What we stand against

Inside the five industries.

Most people have never set foot inside a modern animal farm. This page is a sourced, plain-language tour of the five industries that account for almost every animal killed for food: dairy cows, laying hens, pigs, broiler chickens, and fish. No shock tactics — just what is documented, by whom, and at what scale.

By the numbers

80B+
Land animals killed per year for food
FAOSTAT
1–2T
Fish killed per year (estimated)
Fishcount.org.uk
99%
Of US farmed animals live on factory farms
Sentience Institute, 2019
70B
Chickens slaughtered yearly worldwide
FAOSTAT 2022
Dairy

Dairy cows

~270 million dairy cows worldwide
01

A dairy cow is kept lactating through repeated forced pregnancies. Her calf is taken from her within hours or days so the milk meant for him can be sold. Male calves enter the veal pipeline or are killed shortly after birth. Her productive life — naturally 20 years — is cut to 4–6 before she is slaughtered for ground beef.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Artificial insemination every 12–14 months
  • ·Calf separation within 24 hours of birth
  • ·Tail-docking and dehorning, often without anaesthesia
  • ·Slaughter at 4–6 years (natural lifespan: ~20)

Sources

Eggs

Laying hens

~7.5 billion laying hens worldwide
02

Modern laying hens have been selectively bred to produce ~300 eggs per year (a wild ancestor laid ~15). Most live in cages or crowded sheds with less than an A4 sheet of space each. Male chicks of laying breeds — half of every hatch — are killed on day one, usually by maceration or gassing.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Day-old male chick culling (≈6 billion per year)
  • ·Beak-trimming with hot blade or infrared
  • ·Battery or 'enriched' cages still legal in most of the world
  • ·Slaughter at ~72 weeks when laying drops

Sources

Pigs

Pigs

~1.4 billion pigs slaughtered per year
03

Pigs are widely recognised as intelligent — comparable to a 3-year-old child on many cognitive tests. Most spend their lives on concrete inside windowless sheds. Sows are confined in gestation crates so narrow they cannot turn around. Piglets are routinely castrated, tail-docked, and have their teeth ground without pain relief.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Gestation and farrowing crates (still legal in most countries)
  • ·Tail-docking, teeth-clipping, castration without anaesthesia
  • ·CO₂ gas stunning — documented to cause acute distress
  • ·Slaughter at ~6 months (natural lifespan: 10–15 years)

Sources

Chickens (meat)

Broiler chickens

~70 billion slaughtered per year
04

Broiler chickens have been bred to grow so fast that their legs and hearts often cannot keep up. They reach slaughter weight in 35–42 days. Most live their entire lives on litter inside crowded sheds, with chronic lameness, contact dermatitis, and high mortality before they ever leave the barn.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Selective breeding for 6× faster growth than 1950
  • ·Stocking density up to 42 kg/m² in EU; higher in US
  • ·Live-shackle slaughter still common worldwide
  • ·Slaughter at 35–42 days (natural lifespan: 6+ years)

Sources

Fish & aquatic

Fish, shrimp & molluscs

1–2.7 trillion individuals per year
05

Fish are the largest, least-protected category of farmed and hunted animals. Most are killed without any stunning — left to suffocate on ice, crushed under their own weight in nets, or gutted alive. Farmed salmon, tilapia, and shrimp live in dense pens that drive disease, sea-lice infestations, and large-scale escapes that disrupt wild ecosystems.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Asphyxiation, ice slurry, and live-gutting as standard slaughter
  • ·Bottom-trawling destroys seabed habitats
  • ·Bycatch: ~38 million tonnes of non-target animals per year
  • ·Aquaculture feed still relies on wild-caught forage fish

Sources

Veal

Veal calves

~7 million calves slaughtered per year (EU + US)
06

Veal is the by-product of the dairy industry. Male calves of dairy breeds are useless to the milk machine, so they are removed from their mothers within hours of birth, raised in isolated hutches or crates on a low-iron milk-replacer diet to keep their flesh pale, and slaughtered between 18 and 26 weeks old. White veal — still legal in much of the world — depends on deliberate anaemia.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Separation from mother within 24 hours of birth
  • ·Individual hutches or tethered group pens for the first 8 weeks
  • ·Iron-restricted liquid diet to keep flesh pale (white veal)
  • ·Slaughter at 18–26 weeks (natural lifespan: ~20 years)

Sources

Fur & leather

Fur, leather & wool

~100 million animals killed per year for fur alone
07

Skin industries kill animals primarily for their coats. Minks, foxes and raccoon dogs spend their lives in stacked wire cages, then are gassed or electrocuted to preserve the pelt. Most leather is a co-product of cattle slaughter — the trade is large enough that hide value materially subsidises beef. Sheep raised for wool are routinely mulesed and end their lives in the same slaughter pipeline as lamb.

Standard industry practices

  • ·Fur: lifelong cage confinement, anal/oral electrocution, gas chambers
  • ·Leather: tanning with chromium-VI; severe worker and river pollution
  • ·Wool: mulesing (live skin removal), tail-docking, transport to slaughter
  • ·Down & feathers: live-plucking still documented across major suppliers

Sources

These industries only continue because we pay for them.

Every meal is a vote. The good news: the same money, the same fork, the same plate can fund a very different food system.

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