Animal Cruelty Index: which country ranks the worst?

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.

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. 

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.