How many chickens eaten each year

In this article , which we found on takepart. Please forgive any miscalculations, we are mathematically challenged :. If a small chicken is 3lbs, which translates to about 2lbs of meat, and you only eat chicken as your.

If an average steer is lbs, which translates to about lbs of meat, and you only eat beef as your. If an average pig is lbs, which translates to about lbs of meat, and you only eat pork as your. But then we started thinking about all the vegetarians in the USA about 3. This all adds up to… somebody out there is eating A LOT of meat.

At the end of the day, fresh food is best for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. As noted in the overview, chickens are the animal that is most frequently killed for food excluding fish. In total, more than 66 billion chickens were slaughtered for food in according to United Nations data.

For animal advocates, it may be helpful to examine the distribution of these slaughtered chickens. To get an idea of the current situation, below we provide an interactive global map of chicken slaughter data from , by country. Note that the legend shown is logarithmic to help with interpretation because the differences between countries is substantial.

We also provide a table with the ten countries that slaughtered the most chickens in It is evident from looking at the chart and table above that the top ten chicken-slaughtering countries are also countries with large populations. The top three countries China, Brazil, United States are the same when it comes to killing chickens and cows for food.

For farmed animal advocates, these three countries arguably represent the biggest opportunity to reduce suffering. To provide some extra insight and control for population size, we also consider the world map for per capita slaughter numbers of chickens.

Below we show the same graph and table, but now per capita. Note that the legend of the world map is again logarithmic. Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.

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Facebook is quietly buying up the metaverse By Peter Kafka. Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for The Weeds Get our essential policy newsletter delivered Fridays. Give Give. But poultry has now caught up, and is likely to overtake it. Now poultry makes up a third of all the meat eaten worldwide. But it still remains nearly five times more popular than lamb.

The environmental cost of our growing appetite for meat is alarming. Meat farming produces much higher emissions per calorie than vegetables. Beef is by far the worst culprit — four times higher than chicken or pork. But it is not just the greenhouse gases produced by livestock that damage the environment.

Cattle farming, in particular, requires much more land than other forms of agriculture, which drives deforestation. The largest population of cattle in the world is in Brazil, where numbers have quadrupled in 50 years , a trend that has led to the destruction of vast areas of the Amazon rainforest. Meat production is also a thirsty business, at a time when the availability and abundance of fresh water supplies are becoming a major concern.

For many people, meat is an important source of protein, vitamins and minerals. But some meats are high in saturated fats that can raise cholesterol, and eating too much red and processed meat has been linked to bowel cancer.

The burgers, steaks and sausages served up in most wealthier countries tend to be a lot bigger than the recommended 70g a day. The livestock economy is particularly important for poor rural populations in low- and middle-income countries. Some of these involve the cultivation of animal cells in labs — growing real meat in a petri dish rather than using an animal.

Another approach is the engineering of plant- or fungi-based meat substitutes, to give them the taste and texture of beef, pork or chicken.