How Many Animals are Factory Farmed?
Factory Farming coducted in CAFO's or Animal Factories describes the intensive confinement of large numbers of animals in industrial systems designed to maximise output at minimum cost, prioritising profit over the animals' needs and behaviours.
Global Factory Farming
Over 90% of farmed animals worldwide live on factory farms, including 74% of all farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.
An estimated 31.0 billion land animals and 38.8–215.9 billion fish are farmed globally at any given time. Fish make up roughly 78% of all farmed animals, meat chickens 12%, egg-laying hens 5%, cows and pigs around 1% each.
Excluding waterlife, chickens raised for meat make up over half of all farmed land animals (~55%), with egg-laying hens a further ~23%. Cows and pigs each account for roughly 5%. All other farmed land animals, including ducks, turkeys, sheep, and goats, make up the remaining ~13%.
📷: Terrace Farm Free Range Eggs, NSW - ©Animally 2026
United States
Around 99% of farmed animals in the US live in animal factories.
By species: cows 74.9%, pigs 98.6%, egg-laying hens 98.3%, turkeys 99.8%, meat chickens over 99.9%.
Source: Sentience Institute, updated November 2024, based on the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture.
Australia
No Australian government, industry, or advocacy body publishes one national percentage of all farmed animals in factory farms¹. There is some species data available:
Pigs
Around 90% are housed indoors for every stage of production².
Chickens farmed for meat
Effectively ALL chickens are reared in intensive sheds, holding 40,000 to 60,000 birds each; approximately 756 million were slaughtered in 2024/25³.
Turkeys
Housed in sheds of 8,000 to 14,000 birds, at 4 to 5 birds per square metre⁴. Annual slaughter figures of 3 to 5 million.
Ducks
Dominated by two intensive producers, Pepe's Ducks in New South Wales and Luv-a-Duck in Victoria, each processing 70,000 to over 100,000 birds per week⁶. Both companies were found guilty by the Federal Court of Australia in 2013 of misleading consumers by implying outdoor access when ducks were, in fact, permanently confined indoors. Pepe's Ducks was fined up to $400,000; Luv-a-Duck was fined $360,000⁷.
Hens farmed for eggs
The national flock is approximately 24.9 million birds. Estimates of cage housing vary by what is measured: an older RSPCA estimate put caged hens at 65 to 70% of the flock; more recent data shows cage eggs at 19.7% of supermarket sales volume for 2023/24, a lower figure because it measures retail sales rather than total hens housed, and excludes food service and manufacturing channels where cage eggs remain common⁸. Battery cages are legislated to phase out nationally by 2036.
Beef cattle
Around 4% of the national herd is in a feedlot at any given moment, but roughly 40% of cattle now pass through a feedlot before slaughter, and about 80% of beef sold in major domestic supermarkets is feedlot-finished. Cattle typically spend 50 to 120 days on feed. A record 9.28 million cattle were slaughtered nationally in 2025, the highest since 1978⁹.
Farmed salmon
Tasmania supplies over 90% of Australian Atlantic salmon production, 75,000 to over 83,000 tonnes annually, almost entirely from intensive sea cage systems¹⁰.
Sources
No single Australian government, industry, or peer-reviewed source publishes a national factory-farming percentage across all species; the absence is the source
Australian Pork, Indoor system farming. https://australianpork.com.au/about-pig-farming/indoor-system-farming
Australian Chicken Meat Federation, Facts and figures. https://www.chicken.org.au/facts-and-figures/
RSPCA Australia Knowledgebase, How are turkeys farmed in Australia? https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/how-are-turkeys-farmed-in-australia/ ; The Poultry Site, Raising Turkeys. https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/raising-turkeys
Unverified. Commonly cited figures (3 to 5 million/year) trace to Animal Liberation ACT campaign material only; no ABS, ABARES, or industry breakout for turkey-specific slaughter numbers was found.
PoultryHub Australia, Duck. https://www.poultryhub.org/all-about-poultry/species/duck
Federal Court of Australia, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Pepe's Ducks Ltd [2013] FCA 570; Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Luv-a-Duck Pty Ltd [2013] FCA 1136.
Australian Eggs, Egg Industry. https://www.australianeggs.org.au/egg-industry ; Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Overview of egg industry in Australia, September 2025. https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/P1060%20SD5%20-%20Overview%20of%20egg%20industry%20in%20Australia.pdf ; RSPCA Australia Knowledgebase, What is the RSPCA doing to get hens out of battery cages? https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-is-the-rspca-doing-to-get-hens-out-of-battery-cages/
Australian Lot Feeders' Association / Meat & Livestock Australia, National Feedlot Survey; MLA, ABS data confirms record beef production and strong livestock supply in 2025; ACCC, Cattle and beef market study — Final report, March 2017.
Tasmanian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Salmon Farming. https://nre.tas.gov.au/aquaculture/aquaculture-species-in-tasmania/salmon-farming
United Kingdom
Over a billion animals are confined in factory farms in the UK every year — 85% of all UK farmed animals. The number of UK factory farms rose 12% between 2016 and 2023, with large pig and poultry units up 20% over the same period.
Source: Compassion in World Farming, Factory Farming Map — relaunched February 2024, compiled from Freedom of Information requests, planning documents, and on-location verification.
Source: Sentience Institute, Global Farmed & Factory Farmed Animals Estimates - Updated Aug 2026
Animally seeks to inform and educate the public on the hard-hitting realities of animal exploitation, so people can look, learn, and choose compassion over cruelty.
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