Theoria

Been collecting data that I “know,” but don’t actually have in front of me in any coherent fashion on “agri-business,” especially the meatpacking industry, in Canada. Great passage from a document at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada (a federal department) called Canada’s Poultry Industry:

Poultry production and processing are among the most highly mechanized sectors in agriculture. One person can operate a unit of 50,000 broiler chickens which, with seven lots per year, will provide 640 tonnes of meat annually. Poultry processing plants in Canada are so mechanized that they are slaughtering and preparing 25,000 broiler chickens per hour for market.

The document concludes with links to industry organizations – what used to be called “trusts” in the early twentieth century.

The corresponding document, Canada’s Red Meat Industry [pdf], provides the following data on red meat production in Canada as of 2006:

• 14.2 million cattle on 90,000 farms, 40% of which are in Alberta; the cattle industry has an income of $6.2 billion, which acounts for a total of 15% of all farm receipts;
• 14.9 million hogs on 11,000 farms; the industry has an income of $3.3 billion, which accounts for a total of 8% of all farm receipts;
• 879,000 sheep on 12,000 farms, 72% of which are in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec; the industry has an income of $125 million;
• 116,000 venison (deer, elk, etc) on 1525 farms;
• 220,000 bison, 85-90% in “the West”

Note, these figures only count the number slaughtered in any given year and does not include animals exported or otherwise waiting to be slaughtered. For those numbers, we must turn to an industry organization, the Canada Meat Council:

• 23.4 million hogs produced;
• 79,613 horses slaughtered in 2007; a 60% increase over 2006; most is exported to France and Japan;
• 678.9 million poultry (chicken, turkey, duck, goose) were slaughtered;

Other figures, from a variety of sources:

• 998,500 cows were used to produced milk in 2007 (source), for a total of 7 593 300kL (source);
• 32,234 tonnes (metric) of freshwater fish were harvested in 2006 and 1,019,224 tonnes (metric) of saltwater fish were harvested in 2007 for commercial uses (source) – note: fish are measured in tonnes, not in lives;
• 215 million fish were caught by recreational anglers, 72 million of those were kept; put another way, the average angler caught 66.5 fish and kept 22.2 fish (source – PDF) – note: fish are measured in tonnes, not in lives;
• 2 054 909 animals were used in research by member organizations of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (this does not include industry use in product development) in 2007, nearly half of which were used in Category of Invasiveness D and E (ranging from moderate/severe distress or discomfort to severe pain near, at or above tolerance thresholds of unanestheticized conscious animals).
• 2 699 650 pelts were harvested in Canada in 2006; of which 1 047 428 were “wildlife” and 1 652 650 were “ranch” having a combined value of $115 953 182; at the same time, 5 593 533 pelts were imported into Canada having a market value of $123 225 000 (source).

Finding statistics on “recreational” hunting is nearly impossible; as are statistics on zoos, circuses, animal races, etc. Hunting statistics likely depend upon gathering information from each provincial Ministry of Natural Resources.

I’ve summarized much of the above here [pdf] and here [pdf].

Update:

Comparables for USA – Food/Consumption [PDF] and Research [PDF].