The method used to stun poultry before slaughter has major welfare implications for billions of birds. Understanding different approaches helps evaluate industry practices.
Poultry slaughter welfare involves some of the largest numbers of welfare-relevant events in all of animal agriculture — tens of billions of birds experiencing conditions that may cause pain and fear at the point of death. Water bath stunning, the dominant method globally, requires live birds to be shackled upside-down before contact with the stunning trough — a position that causes pain and fear. Inadequate stunning means birds may remain conscious through killing. Controlled atmosphere stunning avoids these problems but introduces others depending on the gas mixture used. The availability of better methods, combined with the enormous scale of the impact, makes poultry slaughter welfare one of the most high-leverage areas for welfare investment and advocacy.