Broiler Chicken Pre-Slaughter Welfare: Catching, Transport, and Shackling
The final hours of a broiler chicken's life — catching, loading, transport, lairage, shackling, and stunning — involve some of the most significant welfare risks in poultry production. The cumulative stress of pre-slaughter handling affects millions of birds daily.
Key Facts
Broiler catching causes wing fractures, bruising, and acute stress in approximately 5-10% of handled birds
Transport in ventilated containers exposes birds to temperature extremes and social disruption
Live-shackling of conscious birds on slaughter lines causes pain from inversion and wing flapping
Controlled atmosphere killing (CAK) systems using CO2 or inert gas are considered higher welfare than electrical water bath stunning
Pre-slaughter mortality in UK poultry processing is approximately 0.1-0.3% — hundreds of thousands of birds annually
Welfare Considerations
Live shackling of conscious broilers — hanging birds upside down on moving shackle lines — causes measurable pain from hip dislocation and wing stress, and acute fear from inversion and noise. Electrical water bath stunning requires birds to make contact with the stun bath, which does not always achieve effective stunning before throat-cutting. Controlled atmosphere killing systems eliminate conscious shackling and are associated with lower pre-slaughter stress indicators. Catching by machine rather than hand reduces handling injuries but requires investment unavailable to smaller producers. Welfare improvements in pre-slaughter management represent one of the highest-impact interventions for poultry given the scale of production.
What You Can Do
Advocate for mandatory controlled atmosphere killing to replace conscious live shackling in poultry slaughter
Support Humane Slaughter Association campaigns for pre-slaughter welfare research and implementation
Choose chicken from farms using higher welfare slaughter methods in their supply chain
Encourage supermarkets to require pre-slaughter welfare standards from poultry suppliers
Support research into fully automated catching systems reducing manual handling injuries in broiler houses