By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for West Virginia News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Every year, humans around the world eat 360 million metric tons of meat. That’s a lot of animals — or more precisely, a lot of dead animals. At any given point, there are 23 billion animals in factory farms, and countless more being farmed or caught in the sea. As a result, the number of animals killed for food every day is almost too large of a number to comprehend.

Animal Agriculture, by the Numbers

Before getting into the death toll, it’s worth remembering that animals suffer immensely in factory farms, and on the way to slaughterhouses, and in slaughterhouses. Around 99 percent of livestock are raised in factory farms, and factory farms prioritize efficiency and profitability over animal welfare. There are few laws protecting livestock from abuse and mistreatment on farms, and violators of those laws are rarely prosecuted.

The result is a significant amount of pain and misery for farmed animals, and that suffering is an important thing to keep in mind as we dive into the numbers behind these animals’ deaths.

How Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Day?

Quantifying animal slaughter is relatively straightforward — except when it comes to fish and other aquatic life. There are two reasons for this.

First, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which tracks global livestock statistics, measures fish production in weight, not number of animals. Second, the FAO’s numbers only include farmed fish, not those caught in the wild.

To overcome the first challenge, researchers attempt to convert the total pounds of fish caught into the total number of fish themselves. Obviously, this is an inexact science that requires quite a bit of guesswork, and as such, estimates of fish slaughter tend to vary significantly, and are generally expressed in relatively wide ranges.

As for the second challenge, researchers Alison Mood and Phil Brooke have attempted to quantify the number of wild fish caught every year, first by pulling data from multiple sources and then by converting the total weight of wild fish to an estimated number of animals.

The following numbers are based on 2022 data from the FAO, except for the fish tallies: for farmed fish, the low end of the range draws on research by the Sentience Institute, while the high end is based on an analysis by Mood and Brooke. For wild-caught fish, the low end and high ends of the estimate are both based on a range provided by Mood and Brooke.

With that being said, here are the best estimates of how many animals are killed every day on a per-species basis.

• Chickens: 206 million/day


• Farmed Fish: Between 211 million and 339 million


• Wild Fish: Between 3 billion and 6 billion


• Ducks: 9 million


• Pigs: 4 million


• Geese: 2 million


• Sheep: 1.7 million


• Rabbits: 1.5 million


• Turkeys: 1.4 million


• Goats: 1.4 million


• Cows: 846,000


• Pigeons & other birds: 134,000


• Buffalo: 77,000


• Horses: 13,000


• Other animals: 13,000

In total, this means that every 24 hours, between 3.4 and 6.5 billion animals are killed for food. That comes to a lower-end estimate of 1.2 trillion animals killed every year. That’s a positively staggering number. For contrast, anthropologists estimate that the total number of human beings who’ve ever existed is just 117 billion.


A couple of things stand out about this data.


For one, if we exclude fish, the overwhelming majority of animals slaughtered for food are chickens. This isn’t a surprise, given that poultry consumption has skyrocketed over the last 60 years: between 1961 and 2022, the average person went from eating 2.86 kg of chicken every year to 16.96 kg — an increase of almost 600 percent.


The consumption of other meats didn’t rise nearly as much over that period. There was a modest increase in per-capita pork consumption, from 7.97 kg to 13.89 kg; for every other meat, consumption has remained relatively stagnant over the last 60 years.


Also notable is the relatively high death tolls of animals that many Americans might not think of as meat sources for humans. Slaughtering horses for meat is illegal in the U.S., but that doesn’t stop people around the world from killing 13,000 of them every day. Rabbit meat isn’t a common dish in America, but it’s wildly popular in China and the European Union.


Animals Slaughtered Who Are Never Eaten


One thing that’s particularly frustrating about all of this, from both an efficiency standpoint and an animal welfare standpoint, is that a sizable share of the animals killed for food are never even eaten.


A 2023 study published in Sustainable Production and Consumption found that 24 percent of livestock animals die prematurely at some point in the supply chain: they either die on the farm before they’re slaughtered, die in transit on their way to the slaughterhouse, die at a slaughterhouse but aren’t processed for food, or are thrown away by grocers, restaurants and consumers.


This wasted food adds up to about 18 billion animals a year. The meat from these animals never reaches the lips of any human, making their deaths — which, it should be stressed, are often excruciatingly painful and bloody — essentially pointless. What’s more, this tally doesn’t even include seafood; if it did, the amount of wasted meat would be many orders of magnitude higher.


