More than 200 million chickens are slaughtered around the world each day, and increasingly, these birds are raised on intensive farms that wreak havoc on our planet.

In 2024, the average U.S. per-capita chicken consumption reached over 102 pounds—a figure that has more than tripled from 28 pounds in 1960 and is expected to continue rising, with severe environmental consequences.

Read on to find out why the farming of chickens is not as sustainable as you think.

Chicken is the most widely consumed meat in the United States, and nearly all of it is produced on industrial farms—facilities that crowd as many as hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million, birds into intensive operations that heavily pollute our environment. 

In fact, over 99.9 percent of chickens commercially raised for meat in the U.S. and two-thirds globally are kept on factory farms, and the environmentally devastating animal agriculture industry continues to expand and intensify.

The number of U.S. chicken farms with 500,000 or more birds rose by 17 percent in just five years, from 2017 to 2022.

The industrial farms that dominate the chicken industry pollute our waterways, primarily through manure. Runoff from fertilizer and animal waste containing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus can end up in surrounding bodies of water—and an excessive amount of these nutrients leads to toxic algal blooms and a depletion of oxygen in the water. This process creates what are known as “dead zones,” areas devoid of life. 

These impacts are alarming in the Chesapeake Bay, where one billion chickens and turkeys are farmed each year. According to a recent study, the poultry industry in this region produces 5.7 billion pounds of manure and pollutes the Bay with 12 million pounds of nitrogen annually.

There are two to four times more nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in manure produced by chickens than in that of other farmed animals. Most U.S. chicken farms are intensive operations raising at least 660,000 birds each year. Annually, a farm of that size produces 3,300 tons of manure with 72,000 pounds of nitrogen.

Because chickens and turkeys don’t produce methane (the U.S. beef industry, on the other hand, accounts for 45 percent of the nation’s methane emissions), you may have heard that farms raising these birds don’t contribute to harmful greenhouse gases—but that’s far from true. Methane and nitrous oxide are emitted by the vast amounts of manure produced on intensive chicken farms. 

Plus, half of chicken production’s emissions occur after animals are slaughtered, as these once-living birds are processed into products to be sold.

Intensive farming of chickens—and particularly growing crops to feed the billions of birds raised—is a major cause of deforestation. Soy products such as tofu are often blamed for clearing forests, but most of the world’s soy doesn’t go directly to humans. Over 75 percent of soy is used in farmed animal feed, most of which goes to chickens and other farmed birds.

Vitally important rainforests, like the Amazon and Cerrado, are among the land that is being deeply impacted by animal agriculture’s destruction. Forests are crucial in absorbing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and producing around half of the oxygen we breathe.

Because chickens are smaller than cows, more animals would be slaughtered to produce the same amount of meat—in fact, 200 times more chickens. This would come with terrible suffering. On factory farms, chickens are routinely subjected to cruel practices, such as having parts of their beaks and toes cut or burned off with no pain relief or anesthesia. To maximize profit, the meat industry breeds chickens to grow unnaturally large and fast—a practice that results in less time and feed to raise these birds, but dramatically increases suffering. Today’s farmed chickens grow too large to support their body weight, leaving some with debilitating leg injuries or even heart attacks.

As Our World in Data notes, many ways chicken production has become more “efficient” have made life worse for birds. “Pack chickens in tiny cages, and you’ll need less land. Stop them from moving around, and they’ll ‘waste’ less energy. Give them growth hormones, and they’ll gain weight much faster.”

Thankfully, eating plant-based foods rather than chicken can have a greater positive environmental impact and be kinder to chickens and other farmed animals.