The lairage period — time spent in holding pens at slaughter facilities — is a critical welfare period for pigs that involves unfamiliar environments, social disruption, and pre-slaughter stress.
The lairage period represents a welfare challenge because it concentrates multiple stressors simultaneously on animals that are already compromised by transport stress. Pigs arriving at abattoirs are fatigued, thirsty, and disoriented; placing them into unfamiliar groups immediately triggers agonistic behaviour and fighting that causes physical injury and intense social stress. The smell, sounds, and visual stimuli of the abattoir environment are novel and aversive. Well-designed lairage minimises welfare harms through several means: maintaining farm groups intact rather than mixing, providing adequate resting space so all animals can lie down simultaneously, ensuring water access, maintaining appropriate temperature and ventilation, and minimising exposure to aversive stimuli from slaughter operations. Skilled, low-stress stockperson handling during lairage and movement to stunning significantly reduces fear and cortisol levels. Audit of lairage welfare using validated measures — such as the Welfare Quality protocol — reveals wide variation between facilities that is not explained by structural factors alone.