Effective pre-slaughter stunning is essential for poultry welfare, ensuring birds are rendered unconscious before being killed - an area where standards and compliance remain imperfect.
Poultry slaughter welfare encompasses the entire pre-slaughter handling chain - from shackling of conscious birds through stunning to death. Water bath stunning, while effective when properly calibrated, requires birds to be shackled while fully conscious, a procedure associated with pain from hanging by the legs and the stress of inverted transport on the line. Controlled atmosphere systems that allow birds to lose consciousness in groups without prior shackling represent a significant welfare improvement for the pre-stun period. Ensuring that stunning systems are properly maintained, calibrated, and monitored is the most impactful welfare intervention in plants using electrical stunning. The welfare gap in the pre-slaughter period - between live bird arrival and confirmed unconsciousness - is the frontier for improvement.