How many chickens are killed every second, every day, every year?

alive right now, in the queue: about 8.5 billion (rate × 42 days). average time left: 21 days.

method FAO slaughter statistics for chickens (meat birds plus spent layers), converted to per second. births = slaughter + typical shed mortality (4–6%) + male layer chicks culled at hatch (~7 billion/yr). standing stock by Little's law: rate × 42 days.

• the gap is the male chicks, macerated on day one, and the ones that die in the shed. a chicken can live eight years.source: FAO slaughter; hatchery culling estimates
• nine of every ten farmed land vertebrates killed for food are chickens.source: FAO
• the broiler chicken bone will be the signature fossil of our age: more of them than of any bird that ever lived, in every landfill on earth.source: Bennett et al. 2018, Royal Society Open Science

how this number is built

method

FAO slaughter statistics for chickens (meat birds plus spent layers), converted to per second. births = slaughter + typical shed mortality (4–6%) + male layer chicks culled at hatch (~7 billion/yr). standing stock by Little's law: rate × 42 days.

range

slaughter 70–78 billion/yr; births 78–86 billion/yr

confidence

count

weakness

FAO under-reports backyard slaughter in parts of Asia and Africa; hatchery culling has no official global series.

becomes a feed

USDA daily federally inspected slaughter (US share, then others)

dispute

dispute LGR-001 · corrections are credited

data

channels.json (sign-in) · full entry · CC BY 4.0