Slaughter statistics

An aggregation of slaughter inspection records and slaughter reports from slaughterhouses and poultry slaughterhouses in South Korea for cattle, pigs, horses, sheep, chickens, ducks, and rabbits, from January 2004 through December 2024.

The source is the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency’s slaughter statistics. I shared the compiled data on GitHub.

Summary

So many chickens are killed that the other species are hard to see. Changing the Y axis to a logarithmic scale makes the other species easier to examine.

The following index sets 2004 to 100. About 12 times as many chickens are killed each year as in 2004.

Animals not included in the statistics

The data above include only cattle, pigs, horses, sheep, chickens, and ducks killed for food in slaughterhouses and poultry slaughterhouses (rabbits were added in 2024). The “number slaughtered” is the number inspected alive minus the number prohibited from slaughter. In other words, it counts animals killed at these facilities after being judged fit for consumption. Male chicks killed immediately after birth, for example, are therefore not counted.

Fish and various invertebrates are also excluded, as are animals killed for purposes other than food, such as laboratory animals.