How welfare oversight at slaughter plants works and what independent monitoring reveals about compliance with existing standards.
Slaughter plant welfare oversight sits at the heart of the gap between animal welfare regulation as written and as practiced. Mandatory CCTV represented a significant advance, but its effectiveness depends on genuinely independent review of that footage, adequate staffing of official veterinarians, and regulatory willingness to act on non-compliance findings. Evidence from both academic audit and undercover investigation consistently identifies systemic problems — rough handling, ineffective stunning, and welfare failures during lairage — that routine inspection misses. The welfare of billions of animals at their most vulnerable moment depends on genuinely robust oversight of the places where they die.