Counting Animals has put together a piece on the amount of animal-based foods that end up in our landfills. Waste occurs at both the consumer and retail level and the numbers range from a low of close to 1/5 of chicken to nearly a half of the fresh/frozen fish and shellfish. Cutting the waste at the consumer level in half would reduce the number of animals killed per year in the U.S. to the tune of more than 15 billion fish and shellfish, 500 million broiler chickens, 35 million egg-laying hens, 15 million pigs, and 3 million cows. These insights provide a potentially new angle for animal advocates to consider.

[Abstract excerpted from original source.]

“We waste a lot of food in the United States. We grow food at the farm that the farmers sometimes cannot sell. We lose food during processing and transportation. We overstock food at retail stores and throw away whatever goes unsold. We leave food on our plates in restaurants and in our homes.

Sometimes, this thing that we call food is actually the remains of a sentient and cognitively agile animal who wanted to live but who we killed anyway to serve as our food. Most vegans and vegetarians would agree that no animal should have to suffer or die for our food. But, even most omnivores would agree that there is something deeply wretched about inflicting lifelong pain and misery and finally death on an animal for food we are not going to eat. […]”