Introduction
Death of birds during transport represents a production loss
for the broiler industry, with economic consequences for the
professionals involved. It also indicates that the birds concerned
might have experienced poor welfare, and dead
on arrival (DoA) shall be recorded in the European Union
according to Council Directive 2007/43/EC (2007). Moreover,
it has recently been shown that DoAs are related to
subsequent sanitary condemnation (Lupo et al., 2009).
Both DoA and carcass rejection can result from all primary
production steps (Lupo et al., 2009). In an integrated ‘from
farm to fork’ approach to food animal production, all these
primary production steps should be considered as related to
poultry production quality (Terlouw et al., 2008). Estimation
of DoA percentage and variation is therefore of great
importance in order to evaluate the current situation, set up
alert criteria and establish progress targets. The key parameters
influencing DoAs also have to be determined in order
to anticipate and reduce losses. No such data were available
in France. A descriptive and analytical epidemiological survey,
presented hereafter, was therefore carried out at flock
level to obtain descriptive references and to identify risk
factors for DoA at all primary production steps.