Pigs in lairage (holding areas before slaughter) face significant stress from mixing with unfamiliar animals, inadequate space, and environmental challenges. Improving lairage welfare reduces suffering at this critical endpoint.
Lairage welfare represents a concentrated welfare challenge at the end of production animal lives. Pigs in lairage experience multiple simultaneous stressors: unfamiliar conspecifics causing fighting, novel environment causing anxiety, and potential temperature extremes. The cumulative effect is a period of significant suffering that precedes slaughter. Welfare-positive lairage management keeps established groups together, provides adequate space to reduce competition and fighting, maintains appropriate temperature and ventilation, ensures water access, and minimizes waiting time. The slaughter industry's economic incentive to reduce lairage-related injuries (which affect meat quality) aligns with welfare goals, creating potential for welfare improvements that also make commercial sense.