The slaughter of poultry involves welfare considerations affecting billions of animals annually. Improvements to stunning and killing methods can significantly reduce suffering at the end of life.
Poultry slaughter welfare involves the final minutes of life for billions of individual animals. Water bath stunning requires live shackling of conscious birds which causes distress and pain. Inadequate stunning leaves some birds conscious during the killing cut. The scale of poultry slaughter means that even small failure rates represent enormous absolute numbers of animals experiencing pain or distress at death. Controlled atmosphere killing systems that gas birds before shackling eliminate the distress of live shackling and provide more reliable insensibilization. Mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses and independent inspection improve compliance with welfare standards.