Castration of male calves is routinely performed in beef production, and like dehorning, it is frequently conducted without adequate pain management despite the availability of effective and affordable options.
Castration without analgesia is among the most common preventable pain experiences in farm animal agriculture. Both surgical and band methods cause significant acute pain -- the physiological evidence is unambiguous. Band castration causes particularly prolonged suffering as the elastrator slowly occludes blood supply over days. The barriers to change are economic inertia and the normalisation of pain in livestock management. Effective pain management through local anaesthesia plus NSAIDs is available, affordable, and increasingly mandated in progressive jurisdictions. The welfare case is clear; the implementation challenge is changing deeply embedded farm practice at scale.