Transporting pigs to slaughter is one of the most acute welfare events in their lives, causing significant stress, injury, and mortality that is substantially preventable with better practices.
Pig transport is a welfare-critical event involving multiple simultaneous stressors: loading, motion, crowding, mixing, temperature extremes, and novel sensory environments. Pigs that have spent their entire lives in familiar groups are mixed with strangers during loading, triggering fighting. Heat stress in summer transport — particularly when ventilation fails — causes hyperthermia and death. Pigs with existing lameness experience pain that increases with prolonged standing during transport. The most impactful welfare improvements are shorter journey times, maintaining stable social groups for transport, ensuring adequate vehicle ventilation, and training handlers in low-stress pig handling techniques that reduce loading injuries.