Castration of male livestock is performed at enormous scale to manage behaviour and meat quality, but causes significant pain. Evidence on timing, method, and analgesia informs welfare-preferred approaches.
Castration welfare improvement follows a clear hierarchy: avoid it where possible, use immunocastration where practical, and apply effective multimodal analgesia when surgical castration is performed. Immunocastration in pigs has been successfully adopted across Europe as an alternative to physical castration, demonstrating that industry-wide change is achievable. For cattle and sheep, mandatory analgesia requirements — where implemented — have driven adoption rapidly. The barrier is cost-sensitivity and cultural inertia, not technical feasibility.