discussvegan.

We say we love animals, but we pay someone else to have them killed for us.

You say you love animals.

Or do you just love your pets?

This is a dog.

If someone hurt her for fun, you'd call it cruelty.

You'd defend her, and so would anyone.

Now she is a pig.

She's as clever as a dog, and we eat her.

Pigs show problem-solving comparable to dogs, and on some tasks to a young child. They have names for each other, they dream, and they play.

1,500,000,000Pigs killed every year, worldwide

Source: Marino & Colvin, “Thinking Pigs,” Int. J. Comparative Psychology (2015). The pet paradox

You pay for what happens next.

What follows is a reconstruction. The footage and photographs behind this page are real, but none of them show a slaughter. For that, go through the Witness door.

Pigs are pushed by a moving gate into a metal cage, a “gondola”, five to seven at a time.

The cage is lowered into a pit of carbon dioxide. The gas is heavier than air, so it pools at the bottom, at 80% or more (the legal minimum in the UK and the EU; US and Canadian rules set none) and increasingly at 90% or more.

The gas dissolves on the wet linings of their eyes, nose, mouth and lungs and forms carbonic acid. They gasp, squeal, back away and try to get out, and they stay conscious for up to a minute.

In England and Wales the rules keep them in the gas until they are dead, and most go through systems that run three to six cages on a loop. The cage comes back up, the bodies are tipped onto a conveyor, and the next group is pushed in.

In England, Ireland, Australia and, by an industry estimate, the US,

the gas chamber is standard practice.

In 2003 the Farm Animal Welfare Council, which advised the UK government, called it “not acceptable” and asked for it to be phased out within five years. More than twenty years later it is still the standard method.

Its successor, the Animal Welfare Committee, said in 2025 that it should be prohibited, and that December the UK government committed to a ban in England, subject to a consultation that had still not opened in October 2026. In Australia, Victoria's government called the gas “currently considered the best practice method” in December 2024; a committee of its parliament recommended a report on alternatives by May 2026, and we could not find one published. Ireland's agriculture minister says “a specific review of the stunning methods used for pigs has not been carried out” there. US federal rules allow it, and say carbon dioxide “may be administered to induce death”.

About 90% of pigs in England and Wales are stunned with high-concentration carbon dioxide, according to the UK government's Food Standards Agency. In 2003 it was about a third of pigs in Great Britain. In a written answer to the Dáil in June 2026, Ireland's agriculture minister said most Irish pigs are stunned the same way.

Australia's pork industry estimates that 85% of the country's pigs go through seven export abattoirs, all of which use the gas. The US government publishes no figure, but Pig Improvement Company data, quoted in a 2023 petition to the USDA by animal-welfare groups, put it at 86% of US pigs in 2020, an industry estimate. New Zealand's slaughter code does not allow it for pigs at all, which shows the gas is a choice, though about 60% of the pork eaten in New Zealand is imported, according to the industry body NZ Pork, and Australia is among the main suppliers.

In Victoria, two of the state's six pig abattoirs use carbon dioxide, and by the Victorian government's figures about 93% of the 1,202,060 pigs killed there in 2022–23 went into the gas. Across Australia, the pork industry estimates that about 85% of pigs go through seven export abattoirs, all of which stun with carbon dioxide.

Canada publishes no figure for how many pigs are gassed. Its food inspection agency says that at the high concentrations used in North America, some pigs react to the gas “by attempting to escape and showing marked shaking of their heads”. Canadian rules require a blow or an electric current to cause “an immediate loss of consciousness”, but gas only a “rapid” one.

In a written answer to the Dáil in June 2026, Ireland's agriculture minister said “the majority of pigs are stunned by carbon dioxide in high concentration”, with a smaller number stunned electrically. He had been asked how many and gave no number. Ireland killed 3,352,370 pigs in 2025, according to the same answer, a government figure.

New Zealand's welfare code for commercial slaughter lets pigs be stunned only with a captive bolt, an electrical stunner or a firearm, and it notes that “controlled atmosphere stunning of large mammals is not currently carried out in New Zealand”. About 60% of the pork New Zealanders eat is imported, though, according to the industry body NZ Pork, and Australia, where most pigs are gassed, is one of the main suppliers.

About 90% of pigs in England and Wales are stunned with high-concentration carbon dioxide, according to the Food Standards Agency's survey of February 2024, a government figure. In 2003 it was about a third of pigs in Great Britain, and by 2013 just over half. Gas systems now run in eight pig plants in England, three in Northern Ireland, one in Scotland and none in Wales, according to the Animal Welfare Committee, which advises the UK government. The pigs go down into the pit in groups.

The US government publishes no figure. An industry estimate, from Pig Improvement Company data quoted in a 2023 petition to the USDA by animal-welfare groups, put carbon dioxide stunning at 86% of US pigs in 2020, and at 96% in plants killing more than 4,500 pigs a day. US federal rules set no minimum gas concentration.

