Thousands of farm animals were subjected to avoidable pain, suffering and distress in UK meat supply chains, new records have revealed, including cases of livestock perishing during transport, injuries and disease linked to poor conditions on farms and welfare failings in abattoirs.

Internal government data obtained by AGtivist shows that more than 356,000 chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep, amongst other species, were involved in welfare violations documented across England and Wales over a six month period between January and June 2025.

The majority of infractions were connected to the transport of livestock to slaughterhouses or bad practices on farms. There were also incidents at abattoirs themselves. The most serious violations, known as “critical” breaches, were recorded almost 100 times a week, on average.

The records - copies of inspection logs compiled by veterinary officials at abattoirs - were released by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in response to a freedom of information request. Amongst the incidents detailed were:

• Thousands of birds dying during transport, including some freezing to death or overheating in high temperatures
• Injured and diseased poultry, cattle, sheep and pigs arriving at abattoirs, some with open wounds, infections, broken limbs or unable to stand
• Calves and lambs being born at slaughterhouses and killed just minutes after birth, amongst numerous cases of pregnant animals being sent for slaughter  
• Instances of sheep being slaughtered without being stunned, and animals regaining consciousness after stunning
• Equipment breakdowns leading to birds being stuck on production lines, or left in transport crates for hours before slaughter
• Large numbers of poultry suffering from foot pad dermatitis, a condition linked to prolonged exposure to wet, poor quality litter on farms
• CCTV failures leading to key points on abattoir production lines not being sufficiently monitored
• Lengthy transport journeys, and road traffic accidents involving live animals, some resulting in multiple injuries and deaths

“Systemic failures”

The revelations prompted condemnation from MPs and campaigners. Dr Danny Chambers, the MP for Winchester and a vet, said the findings were  “extremely troubling”. He said that the British public “have a right to know that the animals in the supply chain are treated to the highest welfare standards, including at the point of slaughter.”

He added: “Most farmers, hauliers and abattoirs work hard to uphold excellent standards, but this volume and severity of breaches reveals serious and systemic failures in parts of the supply chain.”

Adrian Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley, said that the number of “critical” welfare breaches recorded was “totally indefensible.” “These are happening because too many parts of the system are failing to protect animals, and their combined impact is devastating.”

A spokesperson for the charity Animal Aid said that they had campaigned for decades to make CCTV mandatory in slaughterhouses in the UK, "and now the evidence is clear that no amount of monitoring or so-called ‘welfare measures' will prevent horrendous cruelty.”

The Food Standards Agency defended its enforcement activities and said welfare breaches affected just a fraction of animals slaughtered.  

“The FSA takes any animal welfare breach very seriously and will always take the appropriate enforcement action. We do not tolerate poor animal welfare standards in approved slaughterhouses,” Junior Johnson, Director of Operations, said.

“Overall compliance with animal welfare requirements remains very high across the sector. Of over 1 billion animals slaughtered in 2024/2025, only 0.0033% were detected as affected by animal welfare breaches. Our official veterinarians are present in all approved slaughterhouses to monitor welfare standards and take immediate action when issues are identified.”

He said that the businesses running abattoirs were primarily responsible for ensuring welfare standards were met, and that they were expected to maintain “robust systems and controls.”

Catalogue of suffering

Vets and meat hygiene inspectors work in registered abattoirs to ensure businesses are compliant with welfare legislation and that livestock are spared avoidable suffering, pain or distress. There are currently 208 abattoirs operating across England and Wales, records show.  

The inspection data revealed that there were 2686 welfare breaches recorded in the period, involving 356,095 animals. These included 1184 incidents involving poultry, 491 involving pigs, 435 involving cattle or calves, 568 involving sheep, amongst others.

The most common category of incident was recorded as “on farm / transport”, with 2356 breaches. Others were linked to unloading, lairages [an area for holding livestock before slaughter], movement and restraint, stunning, bleeding [the killing of animals], or failures in management at meat plants.

