Poultry slaughter involves billions of birds annually and the welfare of the slaughter process depends critically on the reliability of stunning methods used before killing.
Poultry slaughter welfare is both a technical and a governance challenge. The technical tools for high-welfare slaughter exist: controlled atmosphere stunning systems that render birds unconscious before handling and killing are demonstrably superior to waterbath systems with known failure rates. The governance challenge is ensuring that available best practices are adopted, maintained, and verified across the thousands of slaughter facilities processing billions of birds annually. Each percentage point of improvement in stunning reliability represents millions of birds experiencing less suffering. Consumer pressure on retailers and food companies to require controlled atmosphere stunning in their supply chains has achieved commitments from some major buyers. Regulatory mandates requiring best-practice stunning technology would achieve broader and more consistent improvement.