Effective pain recognition and management in farm animals is a growing area of veterinary science that could significantly reduce suffering in agriculture if adopted more widely.
The ability to recognise pain in farm animals has improved dramatically with the development and validation of species-specific grimace scales based on facial action coding. These tools allow farmers and veterinarians to identify and quantify pain that would previously have been overlooked or dismissed. Yet adoption remains patchy: pain relief is still not routinely provided for many procedures including castration, disbudding, and dehorning in some countries. Systemic change requires both regulatory requirements and cultural shifts in farming communities.