Poultry processing plants handle billions of birds annually in conditions that create specific welfare risks at every stage from truck unloading to slaughter.
Poultry processing welfare is largely invisible because it occurs behind closed doors at high speed. Birds arriving at processing plants after transport stress are handled manually in ways that cause injury before any official welfare procedure begins. Waiting times before slaughter expose birds to temperature stress, noise, and social disruption. The adoption of audit cameras and electronic monitoring systems at processing plant entry points has revealed welfare failures that internal management had not identified.