Mary Wilson
Well-known member
First published in September 2023.
Updated in November 2024 with the latest estimates for the US.
By: Hannah Ritchie
More than 100 billion animals are killed for meat and other animal products every year.[SUP]1[/SUP] That’s hundreds of millions of animals every day.
This in itself amounts to a large amount of animal suffering. But what also matters for animal suffering is what their lives are like up to the moment they are slaughtered: did they live in discomfort and poor conditions, or did they have a relatively pain-free life?
It’s difficult to capture animal living conditions with a single metric, but one indicator that is often used is whether animals were raised in ‘factory farms’. ...
In agricultural research, they are often known as ‘concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)’.
The US Department for Agriculture has consistent criteria for CAFOs to track and quantify these farms. An animal feeding operation (AFO) is an operation where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. The animals are confined for 45 days or more in a 12-month period. In other words, they have no access to the outdoors over this period. ...
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
Updated in November 2024 with the latest estimates for the US.
By: Hannah Ritchie
More than 100 billion animals are killed for meat and other animal products every year.[SUP]1[/SUP] That’s hundreds of millions of animals every day.
This in itself amounts to a large amount of animal suffering. But what also matters for animal suffering is what their lives are like up to the moment they are slaughtered: did they live in discomfort and poor conditions, or did they have a relatively pain-free life?
It’s difficult to capture animal living conditions with a single metric, but one indicator that is often used is whether animals were raised in ‘factory farms’. ...
In agricultural research, they are often known as ‘concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)’.
The US Department for Agriculture has consistent criteria for CAFOs to track and quantify these farms. An animal feeding operation (AFO) is an operation where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. The animals are confined for 45 days or more in a 12-month period. In other words, they have no access to the outdoors over this period. ...
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed