The journey to slaughter is a high-risk welfare period for all farmed animals, concentrating multiple stressors simultaneously.
The final journey is one of the most welfare-significant periods in a farmed animal's life. Animals experience multiple simultaneous stressors — loading, mixing with unfamiliar animals, motion, noise, temperature, and deprivation — during transport to slaughter. For many animals this journey also involves the most human-animal contact they have experienced since birth. Local slaughter that minimizes transport distance and on-farm slaughter that eliminates transport entirely represent the most welfare-positive approaches.