When you next bite into a chicken sandwich, consider this: 2,400 of these birds are being slaughtered somewhere in the world every second. From street stalls in Mumbai to supermarkets in Beijing, chicken has become the world’s most consumed meat. In 2023 alone, humans slaughtered an astonishing 76 billion chickens.
This didn’t arise naturally. It is the result of a system of industrial efficiency, designed by corporations to maximize profits from the birds.
The industry’s complexity often obscures who actually pulls the strings. But our new research maps, for the first time, the previously unpublicized architecture of chicken production, revealing an industry dominated by a handful of firms and their financial backers.
Feed represents up to 70% of meat production costs. That’s why firms have transformed chickens into living machines for converting feed into meat, faster than any other land animal.
The average broiler chicken is five times heavier than in the 1950s, while the time it takes to reach slaughter weight has been slashed by two-thirds. These birds grow so fast their skeletons and organs cannot keep pace, leaving them in chronic pain until their premature death.
Industrial chicken farming also devours resources. It consumes 27% of global soybean production and nearly 20% of the world’s corn – driving deforestation, pesticide use, and biodiversity loss in some of the planet’s most fragile ecosystems.
Who controls the chicken?
Our research found that 376 companies produced 75% of the world’s chicken in 2023. The top ten companies made up 28% of production, dominated by firms from Brazil, China and the US.
Our work focused in particular on four emerging countries – Brazil, Mexico, India and China.
In Brazil, JBS reigns supreme. As the world’s largest meat producer, it slaughtered 4.1 billion chickens in 2024 – about 9% of global production. Its dominance is underwritten by US asset managers, alongside pension funds and international investors. Its main rival, BRF, is also supported by Wall Street players.
Mexico tells a similar tale. Industrias Bachoco, still largely family-owned, competes with Pilgrim’s de Mexico, a subsidiary of JBS.
In India, production is dominated by private firms such as Suguna, which owes much of its growth to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s investment arm. Between 2006 and 2020, the IFC invested US$96 million (£71 million) to help Suguna expand across South Asia and Africa.
China’s industry is more fragmented. Nineteen companies, many of them publicly traded, slaughtered 7.2 billion chickens in 2024. American agribusiness Cargill is a major player in China.
(Cargill is currently fighting a legal action in the UK over claims its chicken farms polluted the River Wye. The company denies the allegations).
Industrial chicken has fed millions of people globally at “cheap” prices. It has made chicken the most common meat on earth. Yet the system is not controlled by farmers or countries. It is controlled by a small group of corporations, and the financial institutions that bankroll them.
This concentration of power tends to undermine food sovereignty, leaving countries dependent on foreign corporations for staple protein. It risks perpetuating animal suffering by prioritising speed and profit over welfare. And it fuels ecological destruction, as vast amounts of crops, land and water are diverted to meat production.
Taking back control
Industrial chicken production is a clear example of how global finance and corporate power can reshape something as basic as food into a vehicle for profit, despite the cost to animals, people, or the planet. Yet the same concentration that makes the system so destructive also makes it vulnerable. A small number of firms and investors hold the keys.
If people want a food system that values justice, sustainability and compassion, they’ll need to wrest control back from the corporations that currently dictate its terms. Pressure can come from shareholders demanding better welfare and environmental standards; from investigative journalists and lawyers exposing allegations of corporate wrongdoing; from lawmakers better regulating the food industry; and from changes in our own consumption.
Ultimately, the best way to end the suffering of broiler chickens is to eliminate industrial farming altogether. This is won’t happen overnight, but – much like the transition from fossil fuels to renewables – can be achieved through a managed, gradual shift that keeps all the moving parts working together.
The most realistic path forward would be to reduce both the production and consumption of chicken meat, while accelerating the development of lab-grown alternatives. This transition would be supported by reducing subsidies for the industrial chicken sector while investing in new industries and in retraining farmers and other meat industry workers.
This would be good news for chicken, but would mean humans radically confronting our own consumption – and accepting that, ultimately, there will be less chicken available for us to eat.
All this is complicated by the fact that chicken on your plate is the endpoint of a global chain of decisions that shows who really holds power in our world. The question is: who do we want making these decisions – big corporations, or all of us?
By Ambarish Karamchedu, Lecturer in International Development, King's College London and Benjamin Coles, Lecturer in Economic and Political Geography, University of Leicester. Karamchedu and Coles received funding from the Tiny Beam Fund Burning Questions Fellowship from the Tiny Beam Fund, a US vegetarian advocacy non-profit, to write this. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.