Is Vegan Outreach right about how many animals suffer to death?

i dont get it. why compare this? why not say how many were slaughtered and how many suffered to death? why only chickens and not all food animals? not easy to explain. although numbers are anyhow overwhelming this comparison is a bit confusing.

Holy Henderson, to see why this comparison is being made, you may want to read the context around the original claim in "A Meaningful Life" by Matt Ball. The number of chickens who suffer to death is enough to verify the Vegan Outreach claim.

i also don't get this. yes the animals suffer to death. no matter what they are sadistically and brutally slaughtered. yes they are brutally treated as mere commodities and then sadistically slaughtered. yes this is cruel and uncompassionate. yes this is obscenely wrong. yes this is why i am a vegan.

The numbers are simply staggering. The suffering is unimaginable. I can't stop thinking about the fact that these large numbers are made up of individuals each enduring their own pain.

It saddens me because I want it stopped before another has to lose to the greed. I became a vegan because of the eyes of animals; they taught me, not man. Once again, a reminder why we need them on OUR planet.

It's of course, an astounding revelation, but it sort of falls short on the impact it would have on anyone. Can anyone really comprehend the difference between 19 and a half million deaths of totally innocent, feeling beings,and 137.8 million deaths of totally innocent, feeling beings. Besides making a point about an incomprehensible distinction between the number of animals who die before they become food, fur or fodder for scientists, and those who live long enough to be murdered, the article also somehow manages to cheapen the deaths of the animals. Is 19 and a half millions deaths of harmless, innocent, defenseless animals not enough of an outrage that the author needed to point out, in excruciating detail, that the 9 million are just a drop in the bucket of the total carnage? I'm not criticizing an old friend (Matt Ball) for writing HIS article, and informing people that the numbers of deaths, and the treatment of the animals, is even worse than we could have imagined, I'm just questioning the value of a prolonged statistical analysis of these gruesome facts.. I did, however, learn a few things about the abject horror these animals face even before slaughter, so all is not lost..except for the innocent lives.

Fred, thank you for your comment. The question of whether there is a distinction between death and suffering-to-death is outside the scope of this blog. This blog focuses on numbers and the Vegan Outreach statement is about numbers. The point of this post is not to show that the 19 million animals are a drop in the bucket. The point is to highlight the fact that there is a bucket and that it is a big bucket and that the drop is not all there is. Also, it is hard to see why this article with an analysis of their numbers cheapens the death of any animal. Ascertaining objective facts about the scale of these numbers can only be helpful.

Hi Harish- I didn't actual read the name of your blog, and your mission statement, until after I wrote my comment. I also love numbers and animals, so your article certainly made sense in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. We're on the same team.

Thanks for proving Matt Balls's assertion, Mr. Harish. Those are some mind-numbing numbers. The sheer insanity and magnitude of all this unnecessary suffering is truly unimaginable. Why should innocent lives and peaceful animals be subjected to such horrors and incomprehensible, sadistic brutal torture is beyond me.

Thanks for crunching the numbers, Harish. I think the point of the statement is to move thoughtful advocates away from the rather over-served areas of companion animals, lab animals and fur animals and onto the area where we can have the most impact as advocates, animals used for food. Nearly each person we see will sentence dozens of animals to horrible suffering and death each year with their food choices. Almost no one we see has the power to spare dogs, cats lab rats or minks in such numbers.

Harish, I love what you're doing on this blog!

If I were making this case, I would choose to define "suffer to death" or to use a slightly less loaded term. For example, "animals who die miserably before slaughter" is still pushing a moral claim (and is not totally objective), but it does not suggest that suffering itself is necessarily the cause of death.

I know your focus is on the numbers, but the numbers will be most effective if all readers can understand and accept the categories of deaths you're counting.

Thanks for the comment, Andy. I did wrestle with whether "suffer to death" should be defined as I was writing the post and so, I welcome your comment and the opportunity to explain. However, frankly, I found no objective way of defining it. Whenever people say "suffered to death", they usually mean that death occurred while suffering miserably, but they don't actually mean that there was no other cause of death but suffering itself. Further, since it is never really the case that we can isolate suffering itself as the only cause of a death, redefining the term to exclude this case seemed unnecessary to me. Your suggested definition is pretty much the only reasonable interpretation of what "suffer to death" might mean in this context, and that is what I use in this post.