2412 incidents were so severe they were classified as “critical”, the most serious type of infraction which the FSA says “poses a serious and imminent risk to animal welfare or one where avoidable pain, distress or suffering has been caused”. Such breaches were recorded 92 times a week, on average, over the 6 month period.  

Frozen to death

Many incidents were connected to transporting animals or welfare issues on farms. More than 31,600 animals were recorded as being “dead on arrival” during the period, mostly poultry but also pigs, cattle and sheep.  

In one incident, 1500 birds from a total load of 9200 died whilst being transported in freezing conditions. According to the incident log: “The birds were cold and wet, all of the birds were neck dislocated to ensure that moribund birds were dead before being macerated.”

An inspector wrote: “In my professional opinion the duration of the journey during the early hours of the morning as well as the freezing weather, was the cause of the high numbers dead or suffering with hypothermia.”

During the period in question, thousands of birds were found to be suffering from foot pad dermatitis (sometimes known as pododermatitis), a painful condition involving inflammation of the feet, and often an indicator of poor welfare conditions on farms.    

In one breach amongst dozens identified, an inspector noted: “During my checks I observed a high prevalence of foot pad dermatitis among the birds [...] Nearly all the birds exhibited necrotic lesions [areas of dead tissue]. In my professional opinion, these issues likely originated at the farm due to poor litter conditions, resulting in unnecessary pain and suffering for the birds.”

At an abattoir processing pigs, a vet reported "tail bite" in a consignment of animals. This is a serious condition that can lead to injuries, pain and infection, resulting from pigs chewing on other animals' tails on farms. An inspector reported: “Around 38 animals […] were found with varying grades of lesions on their tails (bites and associated abscesses/lumps around them indicating external infections in the area). This indicates poor animal welfare on farms during rearing [...] the animals have suffered unnecessary stress and pain on the farm.”

Open wounds

More than 14,000 animals arrived at abattoirs with other injuries or illnesses, the records show, including cases of broken limbs and horns, open wounds, deformities, hernias, abscesses, bruising and eye infections, amongst other conditions.    

In one incident, an inspector reported a cow suffering from an ingrown horn. “I could see the right horn piercing the hide and the adjacent tissues. The area around the horn was infected and there was a puss discharge,” they noted. “In my opinion [this has caused] unnecessary and avoidable suffering by not trimming off the tip of the horn before it started to pierce the hide.”

In another case, during unloading, a sheep was found “bleeding from the leg and stopped on the floor of the unloading area.”

An inspector observed: “I saw the animal, unable to stand and walk [...] I asked the lairage manager to call another operative with the captive bolt gun [used to render animals unconscious] and a knife, in order to stun and kill the animal where it lies.” It was subsequently found that the animal had a "complete compound fracture".  

In a separate breach, officials found a cow had been sent for slaughter despite being blind. “I observed one female Hereford [a breed of cattle] that exhibited signs of unwillingness to move,” the report stated. “Upon further examination, it became evident that the animal was blind, as it did not respond to the presence of pen bars and covers. The animal struck its horns against the [...] barrier multiple times, which served as additional evidence of its blindness.”

Another report detailed how a vet had observed 3 pigs that had been segregated during unloading which displayed "severe lacerations on different anatomical parts," caused, it was believed, by injuries inflicted on a farm and potentially left untreated. The vet recorded that visual inspection of the lesions "was consistent with relatively old open wounds, very dirty and with a strong smell suggesting an infection ."  

The records also highlighted lengthy journeys from farms to abattoirs, including some lasting up to 8 hours. Critics said such durations raise serious welfare concerns and that tougher regulations are required. Road traffic accidents involving livestock lorries were also documented in the period.

In one instance, an inspector reported that a truck delivering chickens had suffered an accident on the road during the night, "as a result many chicken suffered injuries and death." The incident log shows 584 birds died. When abattoir staff inspected the crates, the inspector wrote, they "killed immediately the chickens found injured and separated all the dead ones."