See the figures for: , , , , the , the . Showing figures for Australia. , or . Showing figures for Canada. , or . Showing figures for Ireland. , or . Showing figures for New Zealand. , or . Showing figures for the UK. , or . Showing figures for the US. , or .

Read the evidence and sources

As the carbon dioxide meets the moisture in their eyes, nose, mouth and lungs, it forms carbonic acid. The UK government's own advisers say the gas causes them “severe pain and distress” before they lose consciousness, and in 2024 a committee of Victoria's parliament, in Australia, found it “aversive to pigs who experience high levels of pain and stress”. Every deeper breath draws in more gas and makes the need to breathe worse. In people this “air hunger” is the urge to breathe that builds during a long breath-hold, with panic and fear, and the UK's advisers expect pigs to feel the same. They gasp and squeal, back away from the gas and try to escape a cage they cannot leave.

Europe's food-safety authority found the gas “is highly aversive and causes pain, fear and respiratory distress”, and that nothing can prevent this because it is “inherent to the stunning method”. The UK's advisers put the time it takes the pigs to lose consciousness at 21 to 60 seconds. In one study that recorded their brain activity, pigs were on average still conscious for ten seconds after they collapsed. At five Australian abattoirs, researchers who watched 1,769 pigs saw between 63% and 82% of them gasping in the cage, depending on the plant.

Sources: FSA Slaughter Sector Survey 2024 (England and Wales, a government figure); Farm Animal Welfare Council (2003); Defra, WATOK Post-Implementation Review (2021) and Animal Welfare Strategy for England (2025); UK Animal Welfare Committee, CO₂ Stunning Opinion (2025); EU Regulation 1099/2009, Annex I (as retained in Great Britain; the EU text applies in Northern Ireland); WATOK (England) 2015 and (Wales) 2014, Sch 1 para 29; Dáil Éireann written answers 668 and 669 (30 June 2026, government figures); Parliament of Victoria, Inquiry into Pig Welfare in Victoria (2024), with Australian Pork Limited's estimate (an industry figure), and Victorian Government Response (2024); Jongman et al., Animal (2021); FSIS petition 23-05 (2023), quoting Pig Improvement Company data (an industry estimate); 9 CFR 313.5 (US); CFIA humane slaughter guidance and Safe Food for Canadians Regulations s.141 (Canada); NZ Code of Welfare: Commercial Slaughter (2018, amended 2026); NZ Pork (an industry figure); EFSA, Welfare of Pigs at Slaughter (2020); Verhoeven et al., Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2016).
The “humane slaughter” myth Hidden-camera footage of a gas chamber near Adelaide, Australia

“They're not like us. They're not clever.”

A small reef fish has passed a version of the mirror test.

Chickens show a rudimentary sense of number and can anticipate the future. Pigs rival dogs on cognitive tests. Fish have pain receptors and respond to pain much as mammals do, and the fish in that mirror test was a cleaner wrasse.

Sources: Rugani et al., Science (2015); Marino, “Thinking Chickens,” Animal Cognition (2017); Sneddon et al., Proc. R. Soc. B (2003); Kohda et al., PLOS Biology (2019/2022).

It doesn't stop at the pig.

Every pack of meat on the shelf was an animal.

This is a chicken.

Killed at six weeks old.

Bred to grow so fast their hearts and legs collapse under their own weight, then slaughtered while they are still cheeping like chicks. More than 70 billion a year, more than every other land animal on Earth combined.

73,000,000,000Chickens killed every year, worldwide

Source: FAO / Our World in Data (2021). More on broiler chickens

This is a dairy cow.

Her calf is taken from her within a day.

She is forcibly impregnated so you can have the milk that was meant for the calf. She bellows for days. Spent by five, she is killed at a quarter of her natural life, and her son becomes veal.

300,000,000Cattle killed every year, worldwide

Sources: FAO / Our World in Data (2024); Compassion in World Farming; EFSA. More on dairy

This is a lamb.

Not yet a year old.

Lamb is the meat of a young sheep, usually less than a year old. A sheep can live twelve years, so the one on the plate had usually lived less than a twelfth of its natural life.

700,000,000Sheep and lambs killed every year, worldwide

Sources: FAO / Our World in Data (2024); RSPCA, Sheep welfare (UK, on the age lambs are slaughtered); Countryfile, How long do sheep live? (2026, a natural lifespan of about 10 to 12 years). More on lamb

This is a duck.

A pipe down the throat.

For foie gras, ducks are force-fed through a tube rammed into the throat until the liver swells to up to ten times its natural size, a disease, sold as a delicacy.

3,000,000,000Ducks killed every year, worldwide

Source: EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health. More on foie gras

This is a fish.

Most are killed with no stunning at all.

Fish have pain receptors and respond to pain much as mammals do. We kill more of them than every other animal put together, by the trillion, and most are crushed or left to suffocate.

