The welfare science of animal slaughter and the reforms that would most significantly reduce suffering at the end of life for farmed animals.
Slaughter welfare reform is simultaneously urgent and achievable. The gap between current practice — where stunning failures leave animals conscious during killing at significant rates in some facilities — and best practice — where properly calibrated, monitored stunning systems achieve near-universal unconsciousness before death — is a gap of investment, training, and regulatory enforcement rather than technical impossibility. The scale of the impact makes slaughter welfare reform one of the highest-priority interventions in farm animal welfare: 80 billion animals annually, and every improvement in stunning effectiveness reduces suffering at the moment of greatest vulnerability.