Poultry Catching and Handling Welfare Before Slaughter

The catching and crating of poultry before transport to slaughter is among the most acutely stressful and injury-prone events in a chicken life.

Key Facts

Catching teams in broiler houses work in darkness or dim red light to reduce bird activity during catching
Manual catching involves grabbing birds by single or multiple legs and carrying them upside down to crates
Injury rates during catching including wing fractures, dislocations, and bruising affect significant proportions of flocks
Mechanical catching machines reduce labour costs but require careful calibration to avoid injury
Birds in catches are often deprived of feed for 8-12 hours before catching to reduce gut content contamination at slaughter
Catching crew training in low-stress handling techniques significantly reduces injury and mortality rates
Corticosteroid levels in caught birds indicate acute stress response of significant magnitude
The period from catching to slaughter is measured in hours but represents concentrated welfare harm at population scale

Welfare Considerations

Poultry catching is a welfare-critical event that occurs for every single commercial chicken but receives relatively little regulatory attention compared to other stages of production. The acute stress of being grabbed, inverted, carried, and crated causes significant fear and physiological stress, and the injury rates from catching mean that many birds arrive at slaughter already injured. The challenge is that the economics of broiler catching incentivise speed over care, and the darkness required to reduce catching stress also reduces oversight of handler technique. Mechanical catching machines remove some of the variability of manual technique but introduce their own injury risks when miscalibrated. The most effective welfare improvement comes from combining trained, regulated catching crews with monitoring systems that track injury rates as quality indicators that trigger management response.

What You Can Do

Support welfare certification schemes that include catching injury monitoring as a welfare audit component
Ask food companies about their requirements for catching team training and injury rate monitoring
Advocate for catching injury rates to be included as a key welfare indicator in poultry welfare legislation
Reduce chicken consumption overall as the most direct contribution to reducing demand from welfare-challenged systems
Support research into mechanical catching systems and training programmes that demonstrably reduce catching injury rates