According to ourworldindata.org, chicken meat production reached over 128 millions tonnes a year worldwide in 2024.
Chickens a typically slaughtered when they reach 5 to 7 lbs. That would be around 48.5 billions chickens a year… or 1.5 thousands every single second.
I’m curious about the opposite statistic now. Presumably, the number of people eaten by chickens wasn’t and isn’t zero.
Chicken is literally a quarter of the price of beef, of course people are eating more chicken. Just a reminder meatloaf, which would now cost at least $15 to feed a family of four, used to be one of the cheapest meals. And outside the anglosphere more people are able to afford meat at all, and chicken and pork are the meats of choice for the world because of their incredibly low cost and relatively low environmental impact; modern cooking techniques and knowledge also pretty much entirely eliminates the risk of food-born illness from historically famously risky sources.
Chickens can also be raised with very little land and just some basic resources. Cows need large amounts of pasture, barns, special equipment, etc.
I’m doing my best, but I wasn’t alive in 1961.
Then you’re eating infinitely more Chicken than you were in 1961. Keep up the good work.
Of course we are, beef has become unaffordable to the masses.
Beef was not cheap in 1961. At least, not for most people. The American everything-with-meat diet started basically as conspicuous consumption, because living on gruel and forage (mostly in the old country, but also the Depression) was in living memory.
This stat probably reflects that most of the world isn’t on the edge of starvation anymore, like it was in 1961. (Now it’s just a notable minority)
I wonder how much of it might also have been to deliberately show off American wealth compared to communist countries during the cold war. Like the whole comparisons of having shelves of different brands of the same food.
Well, there’s no real reason to think it was a forced meme, as opposed to just people living it up when they suddenly could, and it started well before the Cold War. When you watch something set in the Old West, and they’re driving cattle east, that’s what it was about. It’s worth saying it was cheap-er in America than Europe or the undeveloped world, with all that freshly “cleared” land to graze on. Still more expensive than plant crops, though.
There’s a few sides to the Soviet shopping thing. Price controls in the USSR meant that the shopping experience was very different in general. You could afford everything, but anything unusual or desirable tended to sell out immediately. There were indeed empty shelves as a result, although on a rotating basis. Later on, as the system was collapsing, that became permanently empty shelves. People in the West tend to conflate the two, and the famines that happened before the space race period, 'cause propaganda. (There also were no one-stop-shops, and everything was behind the counter and collected by staff, but that’s a digression)
On the other end, there just were a lot more food categories in the West, and the USSR itself acknowledged it. There, a new product couldn’t exist until some government boss sponsored a project to create it, and fudge pops or whatever probably weren’t front of mind for what the Union needed. They spent a lot of time copying Western consumer products as a result. When it came to military equipment or civilian infrastructure, where the requirements are more concrete, they did far better.
Huh, I’m eating less meat than I ever have. Shit’s expensive plus stuff like garbanzo beans are surprisingly tasty and protein packed. Plus, it’s way healthier for you.
For me, when I had no money, it was pulses (garbanzos and lentils, mainly), brown rice and fish. I lived in a town with a fishing port, and back then everyone was barely getting by, so prices weren’t bad. But those same sand dabs I used to buy off the boat, cleaned, 4 for a dollar, are nowhere near as cheap now. And there is no fishing fleet there anymore, it’s become a yacht marina.
Anyway I’ve moved on and am living in another country. Here, the low-food-mile, low-cost options are different. And my consumption of red meat is on the order of once a week. I’m not a big fan of chicken, but still have fish when I’m motivated to visit the fishmonger.
Black beans and rice is a good combo, complimentary proteins too!
I think you have to combine it with other foods to get a complete protein.
Pulses plus grains give you the right set of amino acids to make proteins.
Yes, and some meat is necessary to obtain vitamin B12.
why eat animals that have been fed b12 supplements when you can just take the b12 supplements yourself?
Animal meat naturally has b12. In the old days, animals weren’t fed b12 supplement.
I can safely say this is an underestimation. I ate exactly 0 (zero) chickens in 1961 on account of not having been conceived yet. I eat more than 6 * 0 chickens now.
It isn’t that surprising. Humans have gotten very good at raising chickens in the past 60 years.
I saw videos of chickens from the 1900s. My word. They were a fraction of the size today.
not only is chicken cheaper, it’s healthier. so maybe that also has something to do with it?
i hope as humanity advances, it would be nice to see technological advances in meat alternatives rather than farming chickens. i love eating meat, but damn is it inhumane and inefficient
Also the rise of all the chicken sandwich shops. I imagine their waste is is considered “consumption”, too.
It’s just Chickens Georg who eats 10,000 chickens daily and offsets the average for everyone.
Perhaps, eating insects might be a solution.
Maybe stop eating animals?
Which is probably why insectivory hasn’t caught on. If the West could adapt to sushi it could adapt to mopane worms, but in the 80’s or whatever vegetarianism was still a joke. Now it’s influential.
Eating some meat is required to get vitamin B12.
Nope. The animals geht b12 supplements too, why not direct for us then.
Animal meat naturally has b12. In the old days, animals weren’t fed b12 supplement.
