Animal Cruelty Index: which country ranks the worst? | Atlas & Boots

By wazup on April 2, 2025 Comments Closed / 95 views

As the world wakes up to the realities of industrial farming, one animal cruelty index calls out the worst offenders

The journalist and podcaster Ezra Klein once described going vegan as like waking up from the Matrix. Once you are attuned to animal cruelty, you see it everywhere and cannot fathom how humans not just tolerate but endorse a system that subjugates so many.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari has called factory farming one of the worst crimes in history while others have likened it to slavery.

Much of this is seen as joyless pontificating – and some of it is – but none of us can deny that animal cruelty goes hand in hand with industrial farming. (If you do deny it, then we recommend reading Eating Animals which provides a more comprehensive account of industrial farming than we can do here.)

Pigs suffer greatly in factory farming based on the Animal Cruelty Index — Simone Van Den Berg/Dreamstime Pigs are one of the most farmed animals globally

There are myriad initiatives to try to reduce meat consumption globally. There’s Veganuary which encourages people to go vegan for the month of January, there’s Meat Free Monday which advocates giving up meat for one day a week, and of course there’s the exploding popularity of plant-based milk.

One of the most interesting initiatives we’ve come across is the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index, also known as VACI, produced by the animal protection institute, Voiceless.

It's easy to view animals as a faceless mass — Jose Manuel Gelpi Diaz/Dreamstime It’s easy to view animals as a faceless mass rather than individuals

The VACI is an interactive index that evaluates and ranks countries based on the nature, extent and intensity of cruelty associated with farmed animal production and consumption in a sample of 50 countries that together account for almost 80% of the world’s farmed animal population.

The methodology

The VACI ranks countries using three indices:

Producing Cruelty assesses the number of farmed animals slaughtered for food every year (on a per capita basis), whilst taking explicit account of the fact that animals are treated and protected differently in each country.

Consuming Cruelty assesses the consumption of farmed animals using the ratio of plant-based protein to farmed-animal protein consumed and the number of animals consumed in each country (on a per capita basis).

Sanctioning Cruelty assesses societal and cultural attitudes to farmed animals, as reflected in the quality of the regulatory frameworks that protect, or fail to protect, farmed animals.

Steven Kollaras/Dreamstime Australia is one of the worst offenders of animal cruelty

Animal Cruelty Index: ranking

The table below lists the 50 countries in alphabetical order. Sort by Overall Cruelty, Producing Cruelty, Consuming Cruelty, or Sanctioning Cruelty below. The higher a country scores, the crueler it is to its animals.

Based on Overall Cruelty, Australia and Belarus are the cruelest countries to animals. Conversely, India and Tanzania are the least cruel.

Country	Overall	Producing	Consuming	Sanctioning
Algeria	61	7.39	20	21
Argentina	116	15.17	96	18.2
Australia	128	22.45	99	20
Austria	42	5.76	66	6.1
Azerbaijan	81	9.97	30	26.1
Belarus	128	37.69	69	24.2
Brazil	111	21.59	87	15.4
Canada	97	15.21	74	15.3
Chile	101	15.12	73	17.1
China	83	10.19	34	26
Colombia	85	12.79	69	16
Denmark	76	12.77	82	7
Egypt	72	9.34	18	25.1
Ethiopia	45	1.07	3	24
France	72	11.06	74	12.1
Germany	56	6.67	70	10
India	25	1.58	13	14
Indonesia	62	10.25	13	20.1
Iran	115	23.37	42	28
Italy	49	6.87	55	12
Japan	74	6.41	49	23.1
Kenya	33	0.68	11	17
Malaysia	99	25.92	70	14.2
Mexico	68	10.32	67	14.1
Morocco	104	16.49	35	27
Myanmar	116	27.92	52	24.1
Netherlands	90	22.32	76	8.1
New Zealand	94	19.08	81	10.1
Niger	45	1.17	7	23
Nigeria	37	1.26	5	18.1
Pakistan	61	5.73	30	22
Peru	86	25.66	27	17.2
Philippines	48	8.89	28	15.1
Poland	77	13.75	68	13.1
Romania	87	13.61	55	18
Russia	112	18.17	74	19
South Africa	87	14.04	63	16.3
South Korea	69	14.34	38	14.4
Spain	85	13.06	78	13
Sweden	39	5.32	66	6
Switzerland	39	5.25	63	8
Tanzania	25	1.32	8	14.3
Thailand	69	17.07	27	15.2
Turkey	67	12.31	41	16.1
Ukraine	86	12.57	52	20.2
United Kingdom	74	12.46	77	9
United States	120	23.45	98	16.2
Uruguay	57	8.96	46	15
Venezuela	91	12.99	44	23.2
Vietnam	67	6.49	27	25