The transport and pre-slaughter period is among the most welfare-significant in the lives of farm animals, combining multiple stressors with heightened vulnerability.
The transport chain concentrates multiple welfare insults simultaneously: animals experience fear from unfamiliar environments and social mixing, physical injury from loading and unloading, thermal stress, hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Pre-slaughter lairage adds further stress from unfamiliar surroundings and inappropriate management. At slaughter, stunning failure - which occurs in a proportion of animals even in regulated systems - causes the experience of slaughter while fully conscious. The cumulative welfare harm of the transport-slaughter chain is one of the most significant welfare events in animals' lives, making improvements to transport regulations, stunning oversight, and lairage management among the most impactful welfare interventions available to regulators.