How to Do Animal Rights - Chicken Statistics

Chapter 6

Chicken Statistics

People kill 50 billion chickens every year

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Summary

Factory farms keep almost all chickens worldwide and every year they:

Raise and kill over 40 billion broilers (Table 2).
Keep over 6 billion egg-laying hens, killed after a year, who lay over a trillion eggs (Table 3).
Kill over 6 billion male chicks soon after hatching in the egg-laying industry (Table 1).
In total over 50 billion chickens are killed annually (Table 1).

Types of Chicken

Almost all chickens in the world are factory farmed. The four categories of factory farmed chicken are:

Broiler

Male and female chickens packed into huge sheds and slaughtered after a few weeks to eat.

Egg-layer

Hens are crammed into cages and made to lay up to 300 eggs in a year. After one year they are sent for slaughter.

Male chicks in the egg-laying industry

A male chick hatches for every female chick. They are killed soon after hatching and sold as fertiliser and pet food.

Breeder

Breeders are mainly females and breed more broilers and egg-layers. They are slaughtered after about a year.

Chick

Chicken Numbers Worldwide

The table shows that there are over 50 billion chickens worldwide: broilers, egg-layers, male chicks and breeders. All the chickens are killed within or after about a year.

Table 1. Breakdown of Chicken Numbers Worldwide
Broilers	40 billion (see Table 2)
Egg-layers	Over 6 billion (see Table 3)
Male chicks in the egg-laying industry	Over 6 billion
Breeders	Several millions (60 million in the US alone)
World Total	Over 50 billion

Broilers live packed together in massive sheds. (Photo: Farm Sanctuary)

Numbers of Broilers Produced Annually

About 40 billion broilers are alive in any one year. Just three countries produce over half of them: US, China and Brazil. Worldwide the number of broilers is increasing by about a billion per year.

Table 2. Numbers of Broilers Produced Annually. Top ten countries & Worldwide for years 2008 to 2012. Figures are in billions.
	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
United States	8.3	8.0	8.3	8.4	8.3
China	5.9	6.1	6.3	6.6	6.9
Brazil	5.5	5.5	6.2	6.5	6.8
European Union - 27 states	4.3	4.4	4.6	4.8	4.8
Mexico	1.5	1.4	1.4	1.5	1.5
India	1.3	1.3	1.4	1.4	1.4
Russia	0.8	1.0	1.2	1.3	1.4
Argentina	0.7	0.8	0.8	0.9	0.9
Iran	0.7	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8
Turkey	0.6	0.6	0.7	0.8	0.8
Others	7.2	7.4	7.6	7.8	7.9
World Total	36.8	37.2	39.2	40.5	41.5

See Notes for Table 2, below.

Chick

Egg-laying hens live crammed into cages. (Photo: Farm Sanctuary)

Numbers of Egg-laying Hens and Eggs

The figures in this table are an example of the worldwide numbers of egg-laying hens and the number of eggs they produce, in this case for the year 2011. For this year, there were about 6.4 billion egg-laying hens producing one trillion three hundred billion eggs. China is the biggest producer (2.5 billion hens and 1.3 trillion eggs), the US is the second largest producer (340 million hens and 90 billion eggs).

Table 3. Numbers of Egg-laying Hens & Eggs. The top ten egg production countries & worldwide for 2011.
Countries	Number of Hens	Number of Eggs Produced
China	2,500,000,000	474,000,000,000
United States	340,000,000	90,000,000,000
Brazil	280,000,000	38,000,000,000
India	240,000,000	58,000,000,000
Indonesia	240,000,000	24,000,000,000
Mexico	190,000,000	47,000,000,000
Japan	140,000,000	42,000,000,000
Russia	140,000,000	39,000,000,000
Ukraine	110,000,000	16,000,000,000
France	50,000,000	15,000,000,000
World Total	6,400,000,000	1,300,000,000,000

See Notes for Table 3, below.

Chick

Notes for the Tables

A precise count of the number of chickens worldwide is impossible and therefore figures in all these tables are rounded to avoid spurious accuracy and totals do not necessarily add up.

Notes for Table 2

The source for the figures in Table 2 is Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade. United States Department of Agriculture. (Web site accessed July 2012.) Figures for 2012 are projections. Figures are in billions; thus the total number of broilers produced for 2011 was about 40 billion.

The original USDA data for Table 2 included only the countries which are the major animal producers, thus the World Total in this Table is a minimum figure. The data were in tonnes of ready to cook chickens (that is minus heads, feet and internal organs). The live slaughter weight of US broilers, according to USDA information, averages around 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs). Therefore, I made the assumption that each ready to cook chicken weighs about 2 kg (4.4 lbs) and gives a conservative estimate of broiler numbers worldwide. USDA state that their data are based on �USDA-FAS attache reports, official statistics, and results of office research.�

Notes for Table 3

These figures are based on The Statistical Reference for Poultry Executives, by Watt Executive Guide to World Poultry Trends, 2011 (www.WATTAgNet.net).

Their figures are rounded in Table 3 to avoid spurious accuracy and for ease of reading.

What kills billions of chickens every year?

Click to enlarge. Since this infographic was designed, the figure of 40 billion chickens killed every year has risen to at least 50 billion chickens. Scribble in the new figure by hand.

What goes cluck, cluck, cluck and has 50 billion heads? All the chickens people kill in one year!

For FREE graphics see Animal Rights Paintings & Prints.

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