Laws specific to the transport of animals raised for food are almost non-existent. The only law regarding transit to slaughter refers to transport by train, though 95 percent of animals are moved by truck, where they are subjected to weather extremes, overcrowding, hunger, and thirst. Every year, untold numbers of animals die from heat exhaustion or freezing to death during transport. Sometimes animals freeze to the sides of the trucks and have to be pried loose. At the slaughterhouse, animals are often skinned and dismembered while still fully conscious.
Steers undergo painful procedures like branding, castration, and dehorning without anesthesia.
They often die of pneumonia, dehydration, or heat exhaustion from spending long periods without food or water in overcrowded trucks while being transported to feedlots or slaughterhouses. In such large numbers, chickens vent their stress and frustration by pecking at each other. To reduce losses, farmers use hot blades to slice off chicks' beaks just hours after the birds hatch. The procedure, which requires cutting through tender tissue similar to the flesh under human fingernails, is so painful that many chicks die of shock. Some die of starvation, when eating becomes too painful.