Regarding animals in laboratories, I think your numbers are far too low.

Stop Animal Exploitation Now estimates "The real number of animals experimented on in the U.S. each year is well over 20 million."
Source: http://www.all-creatures.org/saen/fact-anex-jun09.html

In Defense of Animals says "Estimates for total numbers are between 20-70 million." Source: http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/faq.html

And there is no way to know how many of these animals suffer to death as well.

Brandon, I know about those estimates by the organizations you mention. I have seen many such estimates but have not seen any that are accompanied by any factual reasoning behind those estimates. That is indeed also the case with the two pages to which you link. Instead, if someone can provide objective reasoning behind why the estimate should be higher, I would be happy to change my numbers. Until then, my estimate of a little under 12 million stands (for the number used in research in the US).

And yes, there is no doubt that a large number of the animals used in research suffer to death as well.

I take exception to Joe Esponisa's cavalier attitude towards animals suffering anywhere but on "factory" farms. As long as they are still being killed for their skin, their use as lab tools, or their entertainment, they are not "over-served."

@ AnneJones

I agree totally with your statement. Case in point, there is no nice way to brutally torture/abuse and then sadistically and brutally slaughter an innocent, peaceful and sentient animal. I tell you no lies.

@ Andy D

Do please correct me if I'm wrong but pushing a moral claim is "at best" poorly defined, definitely prone to bias and after all is said and done, is just a collection of words, as are all complete sentences written in English. Taken to the extreme, every philosophy, mathematics and elementary logic textbook is pushing a moral claim.=(

Brilliant post, Harish. I am so glad that someone out there is crunching the numbers and making utterly clear where animal advocates must focus in order to do the most good.

Thank you so much for providing these numbers, disturbing as they are. For a long time we have had to deal with vague numbers with no real backing from groups that would have reason to skew those numbers. It's hard to debate using those numbers since they are so quickly dismissed as exaggerations by meat eaters (with good reason imo). Your blog has become a daily stop for me.

Please hand out Vegan Outreach pamphlets at those yoga studios who will accept them, and to the all yoga students. Yes the info and comparison made on this site was very enlightening and saved me from having to read a whole book on the subject.

Where is the number that goes in the big circle at the end? It's missing right now. Great article though, thank you.

Excellent article that breaks down the specifics and doesn't lessen the overall message that the slaughter and mistreatment of animals is wrong. The author treats these animals with the same regard we discuss people. How many people suffer and die from xyz? This gives more emphasis on the individual horrors different groups of animals face, in this case chickens. This is actually better than just summing it all up in just 1 flat number.
Vegan: All the flavor, no victims. Peace!

I think the number of animals in labs is higher than you estimated here. Using the DOD's numbers isn't a good baseline for a number of reasons doesn't take into account regulatory testing, DOD uses more protected animals than NIH, etc.

Harish, next time we meet we can chat more about this. I see the point you are making but I might refute your stat for that one :)

Aryenish: It is quite likely, as you say, that the DoD uses more protected animals than NIH and that it may not be the best baseline to use. I always try to use primary sources as far as possible, and, in 2011, when I first wrote this post, the DoD reports were the only primary sources available with numbers on all species of animals. Since then, in February of 2015, through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, Alka Chandna and her colleagues at PETA have shown that as many as 98.8% of the animals used at some universities are from non-protected species. But, those universities may not be the right baseline either — while the DoD numbers may underestimate the total, the top university numbers may overestimate.

The real percentage of non-protected animals in laboratories likely lies somewhere between 90% and 98.8% — the exact number is hard to determine without reliable primary sources. But, the pattern of use in other countries such as Canada indicate that the number is likely closer to 90% (the estimate I used in this post) than to 98.8%. In any case, my post is due an update with the latest data.

I just stumbled across your blog and I just wanted to say kudos. Your posts are extremely well-researched and and referenced, which is truly refreshing after seeing so many statistics thrown around by animal welfare groups without citations (or citing newspaper articles, which cite other articles, and so on without every reaching primary data). I'm an animal advocate so I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I also want to make sure I quote factually accurate numbers. Thank you for being a legitimate source for verifying the stats!