Transport to slaughter is one of the most welfare-compromising events in pig production, causing stress, injury, and death from loading, vehicle conditions, and social disruption.
Transport to slaughter concentrates multiple welfare harms in a short, unavoidable period. The sequence of loading stress, social disruption from mixing, vehicle motion and noise, temperature extremes, and arrival at an unfamiliar slaughter facility creates cumulative acute welfare harm in the final hours of pig lives. Transport mortality — pigs that die before reaching slaughter — represents welfare failure and economic loss that better transport management could prevent. Casualty pigs that arrive injured or ill but alive at slaughter facilities present welfare challenges requiring prompt assessment and humane euthanasia when slaughter is not immediately possible. Transport-free slaughter, where pigs are killed at or near the farm of origin and transported as carcasses, eliminates the welfare costs of transport entirely and represents the welfare-ideal endpoint for pig slaughter logistics.