Slaughter reports from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reveal that we killed at least 750,409,569 land animals for food in 2015.
This is an increase from previous years, mostly due to an increase in the number of chickens killed. In recent years, we’ve killed roughly 620 million chickens each year. This number jumped to 640 million in 2014 and 660 million in 2015.
Here are the total number of animals slaughtered in Canada in 2015 by species:
Meat chickens: 660,959,987
Egg-layer hens: 36,526,578
Turkeys: 21,477,602
Ducks and geese: 5,989,919
Pigs: 21,186,243
Adult cows: 2,672,806
Calves: 225,530
Sheeps and lambs: 557,851
Goats: 61,048
Bisons: 14,186
Rabbits: 669,873
Horses: 67,946
These numbers don’t include:
- More than 90 million tonnes of fin fishes like salmons (they are only counted by weight) killed in Canadian fish farms.
- Tens of millions of male chicks killed at birth in the egg industry.
- Millions of animals who died of disease or injuries on farms or en route to slaughter.
- Thousands of deers, elks, and wild boars killed in Canadian slaughterhouses for which 2015 data is not available.
Photo: Louise Jorgensen, taken outside a chicken slaughterhouse in Toronto.
