World’s biggest cause of food waste revealed on World Food Day: factory farming

Extra two billion people could be fed each year if governments prioritised food over feed, new Compassion in World Farming report shows

UK, Godalming, Oct. 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An extra two billion people could be fed every year, and land almost the size of Mexico would be freed up to grow food for people if we ended the feeding of grain to factory farmed animals, according to a new report published today (16 Oct) by Compassion in World Farming.  

Released on World Food Day, the report - Food not Feed: How to stop the world’s biggest form of food waste - reveals the hidden scandal of our global food system: in many countries, factory farming wastes much more food than the amount wasted in the conventional sense e.g. by being thrown away by households and food businesses.  

Globally, factory farming wastes more food than any other sector – including food wasted by households, food service or retailers.  

The report outlines the inefficiency of feeding grain to animals to produce meat or dairy, for food – for example, for every 100 calories of human-edible grain fed to animals, just 3-25 calories of meat are produced.   

 If we reduced this waste by switching to regenerative farming, with animals fed on products humans cannot eat - such as pasture, by-products and properly treated, unavoidable food waste or scraps - global food security would be vastly improved.

 The global animal welfare and environmental NGO is now asking supporters to sign an open letter to national governments, urging them to adopt policies that prioritise the production of food for people over animal feed.   

Insights from the new calculations in the report show that:   

• globally, a colossal 766 million tonnes of grain are wasted each year by being fed to farmed animals - most of whom are factory farmed - more food than is wasted by households (631m tonnes), food service (290m tonnes) or retail (131m tonnes).  

• almost 15 million hectares of arable land could be released to grow food for people in the EU if the use of grain to feed factory farmed animals was ended, and in the US, more than 7 million hectares of land would be released.  

• while 59 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the EU every year, almost 125 million tonnes of grain are wasted by being fed to animals – enough to feed an extra 247 million people per year.   

• even more is wasted in the US, where 66 million tonnes of food are thrown away while 160 million tonnes of grain are wasted as animal feed – enough to feed almost 288 million extra people. 

Worryingly, it also shows that around double the grain currently used will need to be produced to feed factory farmed animals by 2040 if we continue with business as usual.    

Thousands of hectares of land are cleared to grow crops for feeding farmed animals, with deforestation impacting communities and killing nature. Furthermore, industrial agriculture’s huge demand for grain as animal feed has led to an expansion of monocultures, and the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers has led to soil degradation,[1][2] biodiversity loss, [3] overuse and pollution of water, [4] and air pollution.[5]  

Peter Stevenson, Chief Policy Advisor at Compassion in World Farming, said: 

“It is simply scandalous that while hundreds of millions of people go hungry and we face a triple planetary crisis, we are allowing hundreds of millions of tonnes of food to be wasted every year by being fed to factory farmed animals.  

“As well as being the world’s biggest form of animal cruelty, fuelling climate change and killing nature, factory farming wastes food on a colossal scale, undermining global food security. 

“Governments must stop propping up wasteful grain-based factory farming with public money through subsidies and adopt fair policies that prioritise food over feed. If we fed crops directly to people instead of to animals used to produce meat or dairy, we could feed an astonishing 2 billion extra people every year.” 

Alongside the report, the NGO has released a powerful interactive tool to raise awareness of this issue which shows the amount of food wasted through factory farming in selected key countries.  

~ENDS~

For more information contact media.team@ciwf.org or call +44 (0)1483 521 615.    

Notes to editor

Compassion in World Farming was founded in 1967 by a British dairy farmer who became horrified at the development of intensive factory farming. Today Compassion is the leading farm animal welfare organisation dedicated to ending factory farming and achieving humane and sustainable food. With headquarters in the UK, we have offices across Europe, in the US, China and South Africa.    

References

1. Edmondson et al, 2014. Urban cultivation in allotments maintains soil qualities adversely affected by conventional agriculture. Journal of Applied Ecology 2014, 51, 880–889. 
2. Tsiafouli et al., 2015. Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe. Global Change Biology: 21, p973–985. 
3. World Health Organization and Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. 2015. Connecting global priorities: biodiversity and human health. 
4. Mekonnen M and Hoekstra A, 2012. A global assessment of the water footprint of farm animal products. Ecosystems.: DOI: 10.1007/s10021-011-9517-8. 
5. Lelieveld et al, 2015. The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale. Nature, Vol 525.  

Lydia Urquhart
Compassion in World Farming
07967631085
lydia.urquhart@ciwf.org

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