What happens when an animal gets spooked on the way to slaughter and refuses to continue?

Question

Apologies if this isn't appropriate for this SE - it was the most relevant one I could find.

When animals are being led to slaughter, I imagine it must happen occasionally that one gets the sense that something is wrong—perhaps they hear or smell something unnerving up ahead—and spooks. Whether fight, flight or freeze, this will presumably interrupt the process and their behaviour may potentially spook additional animals.

What happens in this situation? If an animal flat-out refuses to move/will not respond to attempts to calm it, do the slaughterhouse workers just euthanise it on the spot and move on? Or would this just spook the surrounding animals more? Does the stress-induced lactic acid buildup mean that the animal is not processed for food?

ronak · Answer

Just a review, from here:

Federal law in the United States requires that animals should be
stunned before they are slaughtered. The following types of stunning
are used: captive bolt stunning and electrical stunning. However, this
law is often broken at these slaughterhouses.

This indicates that the law is broken often, probably due to speed-slaughter conditions that are required by the meat business.
In the first link also notes:

In many slaughterhouses in the United States, there is time constraint
which is often the reason behind animal cruelty.

So, it appears that there is no one answer on what the slaughterhouses do, this question could be answered generally by stating:
Animals that slow down the process of slaughterhouse operations are destroyed in a way that maximize speed of the operation, often concentrating on expediency/profit maximization and rarely on reduction of cruelty to animals.

What happens when an animal gets spooked on the way to slaughter and refuses to continue?

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