Over 1.5 million chickens are killed every single day in Australia alone. The treatment of chickens who are used for their meat – known as 'broiler' chickens – is one of the biggest animal welfare issues in the world today.
Every year in the United States, approximately 9 billion “broiler” chickens are killed for their flesh. To put such a large number into perspective, that's about 25 million chickens killed every day; 1 million chickens killed every hour; 17,000 chickens killed every minute; or 300 chickens killed every second.
Every year in Australia, approximately 678 million chickens are killed for human consumption [1]. According to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, an additional 4% of chickens die due to “natural” causes or are killed prior to slaughter [2].
Now, while nearly 600 million broiler chickens were slaughtered in Australia in 2014-15, there were only around 750 broiler farms, a decline from the 1990s.
On average, Australians consume 47.46kg of chicken per person each year, making it the highest consumed meat protein, ahead of beef, lamb, and pork!
When compared with its major export partners, Australia's meat consumption closely matches the United States (Figure 2). In both countries poultry is the most consumed meat at over 40 kg per person. Beef and veal and pig meat each account for between 20 and 30 kg per person.
Chicken meat most popular meat in Australian diet, new trends for other meats.
The country that consumes the greatest amount of chicken is the United States. Every year, the United States consumes approximately 15,000 metric tons of chicken, placing it significantly in front of the second-place region.
Australian chickens are given a bath in chlorine during processing that knocks out most of the naturally occurring campylobacter and salmonella on the chicken skin – but not all the bugs. There is a lot of water used in processing and when packaged this water and some of the serum from the flesh leaches out.”
The two largest integrated chicken companies – Baiada Poultry and Inghams Enterprises – supply approximately 70% of Australia's meat chickens. Inghams Enterprises is a publicly owned company, and Baiada is privately owned.
Over 130 million pigs are slaughtered each year in the US–over 90,000 each day.
Over five million pigs are slaughtered in Australia each year for the pork industry, with around 85% killed using CO₂ gas stunning. In March 2023, an investigation by the Farm Transparency Project and ABC's 7.30 revealed an inside look into the use of CO2 stunning in Australian slaughterhouses.
Cattle slaughter fell 2.8%, or 171,400 in 2022 compared to 2021, to reach 5.85m head. This volume was the lowest yearly slaughter rate since 1984.
Processing/slaughter
Chickens are stunned (rendered unconscious) before slaughter. In Australia, stunning occurs either by electrical waterbath stunning or controlled atmosphere (gas) stunning). Chickens have to be removed from their crates and be consciously shackled for the electrical stunning process.
Generally, the throats of birds are cut, either mechanically or by workers, and they bleed to death. If stunning was ineffective, chickens suffer significantly from the pain and distress of being killed in this way. If the arteries in the neck are partially cut, birds face prolonged deaths.
Dogs are probably the major daytime chicken killers, but several species of hawks may also prey on hens. Mink, foxes, and weasels are occasionally active during daylight hours but raccoons, opossums, and skunks rarely are. Preparing the run in two ways will reduce predation.
Aldi becomes the latest supermarket to announce that it will not sell chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef. While this is great news, we're still calling on the government to protect food standards in the Trade Bill or Agriculture Bill. Tricia Brodie and 2,473 others like this.
Live attenuated vaccines and inactivated bacterins against Salmonella serovars are available in Australia. These have had some use in meat breeder chickens but have yet to be considered by the commercial layer industry. Australian commercial flocks are free of S.
The results of chicken collected further down the food chain and closer to consumers at retail outlets was not much better: 25.8% of samples tested positive for Salmonella (1.7% of samples with quantifiable levels), and Campylobacter was detected in 89.9% of samples (again 6.4% with quantifiable levels).
There are lots of people who enjoy consuming eggs, but there is one country that consumes more eggs than just about any other place on Earth. Per person, Japan consumes the most eggs every year. The average person in Japan eats about 320 eggs per year.
India - 3 kg per capita
The world's second most populous, with an astonishing 1.3 billion people, India holds the distinction of consuming the least meat per capita. With its staggering population, this is even more striking, and indeed with only 3 kg of meat per capita per year consumed, no other country eats less.
Sheep meat consumption
According to the OECD, the consumption of sheep's meat—including both lamb and mutton—is most popular in Kazakhstan, Australia, and Turkey.
Rockhampton is the Beef Capital of Australia. With a long history of beef production, two major abattoirs and 10 Bull statues in key locations across the city this tour will give you the opportunity to pull on your cowboy boots, channel your inner jackaroo and who knows maybe even ride a bull!
NAB economist Phin Ziebell said there were several factors behind the price drop, including an oversupply of cattle in Australia. "What's happened is, we had the drought, we had the herd rebuild, the herd rebuild is done," Mr Ziebell said. "We've had these really great three years, three wet years.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world (36%) followed by poultry (33%), beef (24%), and goats/sheep (5%).