How many animals are farmed and killed for food each year?
The short answer
Around 80 billion land animals are slaughtered every year, about ten for every person on Earth. Most are chickens. Fish are not counted individually but likely number far more.
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Sample data. The figures and sources on this page are demonstration records showing how evidence will be presented. They are approximate and have not yet been through our review process. Read about how we will verify evidence.
- Chickens
- Pigs
- Sheep & goats
- Cattle
billion animals per year. Axis starts at zero.
Data: Nations (2024). Sample
Excludes fish, shellfish, ducks, turkeys and rabbits. Official data count fish by weight, not individuals.
What does the evidence show?
Official statistics compiled by the FAO record around 80 billion land animals slaughtered for meat annually.
Chickens make up over 90% of that figure. Pigs, sheep, goats and cattle together account for a few billion.
Estimates of fish killed for food range from hundreds of billions to over a trillion per year, including farmed fish and wild catch, but these are estimates derived from tonnage.Source 1: FAOSTAT: Crops and livestock products — producing animals / slaughtered
Why does this happen?
Global meat production has roughly quadrupled since the 1960s, driven by rising incomes and population.
Chickens dominate because they are small and fast-growing: producing a tonne of chicken meat requires hundreds of birds, while a tonne of beef requires a few cattle.
Most of these animals are raised in intensive indoor systems, because they produce meat at the lowest cost.
- Chickens74
- Pigs1.4
- Sheep & goats1.1
- Cattle0.3
Each mark is 1 billion animals per year. Rounded to the nearest mark; pale marks are less than one.
Data: Nations (2024). Sample
Each mark is one billion animals. Chickens alone would need seventy-four; the other species share fewer than three between them.
Bottom line
The number of animals involved is very large and dominated by chickens. Because of that, changes to chicken consumption affect far more animals than changes to beef.
The strongest counterargument
“These animals would not exist at all without farming, so farming gives them a life”
Farmed animals are bred for food. Without demand they would never be born, so isn't a farmed life better than no life?
What's true about it
- It is true that most farmed animals exist only because of farming, and some live in conditions that allow natural behaviours.
What may be misleading
- Whether a life is worth living depends on its quality. The argument does not address the conditions most farmed animals actually experience, which for most chickens involves rapid growth linked to lameness and confinement.
- The same reasoning would justify bringing any being into existence regardless of suffering, which few people accept in other contexts.
What remains uncertain
- Judging the overall welfare of animals in different systems is difficult and involves value judgements as well as evidence.
Evidence strength
Why this rating: Based on official production statistics that almost all countries report, with well-understood gaps.
Supported by multiple systematic reviews or large, consistent studies using different methods, with few plausible alternative explanations.
What remains uncertain?Open questions the evidence does not yet settle.
- Fish numbers, because official statistics do not count individuals.
- The scale of informal and backyard slaughter, which is under-reported in many countries.
Methodology: how we know thisHow the numbers were produced and what they leave out.
- The FAO compiles national statistics of animals slaughtered for meat. We report the latest available year.
- We do not include fish in the headline figure because there is no official count of individuals.
Read our full evidence methodology.
Claims used on this page1 claim, each with its own record, rating and sources.
Around 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for food each year worldwide, the large majority of them chickens.
About ten land animals per person per year, most of them chickens. Fish are not counted individually, but likely add far more.
Sources
Each source links to our record of what it found, its limitations and what we used it for, with a link to the original.
- 1FAOSTAT: Crops and livestock products — producing animals / slaughtered
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024). FAOSTAT database.