Lighting in the shackling area: conciliating broiler welfare with labor comfort

The objective of this study was to investigate if blue lighting could reduce broiler stress and comply with legal labor comfort requirements in a new shackling area of a middle-size processing plant. In this study, the old shackling area was compared with the new area, where a blue lighting system was designed and implemented according to the regulations. The old and new areas were video- and audio-recorded during the shackling of 33,850 broilers in each area. Data were statistically analyzed using the non-parametric test of Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney (w test).The results indicated 56% reduction in...