How transport conditions cause significant suffering for farm animals and what evidence-based improvements look like.
Farmed animal transport creates welfare harms at multiple stages — loading, the journey itself, and unloading. Each transition involves fear responses, physical exertion, and physiological stress that compound over long journeys. Temperature regulation failures are particularly serious: poultry in poorly ventilated trucks in summer heat experience life-threatening hyperthermia within hours. Maximum journey time limits, mandatory rest stops with water and feed access, temperature monitoring requirements, and trained handlers all reduce welfare harm. Countries with stronger transport regulations show measurably better welfare outcomes. The gap between best practice and common practice in global livestock transport represents one of the clearest and most tractable welfare reform opportunities.