Transporting chickens from farms to slaughterhouses is one of the most stressful and deadly phases of their lives. Improving live haul practices can significantly reduce suffering.
Transport is a welfare crisis concentrated into a short but extremely intense period of suffering. Chickens experience catching as a terrifying and painful event involving rough handling, inversion, and confinement. During transport, they face heat or cold, noise, motion sickness, dust, and ammonia. Feed and water withdrawal — necessary to reduce gut contamination at slaughter — causes hunger and thirst. For compromised birds already suffering from production-related conditions, transport is often fatal. The industry has made some improvements through better module design and temperature monitoring, but fundamental welfare improvements require shorter journeys, better catching methods, and wider adoption of on-farm killing systems.