Lairage — the holding of poultry at slaughterhouses before slaughter — is a critical and often neglected welfare window. Managing temperature, handling, and time in lairage significantly impacts the welfare of billions of birds annually.
Lairage welfare is a structural welfare gap in poultry supply chains. Unlike on-farm conditions, which increasingly fall under welfare assurance scheme auditing, lairage conditions receive less scrutiny and are subject to operational pressures — line speed, scheduling — that can override welfare considerations. Temperature monitoring failures during summer lairage result in heat-induced distress and mortality that may affect significant proportions of arriving flocks. The combination of pre-transport water withdrawal, transport duration, and lairage holding creates progressive dehydration that adds to the stress burden before slaughter. Regulatory compliance at slaughterhouses is inconsistent, and penalty structures for welfare violations in lairage are often less effective deterrents than the economic pressure to maintain processing speed. Welfare improvement in lairage requires both stronger regulatory enforcement and operational investment in shade, ventilation, and monitoring systems — combined with better scheduling to minimise holding duration and avoid peak heat periods.