Around 50 million pheasants and 10 million partridges are released annually in the UK for shooting, raising welfare questions about intensive rearing conditions and high mortality.
Game bird rearing involves housing large numbers of pheasants in high-density pens with insufficient enrichment, leading to feather pecking, beak tipping (partial beak removal), and high stress. Release into the wild results in high mortality from predation, starvation, road traffic, and disease in birds poorly adapted to survival. The welfare of birds that die between release and shooting is not assessed. Game birds occupy a legal grey area as farmed birds during rearing but wildlife once released. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has published welfare codes for game bird rearing but compliance is voluntary. Concerns about the impacts of high-density pheasant releases on native biodiversity have added to welfare debates.