The catching, loading, transport, and lairage of poultry before slaughter is one of the highest-risk welfare periods in the production cycle. Understanding the evidence on stress and injury helps identify where intervention can reduce suffering most effectively.
The catch-to-slaughter period is one of the least-regulated and most welfare-compromising phases of poultry production. Birds that have been reared in a shed environment and have never experienced handling face extreme novelty stress at catching — the sudden manual restraint, inversion, and confinement in transport containers is acutely frightening and physically injurious for a proportion of every flock. Thermal stress during transport is particularly severe in summer months, when ventilation within containers may be inadequate to maintain safe temperatures, resulting in deaths from hyperthermia. At the slaughterhouse, delays between arrival and slaughter extend the duration of confinement stress and, for water-withheld birds that have not drunk since the previous evening, dehydration compounds discomfort. On-farm audits frequently end at the farm gate, meaning that catching and transport welfare receives less regulatory and assurance scheme attention than in-house conditions — a gap that welfare scientists consistently identify as one of the most significant in the entire supply chain.