In the U.S., around a quarter of animals in this category die on the farm from disease, injury or other causes. Another seven percent die in transit, and 13 percent are thrown away by grocers after being processed into meat.


Some of these “wasted deaths” are part and parcel of factory farm operations. Every year, around six billion male chicks are intentionally killed, or “culled,” on factory farms due to the fact that they can’t lay eggs. In the seafood industry, billions of aquatic animals are caught by accident every year — a phenomenon called bycatch — and are either killed or injured as a result.


It’s worth noting that these numbers vary significantly from country to country. The global average for wasted meat is around 2.4 animals per person per year, but in the U.S., it’s 7.1 animals per person — almost three times higher. On the other end of the spectrum is India, where only 0.4 animals per person are wasted every year.


The Hidden Death Tolls of the Environmental Destruction of the Meat Industry


The above death tolls only count animals who are farmed or caught with the goal of being eaten by humans. But the meat industry claims many other animal lives in more indirect ways.


For instance, cattle farming is the number one driver of deforestation around the world, and deforestation inadvertently kills a whole lot of animals that were never intended to be food in the first place. In the Amazon alone, 2,300 animals are at risk of extinction due to deforestation, as the clearing of trees wipes out their natural habitats and deprives them of the resources they need to survive. 


Another example is water pollution. The manure from livestock farms often leaks into nearby waterways, and this can have a ripple effect that results in many more animal deaths: Manure contains phosphorus and nitrogen, both of which promote the growth of algae; this eventually leads to harmful algal blooms, which deplete the oxygen in the water and clog the gills of fish, killing them.


All of this is a long way of saying that killing one animal for food often results in many other animals dying.


The Bottom Line


The astonishing number of animals killed for food every day, both directly and indirectly, is a sobering reminder of the impact our appetite for meat has on the world around us. From the animals slaughtered on farms to the creatures killed by agriculture-driven deforestation and farm pollution, the death toll that a meat-based diet demands is much higher and more far-reaching than many people realize.




Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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Minnesota's transition to the warmer months has been rough when factoring in air quality.

Just like in 2023, there are occasional bouts of unhealthy smoke from Canadian wildfires and animal experts said pets need protection, too. The American Humane Society said just like their owners, the respiratory systems of dogs and cats can suffer when smoky conditions come on strong.

Dr. Thomas Edling, chief veterinary officer of the Humane Society, said dogs need their outside time on a daily basis but when the air quality is bad, it should to be limited to mainly bathroom breaks. He discussed complications with dogs unable to resist running around.

"Younger dogs, especially, are very prone to doing that," Edling observed. "And when do that, you just make the situation worse, because you are breathing more air in quickly, more particulate matter, things like that."

He added owners should avoid activities like playing fetch during brief outdoor moments with their dog. The Humane Society said older pets and certain breeds, including French bulldogs and pugs, are more susceptible to poor air quality and require extra vigilance.

Edling echoed guidance from other health experts who said when the air is filled with smoke, pet owners should keep their windows and doors closed. If a pet's food and water bowl is normally placed outside, they need to be brought in.

"Those will be a collection point for the particulate matter in the air as it falls down and that debris will contaminate the food and the water," Edling pointed out.

After any outdoor activity, owners are encouraged to monitor their pet for coughing, sneezing and difficulty breathing. If the animal shows signs it breathed in too much unhealthy air, a veterinarian should be consulted for possible treatment.


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CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story described the spay/neuter effort as a "bill," rather than a pilot program. (12:16 a.m. MDT, June 16, 2025)

Animal welfare advocates hope a program approved by the Texas Legislature will help reduce the number of stray dogs and cats across the state.

The measure will fund a pilot program for low-cost spay and neuter services.

Francesca Chillino, government relations assistant for the Texas Humane Legislation Network, said thousands of dogs and cats go to shelters each year.

"They're also very often unfixed and unvaccinated, which means that they are continuing to reproduce and they are spreading diseases amongst themselves," said Chillino. "Some of these diseases are also transmittable to humans, things like rabies or leptospirosis."

Lawmakers also approved a bill enhancing the Animal-Friendly License Plate Program. Additional fees for the specialty license plate will go toward funding spay and neuter initiatives.

According to the National Library of Medicine, Texas shelters took in approximately half a million dogs in 2023.

Members of the network will meet with shelters, veterinarians and rescue organizations to determine how to operate the program.

Chillino said they hope this is the first step to ending pet overpopulation across the state.

