The Country That Produces The Most Chicken In The World
Almost 200 million chickens are eaten every single day across the world. And it's not only a modern-day meat, we've been eating chickens long before Colonel Sanders started slinging his crispy buckets of birds — since at least 400 B.C.E, according to the latest evidence. Way back then, people butchered or hunted their own chickens for food instead of stopping at the drive-thru or grabbing a Costco rotisserie chicken. But who produces most of the chickens the world eats today?
The United States, China, and Brazil are the top three chicken producers in the world.. Each country has hundreds of facilities that raise, slaughter, and process millions of chickens for world consumption — and that's just for commercial meat. But narrowing down the world's top producer of chicken is a little more nuanced than just counting the number of chicken facilities in each country. Chicken production can be calculated according to the weight of meat produced, or the number of broiler chickens each country slaughters every year. Though Brazil's poultry industry is thriving, the U.S. and China are the countries vying for the number one spot.
The number of chickens vs the weight of chicken meat produced
China produces the highest number of broiler chickens in the world, more than 9 billion annually. But the United States produces the most chicken meat, about 20 million metric tons annually. So, either country could claim to be the globe's top poultry producer and be technically correct. There's a difference in approach to the industry between the countries as well — numbers indicate China has more rural and smaller-scale chicken farms, while America's chicken industry is built on technology and advanced production facilities.
While each country may have a focus on different chicken production techniques, one thing the U.S. and China have in common is the driving factors behind the massive numbers. Domestic consumption is a huge driver for poultry producers in both countries, after all, you couldn't get an order of McDonald's McNuggets in either country without a few chickens.
The U.S. poultry industry could surpass China in both numbers and weight in coming years, as the tide has been turning for chicken farms in China. A 2023 US Department of Agriculture report indicates a production decline in broiler chicken production for 2024 (those numbers aren't yet available) due to Avian Influenza-related closures of Chinese live poultry markets.