Tail docking of pigs without anaesthetic is standard practice in intensive systems to prevent tail-biting, but it treats the symptom rather than the underlying welfare cause.
Tail docking removes the problem of tail biting at the expense of causing a different welfare insult to millions of pigs. The EU's own scientific advisory bodies have concluded that where adequate enrichment is provided, docking becomes unnecessary. Routine docking masks underlying management failures. Countries like Finland have demonstrated that enrichment-based approaches make routine docking unnecessary at scale.