"We are really hoping that this program is going to provide a lot of relief for the shelters and the rescues of Texas," said Chillino. "More spay and neuter means less unwanted litters and we're hoping that will, over time, lower the amount of dogs and cats who are being taken into these shelters."

The $13 million program will be operated by the state health department. Texas has more than 670 shelters across the state and almost 1,200 rescue organizations.



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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for California News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In 2023, UC Berkeley student and activist Zoe Rosenberg removed four severely ill chickens from a slaughterhouse truck in Petaluma, California, and brought them to an animal sanctuary. Now, she's facing over five years in prison. Rosenberg's trial is scheduled for later this year, and her allegations tell a story of horrific conditions at ostensibly "free-range" chicken farms, as well as the steep uphill battle activists face in convincing law enforcement to even investigate allegations of animal cruelty on factory farms.

Rosenberg is an activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), a Bay Area-based animal rights organization. In addition to supporting ballot propositions and hosting conferences, DxE carries out undercover investigations of slaughterhouses and factory farms. In some cases, its activists rescue ill and imperiled animals from such facilities; this is what's known as "open rescue," a popular tactic among some animal rights activists.

The prospect of risking prison time for saving a few chickens, who are routinely sold for less than $20 apiece, may seem outlandish. But DxE activists like Rosenberg see it as a necessary risk to accomplish their ultimate goal: the complete abolition of slaughterhouses and factory farms.

"I think that if people don't take action and don't risk their freedom to create change, nothing will ever change," Rosenberg, who's currently wearing an ankle monitor while out on bail, tells Sentient. "We've seen time and time throughout history that it has been the sacrifices of the very few that have changed the world."

Petaluma Poultry did not respond to Sentient's request for comment on this story, but a company spokesperson denied DxE's claims to the San Francisco Chronicle, characterizing the group as "extremist" and its efforts as "theft."

What Is Open Rescue?

In essence, open rescue is the act of removing animals from dangerous or harmful environments without permission from the person, company or facility that oversees said animals. Those who carry out open rescues don't hide what they are doing, and often publicize their actions. Animals that are removed via open rescue are typically provided with medical care and/or taken to animal sanctuaries.

The goal of open rescues, which date back to at least the early 1980s, is not only to provide relief for the animals in question, but also to highlight the conditions in which farm animals are held, and to normalize the act of rescuing them. But it's a controversial practice, even among activists, and law enforcement officials generally treat open rescues as acts of theft, trespassing or other crimes.

This often leads to prosecution, but in the eyes of open rescue advocates, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Prosecutions often bring media attention and publicity to both the topic in question and the relevant laws surrounding that topic. Rosenberg's case, for instance, draws attention not only to the conditions of factory farms, but also to the fact that removing a few sick animals from a slaughterhouse can get you a half a decade in prison.

Do People Usually Go to Prison for Open Rescue?

Although charges are often brought in open rescue cases, they're frequently reduced or, in some cases, dropped entirely before trial. It's not uncommon for open rescuers to be acquitted, either; in a verdict that drew international headlines, DxE founder Wayne Hsiung and another defendant were facing 60 years in prison for rescuing two sick piglets from a Smithfield Farms facility in Utah, only to be acquitted of all charges.

That said, Hsiung did recently spend 38 days in Sonoma County jail for an open rescue in which he participated, so it's not unheard of for activists like Rosenberg to serve time for carrying out open rescues.

The Incident in Question

On June 13, 2023, Rosenberg entered a Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse partially disguised as an employee. A truck delivering chickens to the facility was parked outside, and Rosenberg spotted four chickens in the back of the truck who she says were "covered in scratches and bruises." She took them from the truck, left the slaughterhouse and both she and DxE publicized her actions on social media.

Rosenberg says that she intentionally took the chickens that "seemed like they most needed medical attention." Subsequent examinations found that all four birds were infected with Coccidia parasites; one of them also had a respiratory infection and an injured toe, while a third had a foot infection.

Five months later, Rosenberg was arrested and charged with five felonies relating to the June 13 rescue. These charges were later reduced, and as of this writing, she faces one felony conspiracy charge, two forms of misdemeanor trespassing charges, one misdemeanor theft charge and one misdemeanor charge of tampering with a vehicle. Her trial is scheduled for September 15, 2025.

The chickens she rescued were all treated for their illnesses, and are now living at an animal sanctuary.

