The final hours before slaughter are among the most stressful in a beef or dairy cow life, and the quality of handling, lairage, and stunning profoundly affects whether this period causes unnecessary suffering.
The pre-slaughter period represents a welfare bottleneck where the cumulative stress of transport, lairage, and handling can cause substantial suffering to animals that may otherwise have had acceptable welfare throughout their lives. Transport stress, hunger, thirst, and social disruption during lairage cause measurable cortisol elevation and behavioural distress. Rough handling using electric prods causes pain and fear. Ineffective stunning means some animals recover consciousness after the initial bolt and experience the subsequent bleeding process. Religious slaughter without stunning causes a delay between incision and loss of consciousness during which cattle are conscious of pain and distress. Improving pre-slaughter welfare through better transport regulations, lairage design, handling training, and stunning verification would reduce the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals per year.