The final hours of broiler chickens involve catching, crating, and transport under conditions that cause significant acute suffering for billions of birds each year.
Catching and transport represent the most acute and concentrated welfare crisis point for broiler chickens. Manual catching that involves grabbing birds by their legs causes fractures and dislocations at rates that would be scandalous for any other animal. The birds are then loaded into crates at high density for transport that may take many hours in temperature conditions outside comfortable ranges. Controlled atmosphere processing, where birds are stunned on-farm before transport, eliminates live transport welfare harms but requires significant capital investment. Better training for catching teams, mechanical harvesting equipment, and maximum transport time limits represent lower-capital improvements. Consumer awareness of catching and transport welfare is extremely low compared to housing conditions.