A History of Animal Neglect At Petaluma Poultry

Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of the chicken giant Perdue, presents itself as a humane operation where, in the words of its website, "chickens are free to be chickens."

"Our houses are spacious, with room for birds to move about and exhibit normal behaviors in a low-stress environment open to fresh air," the company's website says. "Our outdoor spaces are at least half the size of the poultry house, and typically as big as the barn itself."

But Petaluma Poultry's advertising is a classic example of humane-washing, when companies try to appeal to animal welfare-minded consumers by depicting their products as more humanely produced than they actually are.

Petaluma Poultry and its contractors have been accused of criminal animal cruelty on a number of occasions, and footage filmed by undercover investigators in the company's farms and slaughterhouse paints a much different picture than the company's marketing.

In 2018, a whistleblower provided DxE with footage from McCoy's Poultry, a factory farm contracted by Petaluma Poultry, that showed chickens collapsed on the ground, unable to stand or walk and surrounded by the corpses of other chickens. Shortly thereafter, Sonoma County Animal Services seized 15 chickens from McCoy's Poultry; six were already dead, while the other nine were injured, malnourished, unable to stand and exhibited signs of distress, according to a subsequent medical report. The facility was later shut down.

In 2023, another activist who infiltrated Petaluma Poultry's slaughterhouse said that she saw workers cutting into chickens while they were still alive, as well as evidence that chickens had been abused, tortured and boiled alive during the slaughter process. They also obtained documents showing that, on a single day in April, over 1,000 chickens were deemed unfit for human consumption after they were slaughtered due to suspicion that they had blood poisoning.

Prior to her arrest for the June incident, Rosenberg herself was involved in a separate DxE investigation of a Petaluma Poultry facility in 2023, where she recorded footage of more chickens suffering in the facility.

"I documented chickens who were collapsed on the floor of their factory farms, too weak to stand, unable to get to food and water, and slowly dying of starvation and dehydration," Rosenberg says. She ended up rescuing two of those chickens as well, both of whom required extensive medical care.

It remains unclear whether authorities prosecuting or investigating these allegations of criminal animal cruelty? And if not, how come?

Rosenberg Raised Allegations of Animal Welfare Abuses

Poultry is the most widely consumed meat in the U.S. and the world, yet there are no federal laws that protect livestock chickens from mistreatment on the farm. The Humane Slaughter Act establishes some baseline requirements for the treatment of livestock, but it specifically exempts chickens from these protections.

In California, however, livestock chickens are protected under a number of different laws. In addition to Proposition 12, which requires poultry producers to give egg-laying hens a specific amount of living space, Section 597(b) of California's penal code makes it a felony to subject an animal to "needless suffering" or deprive them of access to sufficient food or water, among other things.

This law would appear to be relevant in the context of Petaluma Poultry. If a chicken at a factory farm is physically unable to stand (let alone walk), they will be unable to reach the feeding trays and water, and will eventually die of thirst or starvation. If a chicken is boiled alive because they were improperly stunned beforehand, it has suffered needlessly.

The aforementioned investigations uncovered evidence of both of these things happening at Petaluma Poultry and its contracted facilities. Both DxE and Rosenberg claim they've presented multiple law enforcement agencies with this evidence, only to be rebuffed or ignored.

"The most common thing we've had is agencies directing us to another agency, directing us to another agency, directing us back to the place where we started, and just kind of sending us around in circles," Rosenberg says. "We didn't get any helpful response. No one took action."

It was this inaction that led Rosenberg to take the four chickens from the back of the truck in June, she says. After doing so, she again presented her findings to law enforcement, specifically the Petaluma Police Department. This time, she got a response.

"They said they had a detective who wanted to have a call with me, and so I had like a 15-minute call with a detective from the Petaluma Police Department," Rosenberg says. "She very much approached the call from an angle of, you know, 'I'm concerned about the reports you are making.' And so I told her about the animal cruelty that has been documented there."

But Officer Corie Joerger, the detective in question, didn't follow up with her after their call, Rosenberg claims, and ignored her subsequent attempts at communication. A couple of weeks later, Joerger handed Rosenberg a warrant for her arrest regarding the June rescue.

In the preliminary hearing for Rosenberg's case, Joerger acknowledged that Rosenberg had made allegations of animal cruelty, but stated that she did not investigate the matter.

This inaction by law enforcement wasn't an isolated incident. When the investigation at McCoy's Poultry facility uncovered dead birds on the farm floor and others that were unable to move, Sonoma County Animal Services referred the matter to the county sheriff's office for potential prosecution. But no prosecution followed then, either.

