The transport of poultry to slaughter is a high-risk welfare event involving capture stress, thermal challenges, and significant mortality rates that require better management and regulation.
Poultry transport combines multiple simultaneous welfare stressors: capture, unfamiliar movement, thermal extremes, noise, and social disruption. Dead-on-arrival rates — while apparently low in percentage terms — represent millions of birds annually when applied to the scale of production. Birds that arrive stressed or thermally compromised but alive still suffer significant welfare harm. Transport mortality and pre-slaughter welfare are monitored primarily through slaughter line data; real-time welfare monitoring during transit is almost non-existent. Better standards, monitoring, and journey time limits are all achievable improvements.