Poultry slaughter is one of the highest-volume animal welfare issues in food production. How birds are handled, shackled, stunned, and killed significantly affects whether they die humanely.
The scale of poultry slaughter means that even small improvements in welfare practices affect billions of individual animals. Current industry-standard water bath stunning has documented failure rates that leave a proportion of birds imperfectly stunned — a welfare emergency given the numbers involved. Alternatives including controlled atmosphere stunning with low-oxygen or inert gas mixtures, or multi-step CO2 systems, cause loss of consciousness without the aversion and struggle associated with electrical stunning. Regulatory requirements for effective stunning verification, investment in higher-welfare slaughter technology, and consumer demand for welfare-certified poultry are the primary levers for improvement.