Newborn animals slaughtered

The data revealed numerous incidents of animals being sent for slaughter during the late stages of pregnancy. In one episode, a vet recorded that a calf had just been born in the lairage: “Both mother and calf were observed to be in good condition. [...] The newborn calf was stunned with a captive bolt gun and then [killed] and disposed of as Cat 1 [waste byproduct]. The mother was sent to the slaughter line.”

In a similar incident, an inspector recorded: “I noticed one newborn lamb. The aforementioned animal was looking healthy and its umbilical cord was attached [to] its abdomen. Unfortunately the mother of the animal could not be found since no sheep was seen to be particularly interested in the baby and the animals' wool was too long. The newborn lamb was stunned and bled [killed] in the lairage.”

In another case, this time involving a slaughtered cow, an inspector said they had found a foetus "fully developed, with hair all over the body, eyes open, eyelashes presented, golden slippers and the teeth erupted from the gum)." 

Campaigners said that sending pregnant cows and sheep to slaughter was unjustifiable: “Calves born in abattoirs and killed just minutes after birth reflects a serious moral failure in our food system and falls far short of the standard of compassion the public rightly expects,” Chris Platt, of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said.  

Electrical exposure

Amongst numerous failures in abattoir procedures detailed in the logs was an incident where an inspector reported a live sheep apparently being killed without stunning. They wrote that whilst a worker was shackling a stunned sheep “he simultaneously shackled another, unstunned sheep. Both sheep were then moved to the bleeding area. Afterwards, [the worker] left the stunning pen, entered the bleeding area, and bled [killed] the conscious, unstunned sheep.”

In a further breach, an inspector recorded that a worker had been observed bleeding an ovine animal, "and although about 31 seconds had passed after you cut its neck, the animal was still conscious. Despite this, [the worker] still released it from the V-shaped restrainer onto the shackle table while still conscious. Afterwards, the animal jumped off the shackling table and went inside the slaughterhall."

In another episode, involving poultry, it was reported that “the shackling line [a conveyer system used in meat processing plants] was stopped due to a power cut. [...] Staff left the line without verifying that all live birds on the line had been unshackled. As a result, some birds remained suspended on the shackles for approximately 6 minutes.”

Similar violations included one documented as “a failure in [the] CO2 butina system [used for stunning pigs] with several animals found recovering before and after bleeding”. Another saw a live bird “floating freely in the stunning bath. It became apparent that the bird had been subjected to continuous electrical exposure.”

On another occasion, CCTV footage showed a slaughterman “stunning a sheep but failing to bleed [kill] it." The worker was then observed to be stunning other animals whilst leaving the sheep suspended for approximately nine minutes without killing it. The incident resulted in "avoidable animal suffering,” an inspector noted.

Welfare strategy

The FSA highlighted that just 330 (12%) of the recorded breaches related to abattoirs, and that some were technical, such as incidents relating to CCTV, paperwork, and other lower severity breaches where there was no immediate risk to animal welfare.

It said that the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), and local authorities, were responsible for enforcing welfare laws on farms and during transport. The records show that the FSA referred 2356 breaches to external parties, with other incidents being dealt with by verbal or written advice, enforcement notices or further investigation.    

APHA said it took breaches of animal welfare legislation seriously and always investigated where concerns were raised. It added that transporters were required to ensure that when transporting animals, they do so in a way that avoids causing pain, suffering or distress.

The agency said that local authorities were responsible for investigations and carried out routine welfare checks on animals and their means of transport, and will take appropriate enforcement measures including prosecution if required.

Adrian Ramsay said that tackling welfare issues on UK farms and in transport  required multiple interventions: “Enforcement must be adequately funded, and inspections must be frequent enough to act as a real deterrent. At the same time, farmers need support to shift to higher welfare systems,” he said.

Responding to the findings, Johanna Baxter MP, vice chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Animal Welfare, said she was calling on the Government to publish its long awaited animal welfare strategy “to deliver on our manifesto commitment to deliver the highest standards of animal welfare in our nation’s history.”

Note: the data analysis included in this story is based on records provided by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in response to a freedom of information request. The FSA was sent the figures quoted for review prior to publication. Any errors contained in the source material are the responsibility of the FSA.