The live-hang process at poultry slaughter plants — inverting conscious birds by their legs onto moving shackles — is a significant source of pain and distress in chicken slaughter.
Live-hang at poultry slaughter plants represents a final welfare failure for birds that have already experienced a lifetime of welfare challenges. The process of catching (often at night, by hand in dense flocks), loading into crates, transport, and then inversion onto shackles while fully conscious causes pain, fear, and physical injury to billions of birds annually. Broken wings, leg injuries, and acute stress are well-documented outcomes of conventional live-hang slaughter lines. Controlled Atmosphere Killing eliminates these specific harms by rendering birds unconscious or dead before any hanging occurs. The technology exists; the barrier is cost and industry inertia. Consumer pressure on companies that have adopted BCC to extend commitments to slaughter method is the primary advocacy lever.