The final hours before slaughter involve significant welfare risks for poultry through catching, crating, transport, and lairage, and improvements in each phase can dramatically reduce end-of-life suffering.
Pre-slaughter poultry welfare is a phase where significant suffering occurs but where relatively straightforward improvements can make meaningful differences for billions of birds. Catching injuries, transport heat stress, and lairage duration all contribute to end-of-life suffering that is largely preventable with appropriate training, equipment, and management. The welfare case for mechanical catching systems, climate-controlled transport, and minimized lairage times is strong. Certification schemes that include pre-slaughter welfare criteria provide the market mechanism to drive adoption. Dead on arrival monitoring provides a key accountability metric.