Is it 1,000 or 10,000 or even 100,000? According to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation well over one million chickens are slaughtered for food in Australia EVERY DAY! Normally chickens can live for many years, but farmed chickens are slaughtered when they are just babies, at 6-8 weeks.
Every year in Australia, approximately 678 million chickens are killed for human consumption [1]. According to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, an additional 4% of chickens die due to “natural” causes or are killed prior to slaughter [2].
On average, Australians consume 47.46kg of chicken per person each year, making it the highest consumed meat protein, ahead of beef, lamb, and pork!
How many chickens are killed a day in the world? In 2018, factory farms around the world slaughtered 68,795,221,000 broiler chickens for their meat. On average, this comes out to 188,480,057 chickens every single day.
Every year in the United States, approximately 9 billion “broiler” chickens are killed for their flesh. To put such a large number into perspective, that's about 25 million chickens killed every day; 1 million chickens killed every hour; 17,000 chickens killed every minute; or 300 chickens killed every second.
In slaughterhouses, animals also experience fear and pain before they die. Some of the torments they undergo are described below, starting with aquatic animals, who make up the majority of farmed animals.
Factory Farmed Pigs
Over 130 million pigs are slaughtered each year in the US–over 90,000 each day.
The country that consumes the greatest amount of chicken is the United States. Every year, the United States consumes approximately 15,000 metric tons of chicken, placing it significantly in front of the second-place region.
As a whole, according to El Pollo Norteño, Australia consumes roughly 205 pounds of chicken per person, per year. This is more than any other country in the world including the US, which is believed to be the best place on earth to get fried chicken, of all things.
(Pun intended.) The average person will chomp down on 7,000 animals during their lives, according to the Vegetarian Calculator. It breaks down to 11 cows, 27 pigs, 2,400 chickens, 80 turkeys, 30 sheep and 4,500 fish, according to the group.
Chicken meat most popular meat in Australian diet, new trends for other meats.
Per person consumption
When compared with its major export partners, Australia's meat consumption closely matches the United States (Figure 2). In both countries poultry is the most consumed meat at over 40 kg per person. Beef and veal and pig meat each account for between 20 and 30 kg per person.
Australian chickens are given a bath in chlorine during processing that knocks out most of the naturally occurring campylobacter and salmonella on the chicken skin – but not all the bugs. There is a lot of water used in processing and when packaged this water and some of the serum from the flesh leaches out.”
How Many Chickens Does McDonald's Kill in a Year? McDonald's is the second-largest purchaser of chicken in the world. Around the world, the company is responsible for the deaths of billions of chickens every year. In the UK alone, McDonald's serves over 30 million chickens every year.
Australians consume 18.5 million eggs every day and farmers work around the clock to supply a range of eggs and egg products to suit everyone. Find out more about Australia's growing egg industry below.
Australia is a relatively small producer of chicken meat in a global sense, and a small player in global trade in chicken meat. However, Australians rate as among the highest consumers of chicken meat on a per capita basis.
The major markets for KFC include China (7,166 stores), the United States (3,943 stores), Japan (1,140 stores), South Africa (955 stores), the United Kingdom (928 stores), Thailand (853 stores), Malaysia (743 stores), Indonesia (742 stores), Australia (699 stores), and Canada (601 stores).
Farms supply KFC with around 23 million chickens each year and its chains sell almost 400 pieces of chicken every minute. About 1,000 farms in the country supply KFC with 23million chickens a year.
Sheep meat consumption
According to the OECD, the consumption of sheep's meat—including both lamb and mutton—is most popular in Kazakhstan, Australia, and Turkey.
Raccoons and domestic dogs probably kill more chickens than any other animals and live in both rural and urban areas. Raccoons are surprisingly abundant even in New York City!
The slaughter process has two stages: Stunning, when performed correctly, causes an animal to lose consciousness, so the animal can't feel pain. The law states that, with few exceptions, all animals must be stunned before 'sticking' (neck cutting) is carried out.
The animals most commonly slaughtered for food are cattle and water buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs, deers, horses, poultry (mainly chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese), insects (a commercial species is the house cricket), and increasingly, fish in the aquaculture industry (fish farming).
People who kill animals in slaughterhouses have been found to have higher self-reported rates of “somatization, anxiety, anger hostility, phobic anxiety, and psychotism,” than office workers and retail meat-packing workers.