The Billion-Dollar Trade in Wild Animals

When people hear the term "farmed animals," they often think of chickens, cows, and pigs crammed into sheds. But increasingly, it also means pangolins, otters, crocodiles, monkeys, and birds of paradise. Wild animals — not just in name, but in nature — are being bred, caged, and sold by the millions in an expanding global industry that hides behind conservation rhetoric and unproven economic claims.

Wild animal farming is now a multi-billion-dollar business. Some countries actively promote it. Others turn a blind eye. All while the animals disappear behind closed doors.

A Global Inventory

Between 2000 and 2020, at least 487 wild animal species were commercially farmed in 90 countries. This included 27 amphibians, 133 reptiles, 249 birds, and 79 mammals — according to the first-ever attempt to summarise the industry’s scale using published records, freedom of information (FOI) requests, and the CITES trade database.

And those are just the species we know about.

In total, the data points to 936 million to 964 million individual animals being farmed over the two-decade period — almost certainly a conservative estimate. The CITES trade database alone included over 1,700 commercially farmed wild species, many of which never appeared in the academic literature or FOI responses.

Much of the trade remains untracked, obscured, or conveniently vague. Some animals are labelled only as “turtles” or “songbirds.” Some are counted in tonnes rather than individuals. And many are likely double-counted across overlapping data sources.

Who’s Doing It — and Why?

Countries engage in commercial wild animal farming for different reasons, but the motivations usually boil down to profit, poverty alleviation, and public relations.

Governments are told that farming will generate income for rural communities, reduce poaching, and meet consumer demand in a “sustainable” way. China’s Wildlife Protection Law explicitly encourages captive breeding for profit. In Vietnam, national and provincial directives have fast-tracked the creation of breeding farms. In South Africa, 33 wild species were reclassified as livestock. Nepal recently legalised wildlife farming for the first time in 50 years.

From luxury food to leather handbags, traditional medicine to the exotic pet trade — the goal is always commodification. And with it comes the risk of disease, ecological damage, and mass suffering.

Farming Conservation Lies

Supporters of wildlife farming often claim it protects wild populations. The logic? If people can buy a farmed leopard cat, they won’t kill one in the wild.

It’s a seductive idea — and one that’s repeated often in policy documents and press releases. But in practice, it rarely works.

In fact, commercial breeding often fuels demand, rather than reduces it. People want what’s rare. And the more “legitimate” the industry appears, the easier it becomes to launder poached animals through registered farms.

Some governments require farms to return a percentage of offspring to the wild — a conservation-sounding gesture with little oversight. Indonesia’s crocodile farms are supposed to do this. So are some facilities in Colombia. But questions remain over the genetic viability of these reintroductions and whether they happen at all. Meanwhile, species like tigers, Père David’s deer, and oryx now exist in greater numbers in captivity than in their natural habitats. That’s not conservation. That’s domestication with branding.

Pandemic Warnings Ignored

The global wildlife farming industry was thrust into the spotlight in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic — almost certainly zoonotic in origin — ignited scrutiny over the trade and confinement of wild species.

In response, some governments acted swiftly. The Netherlands and Denmark killed millions of mink and paused mink farming. China banned the consumption of terrestrial wild animals. Vietnam promised to crack down on the trade in wild mammals and birds.

But in the years since, most of these efforts have quietly unravelled. Denmark allowed mink farming to resume in 2023. China reclassified 191 amphibians and reptiles as “aquatic,” sidestepping consumption bans. Wildlife bred for traditional medicine? Still fair game.

And so the industry marches on, now with added public relations muscle: it survived a pandemic and came out the other side more “regulated,” more “sustainable,” more “responsible.”

Farming Animals, Farming Risk

Every justification for wild animal farming comes with a counterweight — a growing pile of evidence that it’s risky, unnecessary, and devastating.

Animal welfare is rarely, if ever, prioritised. Wild species are kept in factory-style conditions utterly incompatible with their behavioural and psychological needs.

Biodiversity suffers when captive breeding substitutes wildness for production, or when escaped farm animals pollute wild gene pools.

Public health remains on the line. Many of the diseases that threaten humanity — including COVID-19, SARS, and monkeypox — have links to the commercial trade and confinement of wild animals.

Many wild species can’t even be bred reliably or economically in captivity. For these, “farming” often means wild capture disguised as legal trade — a black market in plain sight.

Data Deficiency Is the Point

Try to find a comprehensive, reliable database of commercial wild animal farms and you’ll come up short. The numbers are messy, overlapping, incomplete. FOI requests are ignored or stonewalled. Many countries have no transparency laws at all. Even the best-resourced treaty in the world — CITES — only covers a portion of species and focuses on trade, not farming.

The authors of the first major global analysis of wild animal farming couldn’t even combine the data sources they had. Each had to be analysed separately due to inconsistencies and incompatibilities. The result: a fragmented portrait of a global industry hiding in plain sight.

But the lack of data is not accidental — it’s systemic. Opacity protects profit. Obscurity fuels denial. And without a spotlight, the industry can continue to grow, quietly feeding global demand while the public assumes the worst ended with the wet market bans of 2020.

This Is Not a Grey Area

The framing of wild animal farming as a “complex issue” serves only to delay action. The complexity is largely manufactured — inflated by theoretical benefits, cherry-picked case studies, and deliberate gaps in accountability.

This is not about balancing “both sides.” It’s about recognising that commercial wild animal farming is an industry built on exploitation, maintained through loopholes, and defended with spin. We don’t need clearer cages. We need to end the trade in wild animals for profit — full stop. And the first step is seeing it for what it is: not a solution to poaching, not a lifeline for communities, not a conservation tool — but a global system of commodification, quietly replacing the wild with warehouses.