The lairage period — when pigs are held at the slaughterhouse before slaughter — is a critical welfare moment involving mixing of unfamiliar groups, noise, fasting, and waiting that causes significant stress requiring active management.
Lairage welfare represents a welfare intervention window that occurs before slaughter — one of the final experiences of an animal life in livestock production. The hours spent in lairage after transport affect the quality of those final hours and, for pigs particularly, represent a period where welfare failures including mixing aggression, excessive noise, and temperature extremes cause genuine suffering. The alignment of welfare and commercial incentives is unusually direct in lairage: stressed pigs produce lower quality pork, creating economic motivation for welfare improvement that does not require consumer pressure alone to drive change. Slaughterhouse design, operational protocols, and staff training in welfare-conscious lairage management are all practical improvements achievable within current industry structures.