How many animals are killed for food each year?

About 81 billion farmed birds and mammals were killed for food worldwide in 2019, according to figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) quoted in a study of fish catches. Fish far outnumber them. One estimate puts farmed fish killed that year at 78 to 171 billion1, another puts wild-caught fish at 980 to 1,900 billion. That makes fish an estimated 87.5 percent of all vertebrates killed for food and feed2.

The fish figures are rough. The FAO records fish only in tonnes, not in numbers, and the wild-catch estimate leaves out unrecorded catches as well as shrimp, crabs and squid3. Part of the wild catch becomes fishmeal and fish oil rather than food2. The authors of the farmed-fish estimate are affiliated with Fishcount.org.uk and the animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming.

Denmark produces over 30 million pigs a year, but more than half are exported as piglets to be raised abroad4.

Denmark also produces about 105 million broiler chickens a year, and conventional ones are typically slaughtered at about 36 days old56. In 2023, 126,700 bull calves were slaughtered as well, according to Landbrug & Fødevarer's statistics7.