorer. One thing it shows is that in some countries, people are eating less meat.
- Why do so many people say they are vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian? That’s the question my coworkers Hannah Ritchie and Edouard Mathieu wrote an article about.
Hundreds of millions of animals get killed for meat every day.
The scale of humanity’s meat consumption is enormous. 360 million tonnes of meat every year.
This number is so large that I find it impossible to comprehend. What helps me to make these numbers more relatable is to turn them from the weight of meat to the number of animals and from the yearly total to the daily number. This is what I have done in the graphic below. It shows how many animals are slaughtered on any average day.
About 900,000 cows are slaughtered every day. If every cow was 2 meters long, and they all walked right behind each other, this line of cows would stretch for 1800 kilometers.1 This represents the number of cows slaughtered every day.
For chickens, the daily count is extremely large – 202 million chickens every day. To comprehend the scale, it is better to bring it down to the average minute: 140,000 chickens are slaughtered every minute.
The number of fish killed every day is very uncertain. I discuss this in some detail at the end of this article. But while the uncertainties are large, it is clear that the number of fish killed is large: certainly, hundreds of millions of fish are killed every day.
If you believe that the slaughter of animals causes them to suffer and attribute even a small measure of ethical significance to their suffering, then the moral scale of this reality is immense.
From the perspective of animal suffering, it is the absolute numbers of animals that matter, but if you want to explore this data in per capita terms, you can do so in our Animal Welfare Explorer.
It’s not just about how many farm animals are killed but also the suffering they endured while they were raised. The majority of the world’s farm animals are raised in dismal conditions. Pigs are held in cramped, stressful conditions, living a life in chronic discomfort and distress. Cows get their calves taken away to produce milk for human consumption, a practice under which both the mother and the calf suffer. Many animals are castrated without anesthetic. Chickens are often debeaked to stop them from fighting with other chickens out of discomfort and pain; many cannot turn around their entire lives.
Theo and Glenny Balls Find Out How Many Chickens are Eaten Every Day
FAQ
How many chickens are killed a day?
The answer to the question “How many chicken are killed a day?” Approximately 65 billion chickens are slaughtered annually, which averages out to around 178 million chickens killed each day worldwide. These numbers are mind-boggling and highlight the significant scale of the poultry industry.
How many chickens are slaughtered a day?
Approximately 65 billion chickens are slaughtered annually, which averages out to around 178 million chickens killed each day worldwide. These numbers are mind-boggling and highlight the significant scale of the poultry industry. 1. How are chickens raised for meat?.
How many chickens are born a day?
The BBC got information from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that more than 62 million chicken chicks are born every day around the world. How many chickens are in the USA?.
How many chickens are there in the world?
The number of chickens worldwide has more than doubled since 1990. In 2020, there were some 33 billion chickens in the world, up from 14. 3 billion chickens in 2000. There are two major types of chickens that are farmed globally: egg laying hens, and broiler chickens. How many chickens are in the World 2021?.
How many chickens are raised in the United States a year?
The United States is the third most prolific country for chicken farming. There are about 9 billion chickens raised for slaughter in the USA each year. An additional 305 million hens are kept for commercial egg production. Chickens are the most plentiful food source of any domesticated animal.
Which country eats the most chicken?
Though chicken is popular worldwide, the United States and China are the largest consumers of chicken meat. Other countries with high levels of chicken consumption include Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. 8. What are the main health concerns related to chicken consumption?.
How many chickens are killed a day for eating?
Species of animals killed More chickens are killed for food than any other land animal. According to Our World in Data, 202 million chickens will be killed every day, or about 140,000 every minute.
How many chickens are killed each year in the US?
In the United States, approximately 9 billion chickens are killed each year for their meat. Additionally, around 300 million chickens are used for egg production annually.
What is the most slaughtered animal in the world?
The most slaughtered animal in the world is chickens, with billions being killed for food annually.