Farm Animal Welfare

Poultry Welfare During Catching and Loading

The catching and loading of broiler chickens before slaughter is one of the most acute welfare events in their lives — involving manual handling, transport stress, and high injury and mortality rates.

Key Facts

Broiler catching involves manually grabbing birds by legs and placing in transport modules
Catching injuries including dislocated hips and broken wings affect 1-5% of birds
Mechanical harvesters reduce catching injuries by 80% compared to manual methods
Pre-slaughter mortality from catching and transport can reach 0.1-0.5% of flocks
Heat and cold stress during transport loading compounds catching injury welfare impacts

Welfare Considerations

Manual catching of broiler chickens causes significant acute trauma — the sudden inversion and restraint causes fear responses and musculoskeletal injury in birds already compromised by fast-growth breeds. The scale — tens of billions of birds globally — means even low injury rates represent enormous numbers of animals experiencing preventable harm. Mechanical harvesting and welfare-conscious loading procedures substantially reduce this burden.

What You Can Do

Support welfare standards requiring mechanical catching or equivalent injury-reduction measures
Ask poultry producers about their catching and loading welfare protocols
Advocate for mandatory catching injury monitoring and reporting
Support research into reduced-stress catching equipment and methods
Choose chicken from producers committed to catching and transport welfare standards