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.

Start a 7-day shiftCalculate your impact

Key takeaways

  • Dairy, eggs, aquaculture, wool, and leather are all outputs of the same slaughter pipeline.
  • Vertical integration hides most consumers from the reality of production.
  • Certified 'welfare' schemes typically improve one metric while leaving core practices intact.
  • Every major industry has viable plant alternatives already at competitive price and quality.

Share this page

Share on XShare on FacebookShare on WhatsApp

Frequently asked questions

Shearing injuries, mulesing (in Australia), and slaughter at a fraction of natural lifespan when yields drop are standard. Wool is a byproduct of the same meat pipeline.

Keep reading

Animals
The scale of industrial farming.
Swaps
Simple product-for-product replacements.
Directory
Brands, retailers, and where to find them.
Vegan but not left

Animal rights belong to no party

Why animal rights belong to no party — and what political capture cost the movement.

Continue →

Inside the four systems

The standard practices, not the exceptions

Public argument about farming tends to focus on abuses. The more important fact is that the practices that trouble people most are usually lawful, audited, routine and economically necessary within the system that produces almost all animal products.

Meat: throughput determines everything

Broiler chickens now reach slaughter weight in roughly 35 to 42 days, compared with about 84 days in the 1950s — a growth rate that produces skeletal and cardiovascular disorders as a predictable side effect rather than an accident. Pigs are commonly kept in farrowing crates that prevent turning, and tail docking, teeth clipping and castration are widely performed without anaesthetic. Stocking densities, line speeds and stunning efficacy are all regulated variables, which means the outcomes are choices made at the level of standards rather than by individual workers.

Dairy: lactation requires pregnancy

A dairy cow produces milk because she has given birth. Calves are typically separated within 24 hours, male calves are surplus and are either killed shortly after birth or raised for veal, and the cycle of insemination, calving and lactation repeats annually. Yields per cow have roughly doubled since the 1970s, with associated rates of mastitis and lameness. Cows have a natural lifespan of around twenty years and are commonly slaughtered at four to six when yields decline.

Eggs: the male chick problem

Laying hens and meat chickens are different genetic lines, so male chicks of laying breeds have no commercial value and are killed on the first day, historically by maceration or gassing — several billion each year worldwide. In-ovo sexing technology now avoids this in a growing number of countries and is a genuine, measurable improvement. Cage-free systems reduce confinement while introducing their own welfare trade-offs in air quality and mortality.

Fishing and aquaculture: the largest numbers by far

Between one and three trillion aquatic animals are killed for food annually — the widest uncertainty in the entire food system, because fish are measured in tonnes rather than individuals. Trawling damages seabed habitat, bycatch discards remain substantial, and roughly 35% of assessed stocks are fished beyond biological sustainability. Aquaculture, often presented as the solution, frequently depends on wild-caught feed fish, with a net protein loss for carnivorous species.

Why reform inside the system is hard

Margins in commodity animal agriculture are thin and set by processors and retailers. Individual farmers rarely control stocking density, breed genetics or slaughter age; those are dictated by contracts and buyer specifications. This is why welfare campaigns increasingly target retailers and processors rather than farms — that is where the specification is actually written.

The four industries in numbers

Global figures, most recent available years; national practice varies.

IndustryAnimals per yearTypical lifespan vs naturalDefining practice
Broiler chicken~75 billion6 weeks vs 6–8 yearsSelected for 40-day growth
Egg laying~7.5 billion hens18 months vs 6–8 yearsMale chicks killed at day one
Pig~1.5 billion6 months vs 15–20 yearsFarrowing crates, early weaning
Dairy~270 million cows4–6 years vs ~20 yearsAnnual calving, calf separation
Beef~300 million18–24 months vs ~20 yearsFeedlot finishing
Wild capture0.8–2.3 trillion fishn/aTrawling, bycatch, asphyxiation
Aquaculture~50–170 billion fishVariesWild feed inputs, density disease

FAOSTAT · FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture · fishcount.org.uk

Verifying any of this yourself

Every claim above is checkable in public documents. That is the point.

  1. 1

    Read a breed performance manual

    Broiler genetics companies publish target growth curves openly. They are the clearest single description of how the system works.

  2. 2

    Check your national welfare code

    Legal minimum space, mutilation permissions and slaughter rules are published statutory documents in most countries.

  3. 3

    Look at FAOSTAT production data

    Head-count and tonnage data are free, downloadable and difficult to spin.

  4. 4

    Read an industry trade publication

    Trade press describes practices plainly to a professional audience, without the framing used for consumers.

  5. 5

    Compare a marketing image with a stocking-density figure

    The gap between the two is the most informative thing in the entire sector.

Claims that hold and claims that do not

Well supported

  • 99% of US farmed animals and roughly 90% globally live in intensive systems.
  • Male layer chicks are killed at hatching wherever in-ovo sexing is not in use.
  • Dairy production requires annual pregnancy and calf removal.
  • About a third of assessed fish stocks are exploited beyond sustainable limits.

Overstated or wrong

  • Claims that all farm workers are cruel — the outcomes are systemic and specified upstream.
  • Claims that animal agriculture is over half of global emissions; credible estimates are roughly 12–20%.
  • Undated undercover footage presented as current practice at a named company.
  • Claims that no welfare improvement has ever occurred; cage bans and in-ovo sexing are real gains.

Questions about the industries

Isn't this only about factory farms?

Factory farms are the system: about 99% of farmed animals in the US and roughly 90% globally. Pasture-based production exists but cannot supply current consumption at current prices.

Do free-range and organic labels solve this?

They improve specific conditions and are meaningfully better on several measures. They do not change calf separation, male chick culling, slaughter age or the underlying economics.

What share of emissions does livestock cause?

Credible estimates cluster around 12–20% of global greenhouse gas emissions depending on accounting method, plus a dominant role in deforestation, land use and freshwater eutrophication.

How reliable are the fish numbers?

Poorly constrained by design — catch is recorded in tonnes, so individual counts are estimates from mean body weights. The range of one to three trillion reflects genuine measurement uncertainty.

Are farmers to blame?

Farmers operate inside contracts, breed specifications and price structures they largely do not set. Meaningful reform therefore targets retailers, processors, subsidies and procurement rules.

Has anything actually improved?

Yes. EU battery-cage and sow-stall restrictions, in-ovo sexing to end male chick culling in several countries, and improved stunning requirements are documented improvements — narrow, real, and far short of resolving the core practices.

Sources

  • FAOSTAT — Production: Livestock Primary.
  • FAO (2024). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture.
  • Sanders, B. Global animal slaughter statistics and charts — Faunalytics.
  • Poore & Nemecek (2018). Science.