Sir, – Today (October 2nd) is World Farmed Animals Day, an opportune time to ask how the annual slaughter of 82 billion farmed animals can be justified.

A little more than a half-century ago, meat was considered a luxury. All that changed with the advent of intensive farming, which began its journey of growth and expansion after the second World War, when it was discovered that chickens could be raised successfully indoors.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the situation is unrecognisable from the animal agriculture landscape of the 1970s, with over 80 billion land animals raised and slaughtered annually, the majority of these on factory farms, where they never see the light of day, never feel the sun on their backs, their brief, confined lives ending in the cauldron of the slaughterhouse.

These days, when animal agriculture comes under the spotlight, it is invariably on account of its devastatingly adverse effect on the climate.

Rarely do we hear about the lives and deaths of the animals, who are at the heart of these massive industries.

Our World in Data estimates that 900,000 cows, 1.4 million goats, 1.7 million sheep, 3.8 million pigs, 12 million ducks, and 202 million chickens were slaughtered every day in 2023.

These are nothing short of mind-boggling numbers, yet every one of the 82 billion animals are individuals, with their own unique DNA, their own personality, their own ability to experience a wide range of emotions. Ask anyone who has spent time on a farm animal sanctuary and they will tell you the same thing: that every animal they take in will start to express their own personality as soon as their recovery allows it.

Unfortunately for the animals raised indoors on factory farms, the massive numbers ensure that the individual animal will never be seen or heard.

It is up to governments to show a hitherto reluctant determination to push back against an animal agriculture lobby that is powerful, inflexible and wedded to growth.

There is no more room for growth in what is alrea