Ammonia from wet litter in broiler houses causes respiratory disease, eye conditions, and chronic pain in millions of chickens, yet can be substantially reduced through better management.
Ammonia welfare in broiler houses is a chronic background harm that affects hundreds of millions of birds simultaneously. Eye damage from ammonia exposure can progress to blindness. Respiratory tract irritation predisposes birds to disease. Foot contact burns from wet, ammonia-saturated litter cause persistent pain. These welfare harms are measurable, understood, and substantially preventable through investment in litter management, ventilation, and stocking density reduction. They persist because the welfare costs are borne by the animals, not the producers, and regulatory standards are often set too high to prevent harm rather than too low to permit it.