Around 40-50 million pheasants and 10 million red-legged partridges are released annually in the UK for game shooting. The welfare of these birds - during rearing, release, and as shot game - raises significant ethical and practical welfare questions.
The welfare implications of game bird releases are multiple and substantial. Intensive pen rearing creates significant welfare challenges, predation mortality after release involves suffering for individually injured birds, and road collisions cause acute trauma. The scale of release means even relatively low-rate welfare problems affect millions of individual birds. Welfare standards for pheasant and partridge rearing are less developed than for farmed poultry despite the birds having comparable capacity to suffer.