The welfare of farm animals at slaughter is one of the most critical and regulated aspects of animal production. Understanding what good slaughter welfare requires helps advocates push for improvements.
Slaughter welfare failures cause acute, severe suffering. Improper captive bolt stunning, electrical stunning at inadequate parameters, or failure to verify unconsciousness before sticking causes animals to regain consciousness during bleeding. Post-cut survival times in non-stunned slaughter mean that animals are conscious while blood pressure falls and organs fail over 2-3 minutes. Lairage conditions before slaughter — noise, unfamiliar environments, mixing of strange animals — cause fear and stress. The slaughter process can either minimise or dramatically multiply animal suffering depending on how it is conducted.