CCTV monitoring in pig slaughterhouses is transforming welfare oversight, enabling continuous monitoring of stunning effectiveness, handling practices, and incident detection.
Slaughter is the moment of highest welfare risk in livestock production: the animals are stressed, handling is rapid, and stunning effectiveness is critical to preventing conscious slaughter. CCTV monitoring has been transformative in making this previously invisible process visible to oversight. The evidence is clear that monitoring improves compliance - not because most workers are malicious, but because accountability changes behavior. The remaining gap is between footage collection and active review: cameras that record everything but are only checked after complaints are significantly less effective than systems with real-time monitoring or AI-assisted incident detection. Continuing to strengthen slaughter monitoring - technologically and in terms of official veterinarian resourcing - is among the most impactful near-term welfare policy priorities.