Assessing whether individual cattle are fit to travel before transport prevents suffering of animals who deteriorate en route and reduces mortality and treatment costs.
Transport fitness assessment is a gatekeeping welfare intervention: unfit animals that enter the transport chain will suffer, potentially die, and create legal liability. The welfare of animals that should not travel but do so experience deterioration throughout the journey from which recovery becomes increasingly unlikely. Well-implemented fitness assessment requires trained personnel applying clear criteria, willingness to make economically unfavorable decisions when welfare requires them, and institutional support that protects assessors who make correct welfare-based decisions against economic pressure. Building fitness assessment culture into farm management creates the welfare protection that regulations require and that transporters and processors increasingly demand.