The transport of chickens, turkeys, and other poultry to slaughter is a high-risk welfare period involving catching, crating, and loading that causes injury and death to millions of birds.
Poultry transport concentrates multiple welfare insults into a short period: the fear and pain of catching and inversion, confinement in unfamiliar crates with strangers, temperature extremes, vibration, and deprivation of food and water. For broiler chickens already compromised by rapid growth, transport stress can cause cardiac events and respiratory failure. The welfare harm is invisible to consumers but represents one of the largest single welfare events in the food system.