1,000,000,000,000+Fish killed every year, possibly twice that

Sources: Sneddon et al.; fishcount.org.uk. Do fish feel pain?

Since you opened this page,

0

Land animals slaughtered worldwide

Each speck of ash falling here is one of them, at the real rate.

More than 80 billion land animals are slaughtered every year, over nine in ten of them chickens. Add fish, and the count runs to one to two trillion individuals a year. A number that size stops meaning anything, which is why the counter above shows them one at a time.

Counted country by country, the UN's figures for 2024 come to about 86 billion across seven species, so the counter, at a round 80 billion a year, is if anything an undercount.

In Australia about 811 million land animals were slaughtered in 2024, and 93 in every 100 were birds, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

In Canada about 857 million land animals were slaughtered in 2024, and 97 in every 100 were birds, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

In Ireland about 112.5 million land animals were slaughtered in 2024, and 93 in every 100 were birds, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

In New Zealand about 152 million land animals were slaughtered in 2024, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Stats NZ, the national statistics agency, counted 1,745,078 calves and vealers killed in the year to September 2025, 1,620,791 of them in the three months from July to September alone.

In the UK about 1.22 billion land animals were slaughtered in 2024, and 98 in every 100 were birds, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

In the US nearly 10 billion land animals were slaughtered in 2024, and 98 in every 100 were birds, according to the US Department of Agriculture's figures.

These figures are worldwide. See them for: , , , , the , the . Showing figures for Australia. , or . Showing figures for Canada. , or . Showing figures for Ireland. , or . Showing figures for New Zealand. , or . Showing figures for the UK. , or . Showing figures for the US. , or .

Sources: FAO / Our World in Data (2024; seven species, which are cattle, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep and ducks, so geese, rabbits and others are left out); USDA NASS, Poultry Slaughter and Livestock Slaughter 2024 Summaries (US, government figures); Stats NZ, livestock slaughter statistics (year to September 2025, a government figure); fishcount.org.uk.

Killed at the same rate, we would be gone in weeks.

There are about 8.3 billion of us. We kill roughly 80 billion land animals a year. Run that same rate on humans, and the entire species is gone in:

38 daysto wipe out humanity, at the land-animal rate

~36 hoursonce you count fish, over a trillion a year

It is simple division, the human population over the number of animals we kill each year. Counting fish, the range is one day to about two and a half.

Sources: FAO / Our World in Data (~80bn land animals); fishcount.org.uk (1 to 2.7tn fish); UN world population (8.3bn, 2026). Check the arithmetic

Then there's the land.

83% of the world's farmland, for 18% of our calories.

That is the share taken by meat, dairy, eggs and farmed fish, which provide 37% of our protein. A kilo of beef carries a water footprint of roughly 15,000 litres. Cattle ranching drives about 80% of Amazon deforestation.

A global shift to plant-based diets could cut food's land use by 76% and its emissions by 49%. The University of Oxford, summarising the study, called avoiding meat and dairy “the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet”.

Sources: Poore & Nemecek, Science (2018); University of Oxford (2018); Mekonnen & Hoekstra (2012). The evidence

Drug-resistant bacteria are being bred on the farm.

An estimated 73% of the world's antimicrobial drugs go to farmed animals, much of it given routinely to whole herds and flocks.

In 2019, drug-resistant infections were directly linked to 1.27 million human deaths. In 2017 the World Health Organization urged the industry to stop, and it hasn't.

Sources: Tiseo et al., Antibiotics (2020); Van Boeckel et al., Science (2017); Murray et al., The Lancet (2022); WHO (2017).

In laboratories,

chemicals are still dripped into rabbits' eyes.

They are forced down other animals' throats too, and the international guideline for the eye test names the albino rabbit as its preferred animal. An estimated 192 million animals a year are used or bred for science worldwide.

Most of it doesn't even predict what happens in people. More than 90% of drugs that pass animal tests still fail in human trials.

Sources: Taylor & Alvarez (2019); OECD Test Guideline 405 (as corrected 2021); clinical attrition data. The evidence

Back to the dog.

You love one animal and pay for another to die.

Nobody here thinks you're cruel. Most people are never shown any of this, and now you have been. You decided that animals matter the first time you loved one, so what's left to discuss is what you do tomorrow.

The alternative

None of this is necessary any more. We can have the meat, the cheese, the eggs, made from cells, microbes and plants instead of suffering.

See how it's built

See it for real

The chamber above was a reconstruction. Witness has the real footage, filmed inside farms and slaughterhouses.

The library

Every objection you have, protein, canine teeth, “personal choice,” the lot, answered with sources.

Make the switch

Free 30-day challenges, films and meal guides, with nothing to sign up for here.

Every claim cited, check our work Search the Library Privacy

No adverts, sponsors, affiliate links or donations, and no organisation funds or approves what’s here.