The world’s seas and roads are awash with farm animals, with almost two billion pigs, cattle, sheep and chickens trucked or shipped as exports in 2017

Fifty years of the global trade in farm animals

In 2017, nearly two billion animals a year were loaded onto ships or lorries to be sent on journeys ranging from a few hours to six weeks and even more.

Fifty years of chickens …

Top of the list of animals being exported in absolute numbers are chickens. The amount of live chickens being moved around the world has ballooned by a staggering sixteen times in fifty years.

… And all the others

The numbers of other live farm animals (we collected data for pigs, cattle, sheep and goats) being exported has also grown dramatically over the past half a century, according to data from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). This growth has shown no signs of slowing despite advances in refrigeration technology allowing fresh and frozen meat to be stored and transported and concerns around the spread of animal diseases such as African swine fever (ASF).

What are the key markets for live animal imports?

The trade is driven by appetite from all over the world, but the Middle East is a particularly key region, and has been a major importer of sheep since records were first collected by the FAO in the 1960s. Alongside Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Jordan also imported 400,000 sheep in 2017. The US figures are mostly made up of pig imports from Canada and cattle imports from Mexico. Just off the bottom of this list, the UK imported 500,000 live farm animals in 2017, most of which were pigs from Ireland. We’ve left out the figures for imports of live chickens as the numbers are so large they would distort the chart.

Where are these animals coming from?

If we included the figures for chicken in the list of biggest exporters then the Netherlands would be top. But even taking away live chickens, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of live pigs, cattle, sheep and goats after Denmark. The Danes are top mainly due to a large trade in pigs with Poland (6.2 million in 2017). Australia has been a major exporter of sheep and cattle since the FAO records started, but its export numbers have fallen from a high of close to 6.5 million in 2000.

Biggest cattle exporters

France has been exporting more than a million live cattle a year since the 1970s, according to FAO data. The majority of the animals it exported in 2017 went to Italy (980,000) and Spain (490,000), but it also sent 11,000 live cattle to Morocco, 14,000 to Lebanon and 38,000 to Algeria. Mali’s live cattle exports mostly went to Senegal (240,000) and Ivory Coast (200,000).

Biggest sheep exporters

The live sheep export market largely involves the animals heading to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia (5.8 million), Kuwait (1.3 million), Qatar (590,000), Yemen (450,000), Jordan (400,000) and Oman (400,000) all major importers of sheep from Europe, Australia and Somalia. The other big sheep importers are Libya (1.2 million) and Italy (1 million).

Biggest pig exporters

Most of the live pig exports from Denmark and the Netherlands are to other European countries. Along with the 6.2 million pigs the Danes sent to Poland, the Netherlands exported more than 8 million pigs to Germany in 2017. China’s 1.6 million pig exports all went to Hong Kong in 2017, although that trade has since been hit by the outbreak of ASF, a highly contagious viral pig disease, that has wiped out some 40% of the Chinese pig population.

Biggest chicken exporters

European countries dominate the live chicken export market, with the Netherlands and Germany alone responsible for the export of almost 700 million chickens in 2017. A large proportion of both countries’ exports of chickens are to each other. The Netherlands also exported 16 million chickens to the UK, 4 million to Thailand and 1 million each to Uganda and Russia in 2017. Most of the exports of live chickens from Belgium, the Czech Republic and Hungary are to other European countries.