A significant proportion of farm animals die before reaching slaughter. On-farm mortality management raises welfare questions about both the manner of death and the treatment of remains.
On-farm mortality reflects the welfare problems within farming systems - animals dying before slaughter are the visible tip of a larger iceberg of chronic welfare compromise. The manner of death matters profoundly: animals that die from disease, starvation or injury suffer through their final hours or days without appropriate pain management. Emergency on-farm euthanasia is not always performed by trained individuals, raising concerns about effectiveness. The decision to euthanize rather than treat economically marginal animals involves a welfare judgment that is not always made promptly. Mortality recording and post-mortem examination provide valuable information about welfare problems within systems, but this information is not always used to drive management improvement. The normalization of high mortality rates in intensive systems represents an acceptance of welfare failure as a production cost.