Poultry including chickens, turkeys, and ducks represent by far the largest number of farmed land animals globally. Understanding the scale of welfare challenges guides prioritisation of advocacy efforts.
Poultry welfare is numerically the most significant issue in farm animal welfare by a large margin. The scale of suffering in intensive poultry production - affecting tens of billions of birds annually - dwarfs all other farmed animal categories combined. This makes poultry welfare improvements, including breed reform, housing improvements, and cage-free transitions, among the highest-impact welfare interventions available. Corporate campaigns targeting food companies with high chicken purchasing volumes can achieve commitments that improve welfare for hundreds of millions of birds simultaneously. Individual dietary choices shifting away from poultry, or toward certified higher-welfare sources, multiply in impact across the billions of purchasing decisions made annually.