Animal suffering in our world is diverse and immense. But the magnitude of human-caused animal suffering inflicted on farmed animals dwarfs all other categories. For every one dog or cat euthanized in a shelter, about 3,400 farmed land animals1 are confined and slaughtered. Of the 9.2 billion farmed land animals killed in 2015 in just the U.S., 8.8 billion were chickens, according to latest slaughter totals. This amounts to 279 chickens killed per second. An additional 400 million other farmed land animals were killed in 2015, twenty-one times the total amount of lab animals confined. All these numbers are for the U.S. alone.

Spending on animal advocacy is highly inconsistent with these patterns. As of 2015, Charity Navigator listed 90 major U.S. animal shelters with annual budgets over $3.5 million—all of these shelters together spent $1.2 billion per year. By contrast, 10 major U.S. farmed animal outreach organizations together controlled just $19.9 million.

These numbers together suggest that typical donors and volunteers should concentrate their efforts on preventing the suffering of as many factory farmed animals as possible.

About the data

Data for numbers of domesticated land animals used and killed was obtained from USDA reports when possible. For all categories except laboratories, numbers reported were of land animals killed. The number of animals used in laboratories reported on this chart includes those species for which the USDA keeps exact records as well as an estimate for common species like rats and mice which are not required to be reported to the USDA. The number of animals killed in shelters was taken from an estimate by the American Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. For animals killed for clothing, we used numbers collected by the USDA regarding farmed mink. Mink are the most common species farmed for fur in the United States, and account for about 70% of U.S. fur sales according to industry sources.

Data for amount of donations was obtained from Charity Navigator and Guidestar pages. Charity Navigator splits animal charities into three groups, of which we considered only “Animal rights, welfare, and services.” 292 charities in this category are included. We recorded the total budget of the organization for its most recent fiscal year, and categorized its main area of operations based on its mission statement (provided on Charity Navigator) and if necessary a brief visit to its website. The categories used were farm, shelters, lab and N/A, which was applied when the operations of the charity were too mixed (as presented on its website) to identify a primary focus, or when the primary focus was outside the scope of the other categories (for instance, veterinary medicine or guide dog training).

We also included charities listed on Guidestar that had not been listed on Charity Navigator. We conducted an advanced search filtered by the category code “D01” (Animal Alliance/Advocacy Organizations). Organizations were listed in descending order by income—we included all organizations with an income above $100,000 for the most recent fiscal year listed. Organizations with category code “D20” (Animal Protection and Welfare) were included as well. From this category, organizations with incomes above approximately $6 million were included. Organizations with lower budgets could not be included due to time constraints. In total, 215 charities were collected from Guidestar. Because most of the smaller organizations reviewed on Guidestar fit into the shelter and “N/A” categories, we expect that not reviewing the local charities with budgets smaller than $6 million led to an underestimate of how much funding overall was directed towards shelters and general animal welfare organizations.

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