Sentient has reached out to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, the Petaluma Police Department and Joerger for clarification on these reports, but as of this writing, none have offered any comments.

Petaluma Poultry Is More the Rule Than the Exception

The allegations against Petaluma Poultry might sound extreme. But in fact, many are par for the course on factory farms, and chicken farms in particular.

For instance, the USDA estimates that every year, around 825,000 chickens are boiled alive at slaughterhouses. This is not standard protocol, but rather, the result of standard protocol gone wrong.

At poultry slaughterhouses, chickens are typically hung upside down by their feet and pulled through an electrified pool of water, which is meant to stun them. After that, workers slit the chickens' throats, and after they've bled out, they're placed into boiling water. This is to soften the skin and make it easier to defeather them.

That's how it's supposed to work, at least. In actuality, though, one or both of those first two steps often fail; chickens are either inadequately stunned before their throats are cut, or their throats aren't fully slit, or both. When both of these processes fail, the chicken is inadvertently boiled alive, and feels every bit of pain associated with this.

Similarly, the fact that those chickens at Petaluma Poultry couldn't stand up or walk isn't an accident. Over the decades, farmers have selectively bred chickens to be as fat as possible, as this maximizes the amount of meat they can sell. According to the National Chicken Council, farmed chickens now grow to be over twice as large as they were 100 years ago in less than half the time.

This unnatural rate of growth has wrought havoc on their internal biology, however, and farm chickens now routinely suffer from a number of illnesses and adverse health conditions as a result, including bone deformities, heart attacks, chronic hunger, ruptured tendons and, most relevantly to Petaluma Poultry, difficulty standing up or walking.

Finally, Petaluma Poultry is far from the only chicken producer to make questionable use of the "free-range" label, which is ostensibly regulated by the USDA. In 2023, undercover footage taken from a Tyson Foods-contracted chicken farm in Virginia depicted employees of both the factory and Tyson freely acknowledging that the "free range" label doesn't actually mean anything, and that "free range" birds often "don't go outside."

Why Wasn't Petaluma Poultry Investigated by Law Enforcement?

Though it's unclear why local law enforcement hasn't pursued any investigations into the allegations against Petaluma Poultry, DxE's director of communications has some ideas.

"It would be a massive undertaking for any government agency, no matter how well-staffed they actually might be, to suddenly address the systemic animal cruelty that we know is happening in factory farms," Cassie King, director of communications at DxE tells Sentient. "If they put their foot in the door and acknowledge that it's their responsibility to address these crimes, then there's a landslide of new cases they need to take on, and it's just a huge amount of work."

It also bears mentioning that chicken farms are an enormous part of Petaluma's local economy, and have been for quite some time. Once referred to as "the egg basket of the world," Petaluma was the birthplace of several egg-related technologies at the turn of the century, and pumped out over a half a billion eggs every year at its peak in 1945.

Although the city isn't quite the egg powerhouse it once was, chickens are still big business in Petaluma. Though official estimates are difficult to come by, the city is home to at least seven chicken farms large enough to qualify as factory farms, and those facilities collectively house around 1.8 million chickens at any given time, according to a 2024 analysis by an activist group that opposes factory farms.

To be clear, there's no evidence that the poultry industry's strong presence in Petaluma has played any role in law enforcement's response to allegations of cruelty at the city's chicken farms. But the fact that the Petaluma Police Department publicly celebrates the city's poultry industry, and participates in the annual Butter and Eggs Day festival in a non-law enforcement capacity, is not lost on DxE activists.

Rosenberg Awaiting Trial

For her part, Rosenberg maintains that her actions were legal. She cites the doctrine of necessity, a legal theory holding that it's sometimes permissible to break a law if doing so prevents even greater harm from occurring.

"For example, if a kid is drowning in your neighbor's pool and no one is helping that kid, you have the right to trespass into your neighbor's yard to rescue the kid," Rosenberg says.

How this defense plays out in court remains to be seen, but it's essentially the same argument Hsiung's attorneys successfully used in the Utah case. In the meantime, Rosenberg says she's been encouraged by the public reaction to her case (Paris Hilton is a prominent supporter), and doesn't regret her actions even if they do land her in prison.

"A few years of my freedom is worth significantly less than even one animal's entire life, and certainly less than four animals' entire lives," Rosenberg says. "And so it's absolutely worth it to me on that level."


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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