Every 24 hours, globally 3.4 to 6.5bn animals are killed for food-Report

Humans consume 360 million metric tons of meat annually, representing an immense number of animals.

At any moment, 23 billion animals are in factory farms, with countless more being farmed or caught in the sea.

Consequently, the daily toll of animals killed for food is staggering and almost beyond comprehension.

According to Sentientmedia quantifying animal slaughter is relatively straightforward, except for fish and other aquatic life.

The complexity arises from two main factors. First, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which tracks global livestock statistics, measures fish production by weight, not by the number of animals. Second, the FAO’s statistics include only farmed fish, not those caught in the wild.

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To address the first challenge, researchers convert the total pounds of fish caught into the estimated number. This process is inherently inexact and requires significant estimation, leading to wide ranges in fish slaughter estimates.

For the second challenge, researchers Alison Mood and Phil Brooke have worked to quantify the number of wild fish caught each year. They gather data from multiple sources and convert the total weight of wild fish into an estimated number of animals.

Estimates Based on 2022 Data

The following numbers are based on 2022 data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), except for fish tallies. For farmed fish, the low end of the range is based on research by the Sentience Institute, while the high end is based on an analysis by Mood and Brooke.
For wild-caught fish, the estimates are both from a range provided by Mood and Brooke.

Daily Slaughter Estimates Per Species

Chickens: 206 million/day
Farmed Fish: Between 211 million and 339 million
Wild Fish: Between 3 billion and 6 billion
Ducks: 9 million
Pigs: 4 million
Geese: 2 million
Sheep: 1.7 million
Rabbits: 1.5 million
Turkeys: 1.4 million
Goats: 1.4 million
Cows: 846,000
Pigeons and other birds: 134,000
Buffalo: 77,000
Horses: 13,000
Other animals: 13,000

In total, this means that every 24 hours, between 3.4 billion and 6.5 billion animals are killed for food. Annually, this translates to a lower-end estimate of 1.2 trillion animals.

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Comparison to Human Population

In contrast, anthropologists estimate that the total number of human beings who have ever existed is just 117 billion.
Excluding fish, chickens constitute the majority of animals slaughtered for food. This is not surprising given the significant increase in poultry consumption over the last 60 years. From 1961 to 2022, the average person’s annual chicken consumption rose from 2.86 kg to 16.96 kg, an increase of almost 600 per cent.

While there has been a modest increase in per-capita pork consumption (from 7.97 kg to 13.89 kg), the consumption of other meats has remained relatively stagnant over the last 60 years.

The data reveals significant slaughter numbers for animals not commonly thought of as meat sources in certain regions. For instance, 13,000 horses are killed daily for meat, despite the practice being illegal in the United States. Rabbit meat, while not common in America, is popular in China and the European Union.