claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed are just intuitively false to anyone that has spent any significant amount of time in the countryside and farms outside of the USA
I don’t think this is the claim typically being made. Rather, X% of farmed animals, as individuals, not by weight, are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed land vertebrates are chickens, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed vertebrates (land or aquatic) are farmed fish, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. Factory farms produce disproportionate numbers of animals relative to the number of farms, and countryside farms are badly unrepresentative of the average animal’s life. To be fair, this is a subtle issue, and we shouldn’t expect people to have a good sense of such numbers just through experience.
We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.
I don’t think this is the claim typically being made. Rather, X% of farmed animals, as individuals, not by weight, are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed land vertebrates are chickens, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed vertebrates (land or aquatic) are farmed fish, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. Factory farms produce disproportionate numbers of animals relative to the number of farms, and countryside farms are badly unrepresentative of the average animal’s life. To be fair, this is a subtle issue, and we shouldn’t expect people to have a good sense of such numbers just through experience.
For example, from Sentience Institute: