Minimizing Injury During Poultry Catching and Handling

Poultry catching causes significant injury and distress. Training programs and mechanized alternatives can substantially reduce these welfare harms at the highest-risk moment in poultry production.

Key Facts

Manual broiler catching typically involves grabbing birds by one or both legs and inverting them
Approximately 1 percent of broilers suffer bone fractures or dislocations during catching
Bruising from catching increases over the final hours before slaughter and can be detected at processing
Trained catchers who use two-handed holds cause significantly fewer injuries than untrained workers
Night-catching in dimmed red light reduces bird activity and injury rate compared to daytime catching

Welfare Considerations

Poultry catching is a brief but high-risk welfare moment in broiler production. Birds are picked up rapidly by catchers under time pressure, often held inverted which increases wing dislocation risk, and placed into crates at high stocking density. Injuries at catching including femur fractures and wing dislocations cause pain that persists through transport and may not be identified until processing. The welfare costs are substantial at scale — with billions of broilers caught annually, even small injury rate reductions translate to millions of animals spared from catching injuries. Training investment in proper catching technique, transitioning to night-time catching, and exploring mechanized catching systems all reduce the welfare burden at this critical moment.

What You Can Do

Support welfare certification schemes that require catcher training and injury rate monitoring
Advocate for mandatory catching welfare training as part of poultry industry worker certification
Choose poultry from producers with audited catching welfare standards
Engage with poultry processing data on catching injuries as a welfare transparency measure