Live animal transport is one of the most welfare-significant aspects of food animal production, with journey duration, space allowance, and thermal environment all critically affecting welfare outcomes.
Long-distance live animal transport causes acute and cumulative welfare suffering: stress of loading, unfamiliar environment and companions, restriction of normal posture and movement, deprivation of food and water on longer journeys, thermal stress, and injury from falls and trampling. Each of these stressors individually is significant; combined over multi-hour journeys they produce measurable physiological and behavioural welfare impairment in transported animals. The UK's post-Brexit live export ban and shorter journey time limits represent genuine welfare improvements. Continued advocacy for on-farm slaughter expansion and mobile abattoir funding would further reduce the welfare burden of transport in food animal production.